April 16, 2024 • 42 mins
This episode features Tim Riesterer, Emblaze's Chief Research Officer, and Chris Kingman of the RES board, sharing their observations from the Emblaze conference earlier this month.
Tim and Chris delve into details about insights and practical strategies shared by speakers and panels on integrating enablement . They also discuss the undeniable impact of strategic enablement, when it aligns perfectly with company revenue objectives.
You'll hear their insights on:
- The digital transformation in Sales
- Enablement driven by intiative
- The role of AI in sales coaching
- The critical role of customer feedback
- The evolution of sales discovery
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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.
The bad and the ugly practicesof corporate revenue enablement
initiatives Learn what worked,what didn't work and how
obstacles were eliminated byenablement teams and
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 and welcome back to another episode of the
Revenue Enablement Societypodcast Stories from the
Trenches.
Typically, we bring togetherpractitioners from all over the
world and we talk about what'sgoing on in enablement, where
they are, the innovations thatthey're coming up with, and
seeing the things that areworking, what's not working, and
we learn a lot every time.
(01:07):
This is a little bit differentepisode.
Once in a while we like to jumpoutside of the box a little bit
because we have just wrapped upan amazing week in Chicago,
schaumburg.
If you want to get technical,with the Emblaze Conference and
if you haven't picked up on it,this year was the beginning of a
partnership between RES and theEmblaze organization.
(01:32):
So the guests that we have heretoday to talk about it with me
are Chris Kingman, who is amember of the RES board, and Tim
Reisterer, who is the chiefresearch officer from Emblaze.
So welcome to you both.
Appreciate you being here.
Thank you, paul.
Thanks Paul, appreciate it.
Chris, you really were the onethat championed this to the rest
of us on the board, I'd saygoing back to I don't know,
(01:54):
early last fall maybe.
So I would love to start off ifyou could maybe give everybody
a little bit of background.
What did you see in the visionof this partnership and how it's
come together?
Then let's talk about theconference Sure.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
To answer that we need to go back a few more years
before that.
I've been involved with Emblaze, formerly AISP, for quite some
time.
What I really think about mycareer trajectory started at an
Emblaze conference years ago inwhich I saw an executive from
Microsoft detail how they builtdigital sales and I said I need
(02:28):
to do that more at myorganization.
Through the years I've beeninvolved with InBlaze and the
value that I've derived from itas a enablement leader is that I
get to hear from sales leadersand folks who are experiencing
challenges on the front lineEnablement.
White papers and content andconferences are line enablement.
You know white papers andcontent and conferences are
great, but this was sort of itwas untapped knowledge and
(02:50):
access to the things that aregoing to impact my organization.
And over the years I, you know,I got more and more value, more
and more exposure and over theI think the last two years I was
attending the conference, I metTim and I also attended an
Emblaze executive retreat and Igot to see really firsthand with
(03:12):
a lot of heads of sales of verylarge organizations what their
challenges were.
And the real surprise, paul,was that these were not sales
management challenges, thesewere not sales leader challenges
.
These were enablementchallenges.
I like to say that salesmanager challenges were solved a
long time ago.
Right, I think we really knowhow to do that job.
There's endless amounts ofresources, but what a lot of
(03:34):
these folks were faced with werechallenges that were emerging
as sales moved to a digitalplatform all digital or half
digital, you know, especiallyafter COVID, the emergence or
the speeding up of thattransition, and so you know, I
started talking with theleadership team there and I said
, look, I really think there'ssome value here Around.
(03:55):
That time I joined the RES boardand, you know, with our mission
of elevating the profession, Ithought this was a great
opportunity to introduce ourmembers to our members to maybe
a part of the business thatthey're not closely tied to,
even though we serve salesleaders.
I observed that I didn't reallythink enablement folks were
(04:17):
engaging at that level, at theCRO level, and so over the last
two years we've been workingwith Tim and the leadership team
at Emblaze to really bring thisto life, and I believe last
year was their first year for anenablement track.
I believe most requested andmost attended is what gets
thrown around.
Hopefully Tim does not correctme on that and this year you
(04:39):
know he's too polite, hewouldn't do that.
He's too polite.
I think you know the enablementtrack and the enablement
practitioners that presentedreally brought a lot of value
and you know some of the thingsthat we'll go over from the
takeaway is really elevate theconversation and you know I'm
very excited to see where thisgoes.
We've got a lot planned for theconference coming up in October
, also in the Chicagoland area,I believe you know, and I think
(05:05):
this is just the beginning toprovide more value to not only
our community but also theEmblaze community as well.
The other side of the coin isintroducing these sales leaders
to enablement and thecapabilities of enablement.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
We were talking about some of the cool things, the
takeaways.
I mean we, you know, anybodythat was on LinkedIn last week
surely saw pictures.
I can't imagine anybody is notaware of the conference and saw
the pictures.
Sorry, I missed the Back to theFuture Delorean.
That probably was the worth theprice of admission alone.
But, tim, I want to pivot toyou for a minute, because one of
(05:36):
, at least I thought, mostinteresting observations that
you and Chris shared with me wasthe one that and this I'm going
to put it, that AI.
You know people talk about AIcoming for people's jobs.
Right, the AI may be coming fora manager's job as coach, but
not necessarily coming after theseller's jobs, which is what
(05:57):
people sometimes theorize.
So we'd love to start with that.
What did you hear or what areyou seeing in that?
Right?
How is AI going to take overthe coaching role, or could it?
Speaker 4 (06:07):
Yeah, we joked at the conference that um, uh, you,
you.
It's going to be a lot ofcontent that you're going to
have to absorb over a couple ofdays and you're going to have to
stay well hydrated.
And the way to stay wellhydrated is take a drink of your
water every time somebody saysAI, because you'll be plenty
hydrated.
You might even suffer fromwater toxicity, but so, no, the
(06:30):
AI call out there is.
So the conference, the Emblazeconference, is for sales leaders
and it's called the Digital NowRevenue Summit and really it's
for the digital first buyer andseller which is coming for every
part of every enterprise andevery sales team in that
enterprise.
(06:50):
So, and I think the thing that,to your point, that jumped out
at me, at least from the AIinformation that was being
thrown around, is one Everybodywants to convince you it's for
certain activities not goingafter certain jobs.
You, it's for certainactivities, not going after
(07:11):
certain jobs, and maybe this wasbecause this was a sales
leaders conference.
What seemed to emerge washere's the thing that it's going
to do really well Is it goingto be able to take in some
signals.
Ai is going to be able to lookat the signals coming in how
people are or aren't respondingto your emails.
They're going to be able tolook at the signals coming in,
how people are or aren'tresponding to your emails.
They're going to look at theconversation intelligence and
start to make some assessmentson that.
It's going to look at buyerfeedback and client experience
(07:33):
feedback on what the salesexperience was like and how your
reps performed.
There's a myriad of signalscoming that AI can process and
then AI can help searchdatabases to give sales reps
coaching from that.
So I'll give you an example Oneof the most provocative things
I heard was using AI to review acall recording.
(07:57):
This is something that the callrecording companies haven't even
figured out yet.
This was a separate littlecompany there that reviews call
recordings and within fiveminutes sends the rep an email
after that call and says here'sthree or four things to work on
specifically, and then it givesyou a video, a little, you know,
nudges, just little things togive that rep.
(08:18):
So it happens immediately.
So there's an element ofimmediacy, which is always good,
and it gives you the learning,not just the insight.
It's the insight and the action.
Now here's where it gets reallycrazy.
So I'm a rep, I had a call, ai,listened to it and scored me,
gave me feedback and gave me acouple of remedial sorts of
enablement or coaching content.
(08:40):
And then it sets up an AIsimulation that that rep can
take to try to get better onthose things.
Based on that scenario, itliterally pulls the call
recording in and makes thatsimulation like a redo on that
call with that client, sincehopefully that client somebody
(09:00):
you're going to meet with again,right, and this is just all
happening and how could amanager ever keep up with that?
Why would you want them to try?
And um and so the scale of that,the pace of that and really the
, the, even the consistency andquality of that that I think we
can see.
And then a manager can getpinged on all that.
(09:22):
Hey, I got my one-on-one withthat rep.
They can get pinged on all that.
Hey, I got my one-on-one withthat rep.
They can get a quick analyticshowing up in Salesforce
associated with that rep thatsays here's what happened to
them this week and now, if youhave to do a little coaching,
super highly directed, and Ijust have to say there was so
much more.
But that to me, was the examplethat expressed that skills,
(09:44):
coaching and the ability to dothat consistently high quality,
at pace and scale, even with alevel of repetition that
managers just can't do, becausewe, as enablement people are
asking them to do all that ontop of their day jobs.
We want to think managers aregoing to be the ones who make
(10:04):
enablement stick, but I thinkwe're asking them to do like one
too many things.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
I'm just sitting here thinking, wow, with the time
we're giving back to them, whatcan they be doing?
You know, um, in thattransformation that you've gone
through, and the teams thatyou're supporting go through
your VP there at TransUnion.
(10:30):
So one of the otherobservations that you and Tim
brought back is that all sellersare digital sellers, versus the
outlook that all selling isdigital.
So you want to talk a littlebit about that.
Tim, you can jump in as wanted,but I.
That's an interesting concept.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
Sure, I mean in this post COVID world.
I'm not exactly sure thatpercentages of sellers are
returning to face-to-facemeetings, and I think that's a
universally accepted truth atthis point.
Right, we can reach morecustomers, we can have more
(11:08):
valuable conversations, butthat's only through the adoption
of digital means and it's notnecessarily just by a bunch of
tech.
Right, it's leverage thechannels and have the right
conversations.
And I think the real benefit topivot off of Tim's comments is
AI is not going to replace humansales manager skills.
(11:31):
I think what AI is going to dois give you capability over time
.
You're going to be able to domore with the time that you have
, and if you're talking aboutdigital selling, it's almost
like adding bodies to aworkforce.
How long does it take to reviewsales calls?
We have this at my organization.
(11:52):
It is very time consuming, butwhen we put an AI layer on there
, instead of reviewing one calland making a coaching
conversation around one call,you can review 10.
You can review 20.
You can review 20,.
You can review all of the callsin a quarter, in a matter of
moments, and score them and thenhave a coaching conversation
(12:12):
focused on one singular or themost important aspect of
someone's skills, right, I thinkthere's these enablement
multipliers, if you will, orthat really can aid to the, the
sell, the nature of selling, asopposed to meeting a customer
face-to-face, even for adiscovery conversation.
(12:34):
I don't think face-to-face willever go away, especially post
COVID.
The other thing that we learnedis wow, I really like human
interaction, you know, and Ilike connection and I even even
the most antisocial person, willagree like I, could probably
sit down and have a conversationwith somebody.
I think where we find this happymedium is digital selling can
(12:54):
help you go a lot farther interms of establishing yourself
with a customer and getting toyou know what is really their
problem and also, hey, how doesthe solution align to this?
As it, you know what is reallytheir problem?
And also, hey, how does howdoes the solution align to this
as it?
You know, as it relates to us,our challenges in the market,
but also prepares them to.
When you do get face to face,you have the most valuable
(13:15):
organic conversation you canhave, whether you're digital
selling where you're selling inperson I think you know those
are.
That's where we're going is,instead of 50% or 60% in person,
you're going to be 30 or 20% inperson, but those in-person
moments will be bolstered andsupported through digital
activity, ai based, you know,preparation, if you will,
(13:40):
coaching.
So the people that we do sendto our customers are going to be
the absolute bestrepresentation of our
organizations.
Speaker 4 (13:47):
Yeah, I'll just add on to that, paul.
I went and dug up the statsfrom this week after Chris so
boldly proclaimed which trackwas the top track and said I was
too polite to dispute it.
If I have data I may not dateit, just your opinion, right.
So here's what I will say Now.
Remember that the bulk of thepeople at this event are leaders
(14:10):
of sellers.
The number two attended trackwas training and enabling
sellers in the flow of work.
So it was the second rankedtrack.
But what's interesting to thisenablement audience listening is
in a group of 700, primarily700, sales leaders.
The second most attended trackwas how do I train and enable
(14:32):
sellers in their flow of work?
That's what we call the track,because we wanted to put a
digital spin on it, the idea ofthe flow of work versus, you
know, traditional learning paths, et cetera.
The top track was engagingdigital buyers.
So, of the eight tracks we had,21.8% of the attendees chose to
attend engaged digital buyers,and that was by the second one.
(14:56):
Train enable sellers was about15.24%.
So and so, and the third onewas increased new business rates
.
What was interesting is itdropped off pretty precipitously
after those three.
Uh, which makes sense, um, butthis idea of engaging digital
buyers.
So your question was um, likeall selling is digital, but it
(15:17):
all sellers are digital.
Basically, all buyers aredigital and digital a lot of the
time, and the thing thatconfounded and caused, I think,
what we're hearing and seeing inthe data sales leaders to
respond to is how do I engagedigital buyers?
Because they're trying to dothings without me until they
need me and they do still needyou.
(15:38):
But making the sales team savvyon how to do that, you know and
so like.
For example, one of the this issales leaders.
Remember One of the topattended breakouts in that track
was the effectiveness and howto improve your automated lead
nurturing, and I'm like, wow,you would have thought that was
(16:01):
a marketing topic, right, but itjust goes to show you Well,
yeah, but it impacts.
thought that was a marketingtopic, right, but it just goes
to show you that nothing can bedismissed as well.
This is a marketing topic, orthis is a such and such topic.
It's like we're all in this nowto reach this digital buyer in
an effective way and leveragewhatever tool or button we have
(16:22):
at our disposal.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
I want to continue the conversation with one of the
other observations, which isthat enablement and this is the
proposed position enablement isdriven by initiative, not
competency models, True or falsefor either one of you.
Let's talk about that, for aminute.
Speaker 4 (16:39):
I'll let Chris answer that one first, as he's
actually gainfully employed asan enablement leader.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
It's a tough one.
I would say yes to both, but Ithink that's evolving.
How so Timco presented on, Iguess, gartner's enablement
mandate right, and I think Iread that the paper.
My takeaway was there's somecommonly held beliefs right,
enablement can't be box checkingexercises and it can't be
(17:10):
focused on just in timeenablement exclusively.
And that it needs to kind ofanchor in driving behavior
change that aligns to, let's say, specific outcomes and goals.
Right, so if you want to, youknow, grow by a certain
percentage, your enablementprograms need to be aligned, you
(17:32):
know, from the strategy all theway down to the tactics of how
to drive that growth.
I forget who co-presented withTim.
I apologize.
It was exactly what I believeenablement should be.
There was a strategy.
There was a clearly definedstrategy of here is how we align
to the broader strategy of theorganization.
And then there were the tacticsand it was.
(17:54):
It was just an expert exampleof this is exactly what
enablement should be.
It's both aligned to executiveleadership outlook here's what
we're going to do but also itbrings the strength of
enablement of here's how we'regoing to do it and I think
that's I think what you're goingto see over the next few years
with an enablement is less andless about the actual individual
(18:16):
tactics, right, how much timecan we spend talking about new
hire onboarding before it's like, okay, this is kind of, there
are standards, there's bestpractices and more aligned to
how do you understand a broaderstrategy?
Right, if you want to grow by acertain percent, you want to
enter a market, what are theenablement tactics?
And then how do we do those?
And then how do we measure thatthey're successful?
(18:38):
Right, I don't think revenue upis the greatest metric of all.
I think there's other thingsthat you can look at all the way
down to the individualcompetencies.
Right, if you train ondiscovery and let's say you
train, you're training on sortof a change in discovery from
you know just questions toreally sort of problem solving,
(18:58):
right, or or deeper discovery,and you know, as we touched on,
kind of discovery.
That also plays off of thecustomer's level of AI and
engagement and knowledge.
That's going to reflect inmetrics different ways, right.
And so how do you get down tothe individual?
Well, if discovery skillsimprove, we should see you know
lead conversions improve oropportunity creation improve, or
(19:21):
the quality of theconversations improve.
It's you know specific to theorganization, but I think it's
kind of from my takeaways,that's really the direction
we're headed in.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Yeah, I've been a big fan of the concepts of strategy
mapping in the balancescorecard from Kaplan and Norton
.
It goes back a little waysHarvard Business because it does
those things that you say.
However, you know now, in adigital world, tim, it seems
like we've got maybe that'sstill a great methodology, but
it seems like we have evenbetter options.
Anything you want to add towhat Chris said?
Speaker 4 (19:52):
Yeah, I'll give you the specific example that was
presented at the conference.
Since this is a conferencerecap, I'll share this.
It was amazing to me.
So the strategy is we have tofind a path to growth and then
you go in and you look at whereare the potential sales impacted
, constraints to growth, and inthis case they identified the no
(20:13):
decision indecision rate.
No shocker there.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Always our worst competitor.
Speaker 4 (20:19):
Right, and then it was particularly pronounced and
expanding for them.
And they said the focus for thenext two quarters is going to
be on the growth initiative.
Sure, but on this particularproblem.
And what they did is theylooked at all of their skills,
(20:46):
rack those things like how doyou create, disrupt, status quo
bias, how do you gain executiveaccess, how do you build-thread
in a client or an opportunity,Because they were able to track
at some level that those hadimpact.
(21:08):
But they'd all been trainedseparately as classes in the
past, but not done as aconcerted effort to move a
certain metric, no decision.
So they repackaged that up thenin a series of coaching nudges
and some re-enablement and evena little bit of training and
(21:28):
management train the trainer.
And it was we're going to godeep into these four behaviors,
these four skills, and put youin a position, Basically, they
launched it in about six weeks,built it, launched it and it was
designed to move the needle ona known metric that was giving
(21:49):
them pain of between a 5% to 6%decrease in no decisions for
those people who had completedthe majority of this pathway.
(22:11):
And so what you had on the frontend was the whole idea was
driving sustained behaviorchange, but doing that because
you attached it to a knowndeficit and a measurable outcome
.
And I think sometimes we docompetency maps, we do learning
paths, we do large scaleonboarding and we spread
(22:34):
everything like peanut butterover everybody.
And the reality is we're goingto pull this lever no decision
for the next two quarters andwe're going to go after it with
those specific skills and whatthey were able to ascertain is
if they everybody had gonethrough these courses somewhere
in their history at the company.
But so, as a result, theprogram wasn't let's just redo
(22:55):
those trainings, it was sort ofa net new advanced expert
experience to re-enable thosethings so that the learner
didn't feel like wait, I've donethis before.
No, it was all contextualizedto this business problem, not
this course, and it clearly hadan impact.
And I think that's where you'regoing to see the future A named
(23:16):
initiative that you can have asubset or derivative sort of
custom enablement coachingexperience that happens quickly
and then in the flow of work andthen is absolutely measurable
because you're targeting a KPIthat you can track before and
after In that.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
I'm thinking because one of the other takeaways that
one of you shared was the ideaof using I mean, hopefully we're
using customer feedback loopsin our revenue orgs already, but
specifically using that as partof the rep feedback and
coaching loop.
And so, as I'm listening to youknow, as we're talking about
this last topic, I'm justwondering where does customer
(23:54):
feedback fit into that, fit intoeverything we've been talking
about?
Because, yes, their point ofview is the one that should
matter the most.
If it doesn't think about, youknow, think about fixing that,
but is it getting into ourenablement?
Is it getting into being fedback to the reps, that feedback,
in a way that's going to helpthem?
Let's talk about that for aminute.
What do you?
What do you?
(24:14):
What do you?
What did you see at theconference?
Or what were people talkingabout?
Speaker 3 (24:17):
I sat in a session with uh left, bonnie and frank p
, and it was all about buyersusing AI.
I pride myself on staying atthe forefront and I was
extremely surprised at how fardown that path buyers have gone.
You know, I ended upquestioning myself what do I
think my buyers are doing?
(24:38):
Just sitting around waiting forme to call?
You know?
Just twiddling their thumbs,waiting for the best solution
possible?
Speaker 2 (24:46):
Right, yeah, wait for me to bump that email up one
more time, right.
Speaker 3 (24:51):
Uh, buyer, I mean, it's critical, right, and it's a
it's a great time to starttalking about how is this woven
into how our sellers operate?
Um, I think there's a couple ofthings to consider here.
One it's uh, I'm I'm trying towork with these individuals
versus, you know, my boss wastrying to coach and develop me.
So there's where the source ofthe feedback comes from, Right,
and I think Meaning thecustomer's feedback as opposed
(25:14):
to my boss's top down feedback.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
Right, right.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
I think there's just Grassroots.
Yep, I think there's a baked inin all of us of like, oh, it's
just my boss telling me to dothis.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
Right.
But you know, I think there'sincreasing avenues for our
customers to really tell us like, hey, this is, this is how you
show up, right?
Maybe you show up with fiveindividuals from your
organization and it's too muchfor your client, right, there's
(25:49):
too many people, or they have togo through too many hoops to
deal with you.
I think that's critical.
The technology exists tothoroughly capture not only what
your customer's feedback is,but their sentiment, their
reactions, what they're saying,what they're talking about, how
they respond to your questions,and all of that can be analyzed
deeply and it should feed backinto how you approach them.
And you may not be as advancedas Tim detailed earlier,
(26:11):
although I do hope we all aresomeday.
I think that stuff is critical.
You know it's at the end of theday, these are the folks that
you want to inform and persuade,to a degree right that you
provide value.
If they're telling you this,you know your solution doesn't
do it, or how you present itdoesn't resonate, or you don't.
(26:33):
You don't really capture orunderstand the difficulties I,
the buyer, am experiencing.
That's going to carry a lot ofweight.
I mean, tim, and I couldprobably, you know, just talk
about this all day, but thepsychology of buying is probably
getting more complicated, right, you know, and I about this all
day, but the psychology ofbuying is probably getting more
complicated, right, you know,and I think there's more
(26:54):
pressure than ever to make theright decision, and so how you
show up- or at least lesstolerance for making the wrong
decision.
That's a great way to put it.
Paul right, I think you knoweverybody's running on a one
strike and you're out policy atthis point.
I think all of that informationis really valuable.
How you can collect it, how youdisseminate it and how you sort
of gather your inferences, yourinsights, is going to be
(27:16):
organization specific, but Iwould challenge enablers
listening, or even CROs, put iton your strategy and even just
start, just baseline what you'redoing today.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
Tim, what of research ?
Or or maybe just to summarizesome things research has shown
about reps?
You know where organizationshave brought the customer
feedback in as part of thatcoaching cycle and that sort of
thing.
What are the sales people?
What are you hearing salespeople?
They spawn well to it, do they?
Do they roll their eyes?
How's that working out?
Speaker 4 (27:46):
um, I think sales people are always going to roll
their eyes.
It's a degree of eye roll.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
Can you see it, or just?
Speaker 4 (27:51):
and see it or hear it .
No, there were three pieces ofdata that came out at the
conference that I thought werefascinating.
One piece of data from folkswho are running customer win
loss, let's say at scale, iswhat they were able to identify
is that 53% of their losses weredue to something that the sales
(28:11):
rep could control or somethingthat happened in the sales
experience.
So let's say something that wascoachable, fixable.
47% of losses is maybe you gotto go back to your product
roadmap or you got to go back toyour pricing schedule or the
politics were out of yourcontrol, but that means there's
a lot of losses to be recapturedand a lot of unforced errors.
(28:32):
So that was a big number 53% oflosses.
There's a problem to be foundand fixed that a manager and a
rep can address.
Now what was interesting is thenext piece of data that was
interesting is 35%.
By a factor of 35%, reps aremore receptive to feedback from
customers than feedback fromtheir managers or their peers.
(28:53):
Managers and peers were aboutthe same, but feedback from
customers reps were morereceptive, both in terms of
willing to hear it and willingto do something about it.
So that came from Dr Lefboni,who did a totally objective test
.
In fact, the results he saidshocked him.
He thought peers was going tobe the winning answer, yet it
was customer feedback, buyerfeedback, that was most highly
(29:17):
regarded and had the potentialto impact behavior change.
So I think enablers who aretrying to show a team hey, we
probably need to fix some thingsBuyer feedback is going to get
you a lot further in that thanreally any other feedback
mechanism.
And the third number was 40%that was presented.
So, again, dr Left Bonnielooked at some win-loss research
(29:37):
and found that year over year,2022 to 2023, reps that got zero
feedback on their deals fromcustomers versus reps that got
at least three deals worth offeedback.
The reps that had at leastthree deals worth of feedback
had 40% higher win rates thanreps that had zero buyer
(30:00):
customer feedback from dealexperience.
Now, it's a correlation.
I'm not here to say it's causeand effect, and neither was left
, but he goes.
That was an interesting findingthat he was able.
It was like one piece offeedback and a rep's like yeah,
that's a piece of data.
Two pieces of feedback, that'sinteresting.
Three pieces and more seem tobe like I think this is a trend.
(30:20):
Maybe I should do somethingabout that or at least it's a
lot harder to dismiss it.
It's harder to dismiss it and umand and and.
I guess then the idea thatthey're more receptive to it
sort of it all clicks togetherat that point where you're like,
huh, there's something you canfix.
They're more receptive and itseems to a critical mass or some
level of scale it seems to helpmotivate that actual change and
(30:42):
, as a result, performance.
So I think win-loss feedback atscale is a totally missed
opportunity for the sales sideof the house, because most time
win-loss feedback at scale is atotally missed opportunity for
the sales side of the house,because most time win-loss is
done on the marketing side ofthe house, where they do a
snapshot of I don't know 30customers and they're like we're
good until next year and theywork on their product roadmap
and we're like wait, theresearch shows that the people
(31:12):
in charge of like.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
in fact, maybe sales enablement should own win-loss
at scale because it could driveso much of what goes into
behavior.
I agree.
I mean when I, where I wasrunning enablement programs at a
couple of different companieswe co-owned that it was, it was,
you know, it was us and RevOps.
Ultimately that you know, wewere delivering that information
back to the sales leaders, thesales organization.
But love that.
You said that because I to me,having access to that
information and having thatinform we were doing enablement
side was also huge.
(31:34):
We loved getting, in fact,going back far enough.
There weren't a lot of otherways to get some of those early
indicators that the sales teamwas evolving, except that we'd
get that feedback and we used acompany that did this.
This is what they didprofessionally.
We didn't do our own.
We did not do our own win-lossanalysis.
It made all the difference.
We've burned through the timehere.
(31:56):
I mean this is really greatstuff.
I'm more and more sad that Iwasn't there, but I want to wrap
up with one more of theinsights that you brought back,
and this is around AI tech stack.
So we're going to start with AI, we're going to go out on AI,
and that's that I'm looking atthe way that you worded it
(32:18):
system of execution versussystem of record.
Now, that's not a frame orreference I've heard before, so
I'm curious to hear a little bitmore about that.
What were people talking aboutat the conference regarding AI
tech stack?
Speaker 4 (32:50):
um some of the most and the the ceo of gong and the
ceo of outreach were on the mainstage um and did a nice job
because they're founders whohave thousands of companies
using their stuff and they'rethey're they're watching the the
trends right.
One of the things that wasnoticeable is that, um, two
companies got on stage ibm andfis and in both, in both cases,
the sales engagement platformhad started with their digital
(33:13):
teams and now both companies,which were small percentages of
their sales teams, and now bothcompanies had bought
enterprise-wide access to salesengagement platforms for all
their reps, meaning that it'smore likely reps are going to be
on a cadence than they are onan expense account and the
(33:55):
expectation of the productivityand the number of touches and
all that is now being referredto as a system of execution or a
sales execution stack, wherethese are all like these
platforms are consolidating andthey're going to do all of those
things, and that CRMs are goingto be relegated to a system of
record this idea that it'sbasically going to be a database
, but what salespeople are goingto be operating in.
Moving forward, is this salesexecution stack driven by the
consolidation of salesengagement, conversation,
(34:17):
intelligence and forecasting anddeal health, and that will be
the gateway that a salespersonwakes up to every day and where
their dashboards and where theiractivities and, frankly, where
their coaching is going to takeplace, based on the signals, the
insights and the actions thatare recommended.
So just, I need people topicture this layer of system of
(34:38):
record, which is the CRM, andthen the system of execution,
and I like one analogy.
I heard from somebody the systemof record reports the news
analogy.
I heard from somebody thesystem of record reports the
news.
The system of execution makesthe news because it's driving
the daily activities from thesignals that it's receiving,
from the myriad of data pointsit can collect and tell you what
(35:00):
to do next and then make sureyou did it next and then keep
driving that.
So what I see in the AI techstack is consolidation, but
there's now this layering and Ilove the idea of part of your
tech stack creates the news.
The other part of the techstack reports the news, because
then a simple person like meunderstood what the heck they
(35:22):
were all talking about.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
That's a good analogy , chris.
Speaker 3 (35:25):
we got to wrap up, whether you want to comment on
that or just comment on theconference in generally?
Why don't you take us out?
What's the last takeaway youwant everybody to have?
I agree with your perception ofwhat's coming.
(35:48):
I've always called itprescriptive selling or
data-driven selling, and thegreat thing is now all of these
platforms are merging andthey're coming together and I
think what we're going to seeover the next few years is what
I think a lot of us have alwayswanted is the one-stop shop.
Tim highlighted the things Ithink are also critical, and
(36:11):
I've always said conversationalintelligence probably the most
important tool after your CRM,with with the aid of AI.
You know the.
The thing I I want to encourageenablement folks and sales
leaders both think about is notyou know what is this going to
replace, but what time is thisgoing to give me back, or what
insights is this going toprovide me?
More importantly, you know whatis this going to replace, but
what time is this going to giveme back, or what insights is
(36:31):
this going to provide me?
More importantly, you know howis this going to make my life
better in sales and you knowsupporting from an enablement
perspective, who to call withwhat message and when I think is
at the core of some of the workthat we do and, if you know,
systems have now evolved andmoved along through acquisition
or development.
To say, call this person, saythis thing at this time and, by
(36:53):
the way, here's what you said tothem and here's what they said
in a nice tight summary.
And, by the way, call them onthis date and this time.
And, by the way, mr SalesManager and Ms Sales Manager,
here's how that call went andthe takeaways and the sentiment
and the customer's perspective.
And oh, by the way, at a macrolevel, here's your pipeline and
here's all your deals in nature.
(37:20):
Where we're going is simply arealignment of what we need to
focus on and, with the toolsevolving the way that they have,
I think the things that we aregoing to focus on are what are
the holes in the boat?
It's no different than 10 yearsago or 50 years ago.
It's just technology is goingto help us look at even more
finite places Deals that are inthe fuzzy areas of maybe too old
or not moving fast enough, orconversations that could be a
(37:42):
little bit more crisp, orcustomer sentiment and feedback,
or even they're saying the nameof your competitor over and
over again.
All of those things are goingto get bubbled up and I hope, to
Tim's early example, it getsextrapolated out to this really
tight, closed loop of feedbackand coaching and development.
So when the seller sits downwith their manager, it's a very
(38:06):
short but impactful conversationof.
This is the one or two thingsthat you really need to think
about.
Here's your report out, here'syour pie chart, your whatever
kind of display.
You need to tell you how you'retracking, but if you just
tweaked right here, you know youget a lot better.
I I think this is one of thosethings that we're still gonna.
It's gonna take time but itwill.
(38:27):
You know the high tide willraise all boats.
It's just thoughtful deploymentof these tools around the right
areas of improvement.
I think what you and I'll giveyou one more takeaway I got just
because Tim didn't touch on itEvery session had a mention of
AI, but when it was always hey,show of hands, who's brought it
in, it was in my groups.
(38:48):
There was a small percentage.
I still think we're in thishesitation phase.
Um, I know, I certainly am.
You know, the, the chat, gptwriting legal cases that didn't
exist was was enough for me tobe like, okay, pump the brakes,
but that's only a matter of time, right?
I think you know the adoptedthinking about the adoption
curve or whatever we're weprecipice, tim, you said it
(39:10):
we're all in this together.
Now we're facing sales in ajust totally new environment.
It's almost completely digital.
There's an abundance of tools.
Our buyers are enabled and moreeducated, but also more
confused than ever.
So it's going to take your CRO,your enablement and revenue
(39:30):
operations team and yourmarketing team to really sort
that out, to get to the rightperson at the right time with
the right message that clarifieswho you are, what you do and
why it matters to that customer.
To summarize this conference,paul, I think this is my fourth
or my fifth one, withoutsounding like I'm promoting this
(39:50):
too much or any other side.
I think this is my fourth or myfifth one Without sounding like
I'm promoting this too much orany other side.
I think this is a place to comeand learn.
It's to come and learn and tomake sure that, if you're newer,
that you're understanding thetrends and what's happening and
if you're tenured, that you'reon track or you can test your
plan there.
There's a lot of times andsessions I've been in where it's
like, yes, we're doing theright things and some of the
sessions, like I said, buyer,buyers and AI we were not
(40:14):
thinking about the right things.
I think, you know, engagingwith Emblaze can help you.
You know, test your ideas butalso keep you on course and, you
know, make sure and this is thesession I moderated that you're
staying in line and staying intouch with your CROs and your
sales leaders.
I'll give you one more piece ofwhat I took away.
(40:34):
So, after our session, one ofthe participants in our panel
said somebody came up to methey're an enablement
professional.
And they said and our sessionwas on CROs and enablement folks
working together at thestrategic level.
And they said I never actuallysat down and talked to my CRO, I
never thought about it.
(40:54):
Next year, that should be likeyes, I'm in lockstep with my CRO
, I know the strategy, I knowhow to execute, we're moving in
the right direction, we'removing the needle.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
You know, you name it , I can't imagine, but I won't
go into all that now I cannot Iliterally cannot imagine
functioning that way, but that'sokay yeah, um, it was a shocker
too.
Speaker 3 (41:16):
Uh, I'm curious what the cro has been doing as well.
Um, so, anyways, I think that'sthe value in in this conference
in terms of a partnership.
Um, you know, it's bringing theCRO and the head of enablement
and making sure that everyoneunderstands the value in each
role and sees things from theother's perspective.
(41:37):
But also was partnering on youknow what I said strategy to
execution and back.
Speaker 2 (41:43):
Well, I don't think that you oversold the conference
at all, because I had FOMO forthree days last week, so you
know there was also a DeLoreanthere, yeah.
Yeah, that's right To back tothe future, but no, I, seriously
, I uh, I I almost positive I'llbe there next year because I
cause I missed this year and Iwish I hadn't.
But I want to thank you both,Appreciate you both taking time
to bring back these insightsCause I wasn't the only one that
(42:05):
didn't make it and so, bringingback these insights and what
everybody was talking about,Appreciate everything you both
do to support the community andfor everybody else.
Thank you for spending anotherhalf an hour with us we wouldn't
be here if it wasn't for yoursupport and stay safe for the
next two weeks until we're back.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
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.
The bad and the ugly practicesof corporate revenue enablement
initiatives Learn what worked,what didn't work and how
obstacles were eliminated byenablement teams and
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 and welcome back to another episode of the
Revenue Enablement Societypodcast Stories from the
Trenches.
Typically, we bring togetherpractitioners from all over the
world and we talk about what'sgoing on in enablement, where
they are, the innovations thatthey're coming up with, and
seeing the things that areworking, what's not working, and
we learn a lot every time.
(01:07):
This is a little bit differentepisode.
Once in a while we like to jumpoutside of the box a little bit
because we have just wrapped upan amazing week in Chicago,
schaumburg.
If you want to get technical,with the Emblaze Conference and
if you haven't picked up on it,this year was the beginning of a
partnership between RES and theEmblaze organization.
(01:32):
So the guests that we have heretoday to talk about it with me
are Chris Kingman, who is amember of the RES board, and Tim
Reisterer, who is the chiefresearch officer from Emblaze.
So welcome to you both.
Appreciate you being here.
Thank you, paul.
Thanks Paul, appreciate it.
Chris, you really were the onethat championed this to the rest
of us on the board, I'd saygoing back to I don't know,
(01:54):
early last fall maybe.
So I would love to start off ifyou could maybe give everybody
a little bit of background.
What did you see in the visionof this partnership and how it's
come together?
Then let's talk about theconference Sure.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
To answer that we need to go back a few more years
before that.
I've been involved with Emblaze, formerly AISP, for quite some
time.
What I really think about mycareer trajectory started at an
Emblaze conference years ago inwhich I saw an executive from
Microsoft detail how they builtdigital sales and I said I need
(02:28):
to do that more at myorganization.
Through the years I've beeninvolved with InBlaze and the
value that I've derived from itas a enablement leader is that I
get to hear from sales leadersand folks who are experiencing
challenges on the front lineEnablement.
White papers and content andconferences are line enablement.
You know white papers andcontent and conferences are
great, but this was sort of itwas untapped knowledge and
(02:50):
access to the things that aregoing to impact my organization.
And over the years I, you know,I got more and more value, more
and more exposure and over theI think the last two years I was
attending the conference, I metTim and I also attended an
Emblaze executive retreat and Igot to see really firsthand with
(03:12):
a lot of heads of sales of verylarge organizations what their
challenges were.
And the real surprise, paul,was that these were not sales
management challenges, thesewere not sales leader challenges
.
These were enablementchallenges.
I like to say that salesmanager challenges were solved a
long time ago.
Right, I think we really knowhow to do that job.
There's endless amounts ofresources, but what a lot of
(03:34):
these folks were faced with werechallenges that were emerging
as sales moved to a digitalplatform all digital or half
digital, you know, especiallyafter COVID, the emergence or
the speeding up of thattransition, and so you know, I
started talking with theleadership team there and I said
, look, I really think there'ssome value here Around.
(03:55):
That time I joined the RES boardand, you know, with our mission
of elevating the profession, Ithought this was a great
opportunity to introduce ourmembers to our members to maybe
a part of the business thatthey're not closely tied to,
even though we serve salesleaders.
I observed that I didn't reallythink enablement folks were
(04:17):
engaging at that level, at theCRO level, and so over the last
two years we've been workingwith Tim and the leadership team
at Emblaze to really bring thisto life, and I believe last
year was their first year for anenablement track.
I believe most requested andmost attended is what gets
thrown around.
Hopefully Tim does not correctme on that and this year you
(04:39):
know he's too polite, hewouldn't do that.
He's too polite.
I think you know the enablementtrack and the enablement
practitioners that presentedreally brought a lot of value
and you know some of the thingsthat we'll go over from the
takeaway is really elevate theconversation and you know I'm
very excited to see where thisgoes.
We've got a lot planned for theconference coming up in October
, also in the Chicagoland area,I believe you know, and I think
(05:05):
this is just the beginning toprovide more value to not only
our community but also theEmblaze community as well.
The other side of the coin isintroducing these sales leaders
to enablement and thecapabilities of enablement.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
We were talking about some of the cool things, the
takeaways.
I mean we, you know, anybodythat was on LinkedIn last week
surely saw pictures.
I can't imagine anybody is notaware of the conference and saw
the pictures.
Sorry, I missed the Back to theFuture Delorean.
That probably was the worth theprice of admission alone.
But, tim, I want to pivot toyou for a minute, because one of
(05:36):
, at least I thought, mostinteresting observations that
you and Chris shared with me wasthe one that and this I'm going
to put it, that AI.
You know people talk about AIcoming for people's jobs.
Right, the AI may be coming fora manager's job as coach, but
not necessarily coming after theseller's jobs, which is what
(05:57):
people sometimes theorize.
So we'd love to start with that.
What did you hear or what areyou seeing in that?
Right?
How is AI going to take overthe coaching role, or could it?
Speaker 4 (06:07):
Yeah, we joked at the conference that um, uh, you,
you.
It's going to be a lot ofcontent that you're going to
have to absorb over a couple ofdays and you're going to have to
stay well hydrated.
And the way to stay wellhydrated is take a drink of your
water every time somebody saysAI, because you'll be plenty
hydrated.
You might even suffer fromwater toxicity, but so, no, the
(06:30):
AI call out there is.
So the conference, the Emblazeconference, is for sales leaders
and it's called the Digital NowRevenue Summit and really it's
for the digital first buyer andseller which is coming for every
part of every enterprise andevery sales team in that
enterprise.
(06:50):
So, and I think the thing that,to your point, that jumped out
at me, at least from the AIinformation that was being
thrown around, is one Everybodywants to convince you it's for
certain activities not goingafter certain jobs.
You, it's for certainactivities, not going after
(07:11):
certain jobs, and maybe this wasbecause this was a sales
leaders conference.
What seemed to emerge washere's the thing that it's going
to do really well Is it goingto be able to take in some
signals.
Ai is going to be able to lookat the signals coming in how
people are or aren't respondingto your emails.
They're going to be able tolook at the signals coming in,
how people are or aren'tresponding to your emails.
They're going to look at theconversation intelligence and
start to make some assessmentson that.
It's going to look at buyerfeedback and client experience
(07:33):
feedback on what the salesexperience was like and how your
reps performed.
There's a myriad of signalscoming that AI can process and
then AI can help searchdatabases to give sales reps
coaching from that.
So I'll give you an example Oneof the most provocative things
I heard was using AI to review acall recording.
(07:57):
This is something that the callrecording companies haven't even
figured out yet.
This was a separate littlecompany there that reviews call
recordings and within fiveminutes sends the rep an email
after that call and says here'sthree or four things to work on
specifically, and then it givesyou a video, a little, you know,
nudges, just little things togive that rep.
(08:18):
So it happens immediately.
So there's an element ofimmediacy, which is always good,
and it gives you the learning,not just the insight.
It's the insight and the action.
Now here's where it gets reallycrazy.
So I'm a rep, I had a call, ai,listened to it and scored me,
gave me feedback and gave me acouple of remedial sorts of
enablement or coaching content.
(08:40):
And then it sets up an AIsimulation that that rep can
take to try to get better onthose things.
Based on that scenario, itliterally pulls the call
recording in and makes thatsimulation like a redo on that
call with that client, sincehopefully that client somebody
(09:00):
you're going to meet with again,right, and this is just all
happening and how could amanager ever keep up with that?
Why would you want them to try?
And um and so the scale of that,the pace of that and really the
, the, even the consistency andquality of that that I think we
can see.
And then a manager can getpinged on all that.
(09:22):
Hey, I got my one-on-one withthat rep.
They can get pinged on all that.
Hey, I got my one-on-one withthat rep.
They can get a quick analyticshowing up in Salesforce
associated with that rep thatsays here's what happened to
them this week and now, if youhave to do a little coaching,
super highly directed, and Ijust have to say there was so
much more.
But that to me, was the examplethat expressed that skills,
(09:44):
coaching and the ability to dothat consistently high quality,
at pace and scale, even with alevel of repetition that
managers just can't do, becausewe, as enablement people are
asking them to do all that ontop of their day jobs.
We want to think managers aregoing to be the ones who make
(10:04):
enablement stick, but I thinkwe're asking them to do like one
too many things.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
I'm just sitting here thinking, wow, with the time
we're giving back to them, whatcan they be doing?
You know, um, in thattransformation that you've gone
through, and the teams thatyou're supporting go through
your VP there at TransUnion.
(10:30):
So one of the otherobservations that you and Tim
brought back is that all sellersare digital sellers, versus the
outlook that all selling isdigital.
So you want to talk a littlebit about that.
Tim, you can jump in as wanted,but I.
That's an interesting concept.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
Sure, I mean in this post COVID world.
I'm not exactly sure thatpercentages of sellers are
returning to face-to-facemeetings, and I think that's a
universally accepted truth atthis point.
Right, we can reach morecustomers, we can have more
(11:08):
valuable conversations, butthat's only through the adoption
of digital means and it's notnecessarily just by a bunch of
tech.
Right, it's leverage thechannels and have the right
conversations.
And I think the real benefit topivot off of Tim's comments is
AI is not going to replace humansales manager skills.
(11:31):
I think what AI is going to dois give you capability over time
.
You're going to be able to domore with the time that you have
, and if you're talking aboutdigital selling, it's almost
like adding bodies to aworkforce.
How long does it take to reviewsales calls?
We have this at my organization.
(11:52):
It is very time consuming, butwhen we put an AI layer on there
, instead of reviewing one calland making a coaching
conversation around one call,you can review 10.
You can review 20.
You can review 20,.
You can review all of the callsin a quarter, in a matter of
moments, and score them and thenhave a coaching conversation
(12:12):
focused on one singular or themost important aspect of
someone's skills, right, I thinkthere's these enablement
multipliers, if you will, orthat really can aid to the, the
sell, the nature of selling, asopposed to meeting a customer
face-to-face, even for adiscovery conversation.
(12:34):
I don't think face-to-face willever go away, especially post
COVID.
The other thing that we learnedis wow, I really like human
interaction, you know, and Ilike connection and I even even
the most antisocial person, willagree like I, could probably
sit down and have a conversationwith somebody.
I think where we find this happymedium is digital selling can
(12:54):
help you go a lot farther interms of establishing yourself
with a customer and getting toyou know what is really their
problem and also, hey, how doesthe solution align to this?
As it, you know what is reallytheir problem?
And also, hey, how does howdoes the solution align to this
as it?
You know, as it relates to us,our challenges in the market,
but also prepares them to.
When you do get face to face,you have the most valuable
(13:15):
organic conversation you canhave, whether you're digital
selling where you're selling inperson I think you know those
are.
That's where we're going is,instead of 50% or 60% in person,
you're going to be 30 or 20% inperson, but those in-person
moments will be bolstered andsupported through digital
activity, ai based, you know,preparation, if you will,
(13:40):
coaching.
So the people that we do sendto our customers are going to be
the absolute bestrepresentation of our
organizations.
Speaker 4 (13:47):
Yeah, I'll just add on to that, paul.
I went and dug up the statsfrom this week after Chris so
boldly proclaimed which trackwas the top track and said I was
too polite to dispute it.
If I have data I may not dateit, just your opinion, right.
So here's what I will say Now.
Remember that the bulk of thepeople at this event are leaders
(14:10):
of sellers.
The number two attended trackwas training and enabling
sellers in the flow of work.
So it was the second rankedtrack.
But what's interesting to thisenablement audience listening is
in a group of 700, primarily700, sales leaders.
The second most attended trackwas how do I train and enable
(14:32):
sellers in their flow of work?
That's what we call the track,because we wanted to put a
digital spin on it, the idea ofthe flow of work versus, you
know, traditional learning paths, et cetera.
The top track was engagingdigital buyers.
So, of the eight tracks we had,21.8% of the attendees chose to
attend engaged digital buyers,and that was by the second one.
(14:56):
Train enable sellers was about15.24%.
So and so, and the third onewas increased new business rates
.
What was interesting is itdropped off pretty precipitously
after those three.
Uh, which makes sense, um, butthis idea of engaging digital
buyers.
So your question was um, likeall selling is digital, but it
(15:17):
all sellers are digital.
Basically, all buyers aredigital and digital a lot of the
time, and the thing thatconfounded and caused, I think,
what we're hearing and seeing inthe data sales leaders to
respond to is how do I engagedigital buyers?
Because they're trying to dothings without me until they
need me and they do still needyou.
(15:38):
But making the sales team savvyon how to do that, you know and
so like.
For example, one of the this issales leaders.
Remember One of the topattended breakouts in that track
was the effectiveness and howto improve your automated lead
nurturing, and I'm like, wow,you would have thought that was
(16:01):
a marketing topic, right, but itjust goes to show you Well,
yeah, but it impacts.
thought that was a marketingtopic, right, but it just goes
to show you that nothing can bedismissed as well.
This is a marketing topic, orthis is a such and such topic.
It's like we're all in this nowto reach this digital buyer in
an effective way and leveragewhatever tool or button we have
(16:22):
at our disposal.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
I want to continue the conversation with one of the
other observations, which isthat enablement and this is the
proposed position enablement isdriven by initiative, not
competency models, True or falsefor either one of you.
Let's talk about that, for aminute.
Speaker 4 (16:39):
I'll let Chris answer that one first, as he's
actually gainfully employed asan enablement leader.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
It's a tough one.
I would say yes to both, but Ithink that's evolving.
How so Timco presented on, Iguess, gartner's enablement
mandate right, and I think Iread that the paper.
My takeaway was there's somecommonly held beliefs right,
enablement can't be box checkingexercises and it can't be
(17:10):
focused on just in timeenablement exclusively.
And that it needs to kind ofanchor in driving behavior
change that aligns to, let's say, specific outcomes and goals.
Right, so if you want to, youknow, grow by a certain
percentage, your enablementprograms need to be aligned, you
(17:32):
know, from the strategy all theway down to the tactics of how
to drive that growth.
I forget who co-presented withTim.
I apologize.
It was exactly what I believeenablement should be.
There was a strategy.
There was a clearly definedstrategy of here is how we align
to the broader strategy of theorganization.
And then there were the tacticsand it was.
(17:54):
It was just an expert exampleof this is exactly what
enablement should be.
It's both aligned to executiveleadership outlook here's what
we're going to do but also itbrings the strength of
enablement of here's how we'regoing to do it and I think
that's I think what you're goingto see over the next few years
with an enablement is less andless about the actual individual
(18:16):
tactics, right, how much timecan we spend talking about new
hire onboarding before it's like, okay, this is kind of, there
are standards, there's bestpractices and more aligned to
how do you understand a broaderstrategy?
Right, if you want to grow by acertain percent, you want to
enter a market, what are theenablement tactics?
And then how do we do those?
And then how do we measure thatthey're successful?
(18:38):
Right, I don't think revenue upis the greatest metric of all.
I think there's other thingsthat you can look at all the way
down to the individualcompetencies.
Right, if you train ondiscovery and let's say you
train, you're training on sortof a change in discovery from
you know just questions toreally sort of problem solving,
(18:58):
right, or or deeper discovery,and you know, as we touched on,
kind of discovery.
That also plays off of thecustomer's level of AI and
engagement and knowledge.
That's going to reflect inmetrics different ways, right.
And so how do you get down tothe individual?
Well, if discovery skillsimprove, we should see you know
lead conversions improve oropportunity creation improve, or
(19:21):
the quality of theconversations improve.
It's you know specific to theorganization, but I think it's
kind of from my takeaways,that's really the direction
we're headed in.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Yeah, I've been a big fan of the concepts of strategy
mapping in the balancescorecard from Kaplan and Norton
.
It goes back a little waysHarvard Business because it does
those things that you say.
However, you know now, in adigital world, tim, it seems
like we've got maybe that'sstill a great methodology, but
it seems like we have evenbetter options.
Anything you want to add towhat Chris said?
Speaker 4 (19:52):
Yeah, I'll give you the specific example that was
presented at the conference.
Since this is a conferencerecap, I'll share this.
It was amazing to me.
So the strategy is we have tofind a path to growth and then
you go in and you look at whereare the potential sales impacted
, constraints to growth, and inthis case they identified the no
(20:13):
decision indecision rate.
No shocker there.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Always our worst competitor.
Speaker 4 (20:19):
Right, and then it was particularly pronounced and
expanding for them.
And they said the focus for thenext two quarters is going to
be on the growth initiative.
Sure, but on this particularproblem.
And what they did is theylooked at all of their skills,
(20:46):
rack those things like how doyou create, disrupt, status quo
bias, how do you gain executiveaccess, how do you build-thread
in a client or an opportunity,Because they were able to track
at some level that those hadimpact.
(21:08):
But they'd all been trainedseparately as classes in the
past, but not done as aconcerted effort to move a
certain metric, no decision.
So they repackaged that up thenin a series of coaching nudges
and some re-enablement and evena little bit of training and
(21:28):
management train the trainer.
And it was we're going to godeep into these four behaviors,
these four skills, and put youin a position, Basically, they
launched it in about six weeks,built it, launched it and it was
designed to move the needle ona known metric that was giving
(21:49):
them pain of between a 5% to 6%decrease in no decisions for
those people who had completedthe majority of this pathway.
(22:11):
And so what you had on the frontend was the whole idea was
driving sustained behaviorchange, but doing that because
you attached it to a knowndeficit and a measurable outcome
.
And I think sometimes we docompetency maps, we do learning
paths, we do large scaleonboarding and we spread
(22:34):
everything like peanut butterover everybody.
And the reality is we're goingto pull this lever no decision
for the next two quarters andwe're going to go after it with
those specific skills and whatthey were able to ascertain is
if they everybody had gonethrough these courses somewhere
in their history at the company.
But so, as a result, theprogram wasn't let's just redo
(22:55):
those trainings, it was sort ofa net new advanced expert
experience to re-enable thosethings so that the learner
didn't feel like wait, I've donethis before.
No, it was all contextualizedto this business problem, not
this course, and it clearly hadan impact.
And I think that's where you'regoing to see the future A named
(23:16):
initiative that you can have asubset or derivative sort of
custom enablement coachingexperience that happens quickly
and then in the flow of work andthen is absolutely measurable
because you're targeting a KPIthat you can track before and
after In that.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
I'm thinking because one of the other takeaways that
one of you shared was the ideaof using I mean, hopefully we're
using customer feedback loopsin our revenue orgs already, but
specifically using that as partof the rep feedback and
coaching loop.
And so, as I'm listening to youknow, as we're talking about
this last topic, I'm justwondering where does customer
(23:54):
feedback fit into that, fit intoeverything we've been talking
about?
Because, yes, their point ofview is the one that should
matter the most.
If it doesn't think about, youknow, think about fixing that,
but is it getting into ourenablement?
Is it getting into being fedback to the reps, that feedback,
in a way that's going to helpthem?
Let's talk about that for aminute.
What do you?
What do you?
(24:14):
What do you?
What did you see at theconference?
Or what were people talkingabout?
Speaker 3 (24:17):
I sat in a session with uh left, bonnie and frank p
, and it was all about buyersusing AI.
I pride myself on staying atthe forefront and I was
extremely surprised at how fardown that path buyers have gone.
You know, I ended upquestioning myself what do I
think my buyers are doing?
(24:38):
Just sitting around waiting forme to call?
You know?
Just twiddling their thumbs,waiting for the best solution
possible?
Speaker 2 (24:46):
Right, yeah, wait for me to bump that email up one
more time, right.
Speaker 3 (24:51):
Uh, buyer, I mean, it's critical, right, and it's a
it's a great time to starttalking about how is this woven
into how our sellers operate?
Um, I think there's a couple ofthings to consider here.
One it's uh, I'm I'm trying towork with these individuals
versus, you know, my boss wastrying to coach and develop me.
So there's where the source ofthe feedback comes from, Right,
and I think Meaning thecustomer's feedback as opposed
(25:14):
to my boss's top down feedback.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
Right, right.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
I think there's just Grassroots.
Yep, I think there's a baked inin all of us of like, oh, it's
just my boss telling me to dothis.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
Right.
But you know, I think there'sincreasing avenues for our
customers to really tell us like, hey, this is, this is how you
show up, right?
Maybe you show up with fiveindividuals from your
organization and it's too muchfor your client, right, there's
(25:49):
too many people, or they have togo through too many hoops to
deal with you.
I think that's critical.
The technology exists tothoroughly capture not only what
your customer's feedback is,but their sentiment, their
reactions, what they're saying,what they're talking about, how
they respond to your questions,and all of that can be analyzed
deeply and it should feed backinto how you approach them.
And you may not be as advancedas Tim detailed earlier,
(26:11):
although I do hope we all aresomeday.
I think that stuff is critical.
You know it's at the end of theday, these are the folks that
you want to inform and persuade,to a degree right that you
provide value.
If they're telling you this,you know your solution doesn't
do it, or how you present itdoesn't resonate, or you don't.
(26:33):
You don't really capture orunderstand the difficulties I,
the buyer, am experiencing.
That's going to carry a lot ofweight.
I mean, tim, and I couldprobably, you know, just talk
about this all day, but thepsychology of buying is probably
getting more complicated, right, you know, and I about this all
day, but the psychology ofbuying is probably getting more
complicated, right, you know,and I think there's more
(26:54):
pressure than ever to make theright decision, and so how you
show up- or at least lesstolerance for making the wrong
decision.
That's a great way to put it.
Paul right, I think you knoweverybody's running on a one
strike and you're out policy atthis point.
I think all of that informationis really valuable.
How you can collect it, how youdisseminate it and how you sort
of gather your inferences, yourinsights, is going to be
(27:16):
organization specific, but Iwould challenge enablers
listening, or even CROs, put iton your strategy and even just
start, just baseline what you'redoing today.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
Tim, what of research ?
Or or maybe just to summarizesome things research has shown
about reps?
You know where organizationshave brought the customer
feedback in as part of thatcoaching cycle and that sort of
thing.
What are the sales people?
What are you hearing salespeople?
They spawn well to it, do they?
Do they roll their eyes?
How's that working out?
Speaker 4 (27:46):
um, I think sales people are always going to roll
their eyes.
It's a degree of eye roll.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
Can you see it, or just?
Speaker 4 (27:51):
and see it or hear it .
No, there were three pieces ofdata that came out at the
conference that I thought werefascinating.
One piece of data from folkswho are running customer win
loss, let's say at scale, iswhat they were able to identify
is that 53% of their losses weredue to something that the sales
(28:11):
rep could control or somethingthat happened in the sales
experience.
So let's say something that wascoachable, fixable.
47% of losses is maybe you gotto go back to your product
roadmap or you got to go back toyour pricing schedule or the
politics were out of yourcontrol, but that means there's
a lot of losses to be recapturedand a lot of unforced errors.
(28:32):
So that was a big number 53% oflosses.
There's a problem to be foundand fixed that a manager and a
rep can address.
Now what was interesting is thenext piece of data that was
interesting is 35%.
By a factor of 35%, reps aremore receptive to feedback from
customers than feedback fromtheir managers or their peers.
(28:53):
Managers and peers were aboutthe same, but feedback from
customers reps were morereceptive, both in terms of
willing to hear it and willingto do something about it.
So that came from Dr Lefboni,who did a totally objective test
.
In fact, the results he saidshocked him.
He thought peers was going tobe the winning answer, yet it
was customer feedback, buyerfeedback, that was most highly
(29:17):
regarded and had the potentialto impact behavior change.
So I think enablers who aretrying to show a team hey, we
probably need to fix some thingsBuyer feedback is going to get
you a lot further in that thanreally any other feedback
mechanism.
And the third number was 40%that was presented.
So, again, dr Left Bonnielooked at some win-loss research
(29:37):
and found that year over year,2022 to 2023, reps that got zero
feedback on their deals fromcustomers versus reps that got
at least three deals worth offeedback.
The reps that had at leastthree deals worth of feedback
had 40% higher win rates thanreps that had zero buyer
(30:00):
customer feedback from dealexperience.
Now, it's a correlation.
I'm not here to say it's causeand effect, and neither was left
, but he goes.
That was an interesting findingthat he was able.
It was like one piece offeedback and a rep's like yeah,
that's a piece of data.
Two pieces of feedback, that'sinteresting.
Three pieces and more seem tobe like I think this is a trend.
(30:20):
Maybe I should do somethingabout that or at least it's a
lot harder to dismiss it.
It's harder to dismiss it and umand and and.
I guess then the idea thatthey're more receptive to it
sort of it all clicks togetherat that point where you're like,
huh, there's something you canfix.
They're more receptive and itseems to a critical mass or some
level of scale it seems to helpmotivate that actual change and
(30:42):
, as a result, performance.
So I think win-loss feedback atscale is a totally missed
opportunity for the sales sideof the house, because most time
win-loss feedback at scale is atotally missed opportunity for
the sales side of the house,because most time win-loss is
done on the marketing side ofthe house, where they do a
snapshot of I don't know 30customers and they're like we're
good until next year and theywork on their product roadmap
and we're like wait, theresearch shows that the people
(31:12):
in charge of like.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
in fact, maybe sales enablement should own win-loss
at scale because it could driveso much of what goes into
behavior.
I agree.
I mean when I, where I wasrunning enablement programs at a
couple of different companieswe co-owned that it was, it was,
you know, it was us and RevOps.
Ultimately that you know, wewere delivering that information
back to the sales leaders, thesales organization.
But love that.
You said that because I to me,having access to that
information and having thatinform we were doing enablement
side was also huge.
(31:34):
We loved getting, in fact,going back far enough.
There weren't a lot of otherways to get some of those early
indicators that the sales teamwas evolving, except that we'd
get that feedback and we used acompany that did this.
This is what they didprofessionally.
We didn't do our own.
We did not do our own win-lossanalysis.
It made all the difference.
We've burned through the timehere.
(31:56):
I mean this is really greatstuff.
I'm more and more sad that Iwasn't there, but I want to wrap
up with one more of theinsights that you brought back,
and this is around AI tech stack.
So we're going to start with AI, we're going to go out on AI,
and that's that I'm looking atthe way that you worded it
(32:18):
system of execution versussystem of record.
Now, that's not a frame orreference I've heard before, so
I'm curious to hear a little bitmore about that.
What were people talking aboutat the conference regarding AI
tech stack?
Speaker 4 (32:50):
um some of the most and the the ceo of gong and the
ceo of outreach were on the mainstage um and did a nice job
because they're founders whohave thousands of companies
using their stuff and they'rethey're they're watching the the
trends right.
One of the things that wasnoticeable is that, um, two
companies got on stage ibm andfis and in both, in both cases,
the sales engagement platformhad started with their digital
(33:13):
teams and now both companies,which were small percentages of
their sales teams, and now bothcompanies had bought
enterprise-wide access to salesengagement platforms for all
their reps, meaning that it'smore likely reps are going to be
on a cadence than they are onan expense account and the
(33:55):
expectation of the productivityand the number of touches and
all that is now being referredto as a system of execution or a
sales execution stack, wherethese are all like these
platforms are consolidating andthey're going to do all of those
things, and that CRMs are goingto be relegated to a system of
record this idea that it'sbasically going to be a database
, but what salespeople are goingto be operating in.
Moving forward, is this salesexecution stack driven by the
consolidation of salesengagement, conversation,
(34:17):
intelligence and forecasting anddeal health, and that will be
the gateway that a salespersonwakes up to every day and where
their dashboards and where theiractivities and, frankly, where
their coaching is going to takeplace, based on the signals, the
insights and the actions thatare recommended.
So just, I need people topicture this layer of system of
(34:38):
record, which is the CRM, andthen the system of execution,
and I like one analogy.
I heard from somebody the systemof record reports the news
analogy.
I heard from somebody thesystem of record reports the
news.
The system of execution makesthe news because it's driving
the daily activities from thesignals that it's receiving,
from the myriad of data pointsit can collect and tell you what
(35:00):
to do next and then make sureyou did it next and then keep
driving that.
So what I see in the AI techstack is consolidation, but
there's now this layering and Ilove the idea of part of your
tech stack creates the news.
The other part of the techstack reports the news, because
then a simple person like meunderstood what the heck they
(35:22):
were all talking about.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
That's a good analogy , chris.
Speaker 3 (35:25):
we got to wrap up, whether you want to comment on
that or just comment on theconference in generally?
Why don't you take us out?
What's the last takeaway youwant everybody to have?
I agree with your perception ofwhat's coming.
(35:48):
I've always called itprescriptive selling or
data-driven selling, and thegreat thing is now all of these
platforms are merging andthey're coming together and I
think what we're going to seeover the next few years is what
I think a lot of us have alwayswanted is the one-stop shop.
Tim highlighted the things Ithink are also critical, and
(36:11):
I've always said conversationalintelligence probably the most
important tool after your CRM,with with the aid of AI.
You know the.
The thing I I want to encourageenablement folks and sales
leaders both think about is notyou know what is this going to
replace, but what time is thisgoing to give me back, or what
insights is this going toprovide me?
More importantly, you know whatis this going to replace, but
what time is this going to giveme back, or what insights is
(36:31):
this going to provide me?
More importantly, you know howis this going to make my life
better in sales and you knowsupporting from an enablement
perspective, who to call withwhat message and when I think is
at the core of some of the workthat we do and, if you know,
systems have now evolved andmoved along through acquisition
or development.
To say, call this person, saythis thing at this time and, by
(36:53):
the way, here's what you said tothem and here's what they said
in a nice tight summary.
And, by the way, call them onthis date and this time.
And, by the way, mr SalesManager and Ms Sales Manager,
here's how that call went andthe takeaways and the sentiment
and the customer's perspective.
And oh, by the way, at a macrolevel, here's your pipeline and
here's all your deals in nature.
(37:20):
Where we're going is simply arealignment of what we need to
focus on and, with the toolsevolving the way that they have,
I think the things that we aregoing to focus on are what are
the holes in the boat?
It's no different than 10 yearsago or 50 years ago.
It's just technology is goingto help us look at even more
finite places Deals that are inthe fuzzy areas of maybe too old
or not moving fast enough, orconversations that could be a
(37:42):
little bit more crisp, orcustomer sentiment and feedback,
or even they're saying the nameof your competitor over and
over again.
All of those things are goingto get bubbled up and I hope, to
Tim's early example, it getsextrapolated out to this really
tight, closed loop of feedbackand coaching and development.
So when the seller sits downwith their manager, it's a very
(38:06):
short but impactful conversationof.
This is the one or two thingsthat you really need to think
about.
Here's your report out, here'syour pie chart, your whatever
kind of display.
You need to tell you how you'retracking, but if you just
tweaked right here, you know youget a lot better.
I I think this is one of thosethings that we're still gonna.
It's gonna take time but itwill.
(38:27):
You know the high tide willraise all boats.
It's just thoughtful deploymentof these tools around the right
areas of improvement.
I think what you and I'll giveyou one more takeaway I got just
because Tim didn't touch on itEvery session had a mention of
AI, but when it was always hey,show of hands, who's brought it
in, it was in my groups.
(38:48):
There was a small percentage.
I still think we're in thishesitation phase.
Um, I know, I certainly am.
You know, the, the chat, gptwriting legal cases that didn't
exist was was enough for me tobe like, okay, pump the brakes,
but that's only a matter of time, right?
I think you know the adoptedthinking about the adoption
curve or whatever we're weprecipice, tim, you said it
(39:10):
we're all in this together.
Now we're facing sales in ajust totally new environment.
It's almost completely digital.
There's an abundance of tools.
Our buyers are enabled and moreeducated, but also more
confused than ever.
So it's going to take your CRO,your enablement and revenue
(39:30):
operations team and yourmarketing team to really sort
that out, to get to the rightperson at the right time with
the right message that clarifieswho you are, what you do and
why it matters to that customer.
To summarize this conference,paul, I think this is my fourth
or my fifth one, withoutsounding like I'm promoting this
(39:50):
too much or any other side.
I think this is my fourth or myfifth one Without sounding like
I'm promoting this too much orany other side.
I think this is a place to comeand learn.
It's to come and learn and tomake sure that, if you're newer,
that you're understanding thetrends and what's happening and
if you're tenured, that you'reon track or you can test your
plan there.
There's a lot of times andsessions I've been in where it's
like, yes, we're doing theright things and some of the
sessions, like I said, buyer,buyers and AI we were not
(40:14):
thinking about the right things.
I think, you know, engagingwith Emblaze can help you.
You know, test your ideas butalso keep you on course and, you
know, make sure and this is thesession I moderated that you're
staying in line and staying intouch with your CROs and your
sales leaders.
I'll give you one more piece ofwhat I took away.
(40:34):
So, after our session, one ofthe participants in our panel
said somebody came up to methey're an enablement
professional.
And they said and our sessionwas on CROs and enablement folks
working together at thestrategic level.
And they said I never actuallysat down and talked to my CRO, I
never thought about it.
(40:54):
Next year, that should be likeyes, I'm in lockstep with my CRO
, I know the strategy, I knowhow to execute, we're moving in
the right direction, we'removing the needle.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
You know, you name it , I can't imagine, but I won't
go into all that now I cannot Iliterally cannot imagine
functioning that way, but that'sokay yeah, um, it was a shocker
too.
Speaker 3 (41:16):
Uh, I'm curious what the cro has been doing as well.
Um, so, anyways, I think that'sthe value in in this conference
in terms of a partnership.
Um, you know, it's bringing theCRO and the head of enablement
and making sure that everyoneunderstands the value in each
role and sees things from theother's perspective.
(41:37):
But also was partnering on youknow what I said strategy to
execution and back.
Speaker 2 (41:43):
Well, I don't think that you oversold the conference
at all, because I had FOMO forthree days last week, so you
know there was also a DeLoreanthere, yeah.
Yeah, that's right To back tothe future, but no, I, seriously
, I uh, I I almost positive I'llbe there next year because I
cause I missed this year and Iwish I hadn't.
But I want to thank you both,Appreciate you both taking time
to bring back these insightsCause I wasn't the only one that
(42:05):
didn't make it and so, bringingback these insights and what
everybody was talking about,Appreciate everything you both
do to support the community andfor everybody else.
Thank you for spending anotherhalf an hour with us we wouldn't
be here if it wasn't for yoursupport and stay safe for the
next two weeks until we're back.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
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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Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!