Revenue Enablement Society - Stories From The Trenches

How do Sales Engineers learn differently? Is their attitude towards training different? What are the onboarding needs of an experienced vs. a novice SE?  When should the handoff from the Enablement team to the SE leaders occur? What are the 3 critical legs of onboarding SEs?

John Care, Author and Managing Director of Mastering Technical Sales shares his insights with me in this 2 part series. In Part 1 we focus on defining and understanding the Enablement needs of SEs and how to design an effective onboarding experience for them.

During his career, John built world-class sales engineering organizations at Oracle, Sybase, Business Objects, Nortel, CA Technologies, and HP. His responsibilities have varied from an individual level up to a VP of Presales running teams of over 200 people. He also has diverse experiences as both a quota-carrying salesperson and a senior IT executive/ CIO listening to salespeople and presales engineers trying to sell him their “solutions.”

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How do you set the correct enablement priorities when you need to make a decision but don't have a lot of information? What is the only wrong decision you can make in any situation? Is following your gut a sound strategy? How can you apply buyer types to internal selling and negotiation? 
 
This episode features Arup Chakravarti, Director of Sales Excellence at Equifax UK and we discuss his unique insights on identifying, selling and negotiating enablement priorities and projects.

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What do buyers actually need sellers for? What are the "3 Cs" of empathy in selling? How do sellers enable buyers to build internal consensus? If a seller is empathetic do they risk losing control of the opportunity progression and velocity? How does an enablement team use selling with empathy to help sellers to not be "product pushers who reek of commission breath"?

In this episode Chuck Marcouiller, VP of Revenue Enablement at  Freightwave joins me to answer these questions and much more by sharing the insights he's gained over a career as a seller, a sales leader, and  revenue enablement leader.

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As Revenue Enablement professionals our mission is to enable others with the skills, knowledge, and experiences to grow and improve. With everything we focus on have you ever evaluated how well you and your team are teaching the actual skill of learning? Keenan believes that learning is a skill not a default mechanism. In his years of working with sales teams he’s observed that not enough time is spent teaching the skill of deliberate learning. In this episode he breaks it down for us.

Keenan is A Sales Growth Co's CEO/President and Chief Antagonist. He's been selling something to someone for his entire life. He's been teaching and coaching almost as long. With over 20 years of sales experience, which he'll tell you he doesn't give a shit about, Keenan has been influencing, learning from and shaping the world of sales for a long time. Finder of the elephant in the room. Keenan calls it as he sees it and lets nothing or no one go unnoticed.

Father of 3 amazing girls, PSIA Certified Level 2 ski instructor (see more coaching) and avid Boston sports fan, Keenan keeps crazy busy when he's not focused on A Sales Growth. 

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The Sales and Revenue Enablement profession continues to thrive and grow overall but we’ve all seen enablement individuals and teams negatively impacted by the recent economic challenges. The sad reality is that even high performing enablement professionals can find their careers taking an unexpected detour. 
In this episode Dave Lichtman of Enablematch will offer insights in proactively managing your career to avoid redundancy but also what to do if it happens despite your best efforts.

Dave Lichtman is the founder and CEO of Enablematch, a recruitment firm specializing in Sales Enablement. Enablematch has the largest bench of enablement professionals and helps companies solve the challenge of finding and hiring proven sales enablement talent. Additionally, Dave has become a sought-after speaker and coaches on topics surrounding sales enablement careers. 

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Join  Sales Enablement Society President Mo Schlick and I as we discuss the state of Sales Enablement, what she's learned from her experiences,  and how she thinks about the future of our industry and the SES organization.

Mo brings a unique diversity of experience to the SES Presidency, drawing from an extensive background in global sales enablement along with early non-profit work outside of B2B sales.  In 2010, as a senior instructional designer at ADP, she was recruited internally to join its first specialized sales enablement organization.  Since then, Mo has held leadership positions in sales enablement, sales learning, sales operations, and product marketing, working for companies like One Call Care Management, YP,  Bloomberg, and most recently, FIS leading global Sales Leadership Training. 

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Sales enablement for B2C vs. for B2B - is there a difference? If so, what are the unique challenges and needs the Sales Enablement teams that support them need to address? In this episode Kevin Jones from Filevine shares the insights he’s gained over 6 years of enabling large B2C teams. You’ll hear about:

• H2H (human 2 human) selling
• Onboarding for a product driven company
• Training in a decentralized business
• Keeping up with fast changing consumer demands
• Measuring performance in a B2C environment

Kevin Jones is an experienced sales enablement leader with a diverse background across industries and countries. His passion is helping salespeople discover a passion for selling. He loves spending time with reps to help unlock their full potential. He believes that all sales are innately #h2h, or human-2-human, before they are b2b or b2c. This perspective has given him enablement methodologies that work in a wide variety of organizations at all stages of growth.

Kevin is currently the Sales Enablement Manager at Filevine. Before Filevine, he led sales enablement programs at Vivint. Kevin received his MBA from the David Eccles School of Business at the University of Utah. 

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Are you and your team taking a truly customer-centric approach when developing your revenue enablement strategy and programs? How well are you using the concept of force multiplying to scale your impact? In Part 2 of my conversation with Kristen McCrae McMullan we discussed her ideas, experiences, and how she's learned to be effective in these areas:

• Taking a customer-centric approach with Innovative examples
• Using customer-centric micro KPIs to align priorities
• How to apply force multiplication for scaling
• Effectively communicating with Sales leaders
• Working with internal blockers

Kristen is currently a Global Sales Enablement Leader at Amazon Web Services [AWS], leading a team of sales enablement and readiness professionals to support the ProServe sales teams. With 11 years of sales and enablement experience, Kristen is passionate about being a woman in tech leadership and serves on the global Board of Directors for WiSE. Kristen received her undergraduate degree in journalism from Emory University, and continuing education certificates from The University of California, Berkeley, and Harvard Business School. For speaking or article requests, please reach out to Kristen on LinkedIn.

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How are you measuring the revenue impact of your Enablement initiatives? How quickly are you accelerating the time to revenue impact? What about identifying when a change in the approach is needed? Kristen McCrae McMullan of Amazon Web Services has tackled these challenges successfully and come up with innovative solutions that she shared with me in this 2 part series. In Part 1 you’ll gain insights into:

• How to successfully transition from being reactive to strategic
• Quantifying your impact in a credible way
• Identifying and isolating the right micro KPIs to correlate activity to revenue
• Using a change management strategy that meets leaders where they are
• Learning from neutral and negative change

Kristen is currently a Global Sales Enablement Leader at Amazon Web Services [AWS], leading a team of sales enablement and readiness professionals to support the ProServe sales teams. With 11 years of sales and enablement experience, Kristen is passionate about being a woman in tech leadership and serves on the global Board of Directors for WiSE. Kristen received her undergraduate degree in journalism from Emory University, and continuing education certificates from The University of California, Berkeley, and Harvard Business School. For speaking or article requests, please reach out to Kristen on LinkedIn.

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As companies grow and mature, they typically diversify their product offerings either organically or through acquisitions. Once this happens the need for the sales organization to quickly and successfully transition from selling a single solution to a platform sales approach becomes critical. In this episode, ZoomInfo Technologies SVP of Enterprise Sales and Account Mgt., James Roth, and I discuss the best practices organizations follow when leading this evolution. We discuss in detail: 

• The importance of effective training and coaching
• Understand who, what, when, and how to coach
• Tips on  how to overcome barriers
• Who coaches the coach? 
• Don’t forget you are dealing with humans

James Roth is an Inspirational, results-focused executive sales leader with demonstrated success building teams and growing revenue in complex and competitive environments. He is currently the SVP of Enterprise Sales and Account Mgt at ZoomInfo. Prior to that as VP of Sales James helped steer Vonage’s transformation from a consumer, residential VOIP business to a leader in the enterprise communications platform space. He has a history of success in transforming sales organizations through a consistent approach to strategic solution selling disciplines.

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