Navigating sales enablement can be a labyrinth, but not when you have a strategic vision and the right metrics to guide you. In Episode 57 we dive into a discussion about what separates operational vs. strategic Enablement and how to develop a data driven strategy that has measurable impact. Learn how to:
Kieran Smith manages EMEA and APAC GTM Enablement & Productivity for Staffbase. As a skilled Enablement leader with over a decade of experience in sales leadership his focus is on designing and implementing sales enablement programs that increase team productivity and revenue growth. Kieran has a proven track record in developing sales strategies that are aligned with business goals and revenue outcomes. He has developed expertise in sales leadership and coaching coupled with a deep understanding of sales operations, sales methodologies, and sales technology.
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Navigating sales enablement can be a labyrinth, but not when you have a strategic vision and the right metrics to guide you. In Episode 57 we dive into a discussion about what separates operational vs. strategic Enablement and how to develop a data driven strategy that has measurable impact. Learn how to:
Kieran Smith manages EMEA and APAC GTM Enablement & Productivity for Staffbase. As a skilled Enablement leader with over a decade of experience in sales leadership his focus is on designing and implementing sales enablement programs that increase team productivity and revenue growth. Kieran has a proven track record in developing sales strategies that are aligned with business goals and revenue outcomes. He has developed expertise in sales leadership and coaching coupled with a deep understanding of sales operations, sales methodologies, and sales technology.
Please subscibe on Apple, Spotify or Google.
Welcome to the Sales Enablement Society Stories from the Trenches, where enablement practitioners share their real-world experiences. Get the scoop on what's happening inside Sales Enablement teams across the global SES member community. Each segment of Stories from the Trenches share the good, the bad and the ugly practices of corporate sales. Enablement initiatives learned what worked, what didn't work and how obstacles were eliminated by corporate teams and leadership. Get back, grab a cold one and join host Paul Butterfield for casual conversations about the wide and varied profession of sales enablement, where there is never a fits all solution.
Speaker 2:Hello and welcome back to another episode of Stories from the Trenches, the Sales Enablement Society podcast, where we are able to bring together enablement professionals and leaders from all over the world and talk about the things that we have in common. By that I mean common challenges, things we're all trying to sort out and find out how people are doing it and succeeding. Sometimes we even talk about when it didn't go so well, because there's a lot to be learned by that and what adjustments were made Before we get into it this week. One of the things that we've all been dealing with this year is saving money without sacrificing productivity. One of the things that you should be looking at when doing that, if you're not already, is a Lego. With a Lego, you can consolidate up to seven different tools and save on software spend while also improving your adoption. There may not be a more efficient way that you can do more with less, which is so critical right now.
Speaker 2:A Lego's modern revenue enablement platform provides everything that you need for effective onboarding, coaching, product launches, sales content management and conversational intelligence. Their platform is unmatched in driving alignment across sales, marketing and enablement teams. You can leverage peer-to-peer knowledge sharing, quickly source content and messaging insights from the field and increase learning, engagement and retention. Don't let too much tech get in the way of your team's performance. Demo a Lego's revenue enablement platform. Today at alegocom slash demo. We appreciate the support that a Lego gives us for this broadcast, so I'm excited now to introduce you to Kiran Smith. Welcome, kiran, hi Paul.
Speaker 2:More than a pleasure to be here And Kiran's calling in from Manchester. We had a nice conversation about football. We won't bore all of you with that, but Kiran is currently in fact. he started a new role recently. He is now senior manager of GoToMarketEnablement, a company called StaffBase. So, kiran, maybe take a couple of minutes. introduce yourself a little bit about the work you're doing.
Speaker 3:Wonderful. Yeah, i have been at StaffBase for a huge one month currently, and what's interesting about StaffBase is they're the first ever what they refer to as a communicon, so the first ever internal communications unicorn technology company. So they do with all manner of internal communications, intranet, but our phraseology is not your 90s intranet, it's not the traditional version. We do all manner of internal communications, whether that be through marketing or HR and those sorts of things, and I joined the enablement team a month ago to head up the EMEA region. So, as you and I will discuss ahead of this, paul, we've got quite a large enablement team, certainly compared to my previous experience. We have 17 in total across the globe. I look after seven people or seven, including myself, sorry And yeah, we look at, we go right for the full span from sales, customer success. We look after partner enablement, a little bit of everything. So it's been a fantastic first month thus far, that sounds like it.
Speaker 2:So not your granddad's internet, right? I like that. Yeah, yes, all right, very cool. Well, before we get into the topic, today no one gets out without doing the Jimmy Kimmel challenge, and so here we go. I'm sure you know it by now Jimmy Kimmel's retiring next year. Through your connections, You're offered his show. You can have anybody you want on the first episode. Who did you bring on? Who would you bring on and why?
Speaker 3:So this is probably me pulling back the curtain on a bit of a bromance I have, but if I was to be in that chair, the first person I bring on is Jamie Foxx.
Speaker 3:I've been a fan of Jamie Foxx for a long time, but I think he's also quite applicable, which probably gives me delusions of grandeur. But let me explain what I mean. What I mean is Jamie Foxx is, for me, someone who you're quite often told, especially when you're younger in life, younger in your career, to stay in your own lane, focus on one thing, be really good at it, and I think he's a shining example of you can be world-class, stroke world, famous in multiple different things. He started as a comedian, then became an actor, he's also a singer, he's one of Oscar, he's one of Grammy, he's one of the world's most famous comedians. And I think the best thing for me is, if you ever see an interviewer like that, he just is 100% authentic and he always has fun. And I think if I was to, you know, if that was to cascade down, it's certainly not to the same level of success, but certainly those values I think. I look at those and I resonate with those quite a lot. So I would pick Jamie Foxx.
Speaker 2:I think that'd be a great choice. I think the first time I really took him seriously maybe that's not even fair, but really known as how, what? the span of his because I always thought him as a comedian, as you said was that Ray Charles biopic that he did, which was amazing. And then to learn that he did his own, he was, he was doing the music, he was doing the singing and he was doing the yeah, absolutely amazing And watching that, he's one of those actors that you can very easily forget that it's him right.
Speaker 2:If you did, there was. There was no element of Jamie in that portrayal of Ray, and so I walked from that and I was just like wow, i was blown away. And he's done quite a bit as well Others. All right, so we're going to talk today about a topic that I know is is it gets a lot of, it's a lot of public discussion right now, and that is the and some people may have different terms for it, but operational versus strategic enablement, and so what I'd love to, something you and I are both passionate about. Again, we were talking a bit about it. Just because definitions are not always the same in our industry, would you maybe start by defining, for our discussion, the differences of operational and strategic.
Speaker 3:Sure, and, like you say, some people know it as as other things. So my definition of operational versus strategic, so starting out, the strategic side is that's when you're you have a seat at the table, that's when you're looking at making an impact. First and foremost, everything that you do ties to a key initiative, strategic initiative, an OKR, something like that. But ultimately it's all about the whatever, the North Star of the revenue or guess. I would say that the vast majority, not all, but the vast majority of people enable us and people who listen will report into the CRO or some sort of head of the revenue function And and I think they're North Star is always revenue And yes, there's multiple levers we can pull to help them get there. But but it counts the strategic. We want to, we want to see at those tables, we want to be involved, we don't want to be dictated to. I think I'll use that as a segue of moving over to operational.
Speaker 3:I think operational enablement is, i suppose the, the, the dirty stereotype is just the training department, but I think to go a level deeper which probably will resonate with a lot more enableers, it's all about being dictated to, told what to do, when to do it not really understanding what the bigger picture is or not being told what the bigger picture is.
Speaker 3:Sometimes it's not even about understanding, and then What happens is everything you tend to do. You tend to be more reactive, you tend to be fighting fires, you jump, you jump from context to context. You don't quite understand what we're doing. I think the reason that you and I have both exceptionally passionate about it, paul, is one of those. If you focus on the strategic side, that will lead you towards being seen as a strategic partner with the, with the revenue. Or if you look at the other side, you look at, you look at the training department, or you just become a cost center or sales support, and I don't think anyone in enablement, i think, i suppose, if you look at it that way. But I think calling enable us just sales support is almost a little bit Derogatory to the skill set that we have and certainly the impact that we can make. But that's how I would define the differences between the two.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think you'd agree that we're not saying operational is not important.
Speaker 1:No, you can't be all strategic.
Speaker 2:Right, exactly, you've got to be delivering. But are you delivering with intention? Right, and you delivering with an outcome in mind that can be measured and reported on and that sort of thing? But just be clear, whatever we're not saying the operational, but I agree with you, it's um and and I, and I think that there's a mix. I think that sometimes In enablement, it's actually on us that we don't have that seat at the table, because and you and I are getting into this How do we, how do we brand enablement internally, how do we talk about the work that we do? right, we're gonna get into that. So the other thing that I thought would be interesting is in your experience, does, where enablement report Impact the ability to be strategic you know, reporting to a COO versus rev ops, versus marketing, and, and most recently, you know I've run into some folks that report up into HR and L&D which, being honest, i think would be really difficult to be revenue focused. but have you seen, just just for sake of discussion, a difference there?
Speaker 3:I've been fortunate enough to only report into the CRO in my enablement career, which is not as long as yours, paul, but I think.
Speaker 3:I think last year I was at One of someone and the enablement event and it showed the stats from Forester of The impact that teams reporting into the CRO have compared to marketing, compared to HR and L&D, and I think the reality is for us, if we really Work, if we want to get to the operational level work on these building these key levers of revenue, then realistically, not a big fan of the world should, but and let's be honest We should report into the CRO or whoever the I agree. And that because HR and L&D have a completely different remit to revenue. They're all about education and training and more so about the amount of development, and but development, as You know, personnel development as opposed to sales development or performance development. We are very much performance managers And that's what we, that's what we look to influence and try an impact where we can. So if we're not reporting into The person who's ultimately responsible for that, then I think there's a disconnect right from day one. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, i would agree with that. So let's get into to to some of the how and some of the nuts and bolts of this. So you referred earlier to the fact that it's critical to be able to tie back to I can't refuse where tape, kpis or metrics are. You know it's a bit but, um, that's something that I'm sure some of our listeners Have maybe even heard people talk about, but they're not doing it currently. So I would. I would love to have you break down for them. You know, what should they look for, right, what should they agree to build? Just just talk to us a little bit about that metrics piece first.
Speaker 3:Sure, well, i mean, i can certainly give you my world view on it. My world view is, let's just say we get to the end of of 2023. I don't know, i'm wishing, wishing everyone's life away, i don't mean that. But we get to the end of 2023 If the ease of conversation, the company finishes on a hundred million dollars a hour and the target for 2024 is a hundred and twenty five million a hour. I think at that point is where enablement need to be involved in the conversation. At that point, not Not after its beat.
Speaker 3:So, soon as the target's been decided, we look at which levers we can pull. So hopefully, lots of people are familiar things like the sales velocity equation and all these lovely ways of doing it. Because, as enablement We have, whether it's you know, obviously you've been all the way up at VP level, ball right, so you, but you've got your team who know everyone on the front. You know on the front lines and you know where the performance gaps are. So it's easy enough just to put a 25 million increase on For next year. But which levers are we going to pull? is it more opportunities? Is it higher average order value? Is it shortening the sale cycle? because, realistically, what's happened and No one can really deny this now is in the last five or ten years, all we've all CROs have done is hire more people, and that's proving that it doesn't work right Like it's.
Speaker 2:The price is so big.
Speaker 3:Yeah, right, but it's the longest, most expensive, most ineffectual way to get more revenue and we've no one can deny it now. So if we are, if we know what that target is going to be and yes, we can split that down by, say, region or NRR versus ARR, whatever it may be, and my long-term, long-term client value any of these things But I think if we know what these targets are, we can, if we've got someone strategically minded for running that enablement function, we can then jump into that conversation and we can go, we can give our expertise and how we do that. So then how that then cascades down is let's just say, we agree on a 10% increase on opportunities, at 5% increase on average order value throughout the sales velocity equation. That's fine, but what does that mean? Then we have to cascade that down again. So then that's where we probably go from the strategic thinking down more towards operational. This is where we start to be becoming that. So again, there is a big difference for me between influencing these metrics and then being fully accountable for them. Now the reality is we don't carry bags, we don't manage teams of salespeople, so we can buy influence. So where we move from the strategic side to the operational side is we might move to something like a competency framework or we might look at some of the things that we can do and we can break that down by role.
Speaker 3:if it's opportunity. What's their percentage, inbound versus outbound? What's our strategy for these? What tactics do we employ? So that's where we really get involved, and then we roll that down from what behaviors do we want to change? What are the timeline, what's the actual metric? we want to move by team, by region, whatever, whether that's 5, 10, 15 percent, and then we get down to so what programs do we build?
Speaker 3:So now we're getting really and then over. so is this a blanket program? Is this a program for the regions, for a team, is it for a person? Because once you've got that level of information and you actually know what the North Star looks like, depending on what sort of whether it be tech, stack or timescale you have available to you, you can go all the way down and be like really data driven and you can be really bespoke with what you're doing.
Speaker 3:Right, and that's how I look at it is we need to be involved from the start and you need to have a strategically minded enablement leader to then bring that down And then at that point we then cascade it across the entire department in terms of what are the levers we're trying to pull, because you know as well as I do, paul, like if the fastest way for us to get that 25 million is us increasing the average order value and keeping everything else the same, because we're not going to hire, or you know the market saturated and all we focus on is cold calling out, you know objection, handling stuff like that, then we've made a huge mistake there. Yeah, so that's how I would see it in terms of looking at those metrics, that we would try to move.
Speaker 2:Yeah, i mean you make a good point. When I was at Instructure, you know, i mean I only left in January, so it probably hasn't changed a lot But we had, in North America, well over 60% of the market share for both universities as well as primary school districts, which is a good and a bad thing. The bad thing is is we had a very compressed target audience right to go after. So what was determined is all right well, we need to focus more on developing countries, developing economies, the rest of the world, and we launched a channel for the first time with channel partners in those places, and so that was all in 2022. And so, to your point, whatever we were focused on for metrics and strategy, et cetera, in 2021, by would have to be right, realigned, at least to a degree, to these new initiatives that were coming along in 2022.
Speaker 2:Otherwise, if that's what the CRO is looking at, if that's what he's being measured on, if that's what he's reporting to the board on, and we're not aligned to that, then what purpose do we have? You know, i I I don't mean any offense to the HR community, but I used to tell my team we're not HR And all I meant by that is, we don't deliver government mandated trainings or industry trainings or security trainings right. Anytime we ask our constituents to step away from their selling or their customer success work, we have got to be reasonably sure that, and the leadership team that what we're asking them to do is going to make them better. And without metrics, how do you do that, right? So let's start with talking about the ideal, and what I mean by that is there is some really great tech out there that lets us start to measure this sort of thing. So I'd love to hear from you, right, how do you be proactive with your tech stack? What have you found useful? And then we'll kind of go from there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, i mean, if we're talking tech stack I'm not a massive tech person, right. I mean, i think we use that to inform what it is that we do But I think we are the, we are the creative part that tags on to the binary, right? So I think, realistically, i'd be looking at my CRM Again if we were looking at those metrics. You know what are conversion rates looking like, all these, all these things. So I think you have to start with the baseline of where we are. So I think, hopefully, most people listen and have some form of CRM by 2023. But I'd start there.
Speaker 3:Depending on, you know whether you do it yourself or whether you're a WIS. If you work with your Revox team, you know the amount of touches it takes to get a meeting. You can go super granular, right. Or you know which channel is working best for you for booking meetings, all the way to how many. Once you get into the sales cycle, how many days are you? you know in each stage, how, how, what's your conversion rate by stage? What's your ICP? Look it. Does your ICP of who's actually bought match what you're telling people? it is? you know like something fundamental like that right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, right, right. Yeah, And we're laughing but but it doesn't always right.
Speaker 3:I mean, we're laughing, but it's sometimes that's a problem, right, Yeah, But also it changes right, especially over the last 12 to 18 months, when the market's completely changed. It can absolutely change. So I would start there. Firstly, you need the baseline of any sort of metric And then probably my two goals. My two ones I would focus on is the conversational intelligence tools. I think that's where you can actually see the reality of what's what's happening So you can see as you're trading or people using the message you know they're using the training.
Speaker 3:If you've got things like scorecards in there, i think that's a fantastic way to get a benchmark, but also to be proactive. For example, when I was at my previous company, we used a conversation intelligence tool that gave us salesforce reports. So what happens is based on the scorecards. We asked managers to score one call per rep per week And this was by role and stuff like that. So we had three different roles there And what the agreement that we had with the managers were.
Speaker 3:So it was a scale of one to five. So we would check it. As the enablement team, we had an agreement with the managers. Anyone that was three or below, we would look at what the skill gaps were. Anyone who was, you know, like four, four average of four above, we would look at them for best practice. So again, you've already got things they're without actually having to dig. And if we look at that and again like, depending on the, the tool that you have, you have like initiative boards or ways to track, you know, different parts of the sales cycle and stuff like that, i'm a huge believer in conversational. If I could only have I'll be very honest, if I could have one tool for it just as an enabler, it would only be conversational intelligence. If I had to pick one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, i don't think you're overstating that. In my experience, that is probably the biggest leap forward in being able to measure leading indicators. Well, i guess you could call them leading or lagging. I'm referring to them as leading in this sense. Say, you're rolling out a new methodology, right, and how do you, as you mentioned this, how do you start to get a sense of it's being adopted? Well, pre conversational intelligence, some of the tools we have.
Speaker 2:We would use customer surveys that we were already doing, win loss surveys, things like that And we would start to work in some questions to find out if the experience was being elevated the way that we expected. But now you don't have to wait for that. Right, the CI tools I've worked with, you can build in tags, so that's listening for keywords, key phrases, that sorts of things that the new methodology should be bringing into the conversations, and so, as you said, you're going to have that. You can score people, you can get in front of it. So, yeah, i agree with you. Now, what if someone just right now is not going to get the budget for that? What have you found, or what have you done along with that? something like a CI tool to still have a competency framework and be able to measure things.
Speaker 3:It definitely makes it more difficult, or by more difficult I mean more time consuming, because the calls are the calls. I think at that point you would either I think one of the most interesting things with the competency framework if you didn't have a tool that could help you do that. Yes, you can do it on Excel, you can break it down. Just more time consuming. You have to agree with the managers and stuff like that. I think the first thing to do and I think Kate Lewis she's got a fantastic story on this and I found this with lots of different topics you've seen reps and managers, but if you were to ask a manager to fill out a company's framework scorecard on a rep and ask a rep to do it very rarely are they similar- It's a fun exercise, though, right It's?
Speaker 3:fun for them, but terrifying for enablement right.
Speaker 3:So, then you've got their version, his version, her version, and then some of the truth is somewhere in the middle. So I think you have to agree on that. And what is, i think, one of the separate points for any scorecard? I think one of the biggest misses that people have is that they don't create a scoring rubric. So my version of a one is different from yours, and so then it almost renders the scorecard obsolete.
Speaker 3:So I think I would look at that. You know the competency framework. I would still create the competency framework by hand and go through it that way. But then I think from there you just have to get in the trenches and understand.
Speaker 3:Like I've worked at companies probably most companies I've ever worked at previously, even as a sales leader, but the vast majority of sales people the biggest thing they miss out is the impact and the need, and then just what they do, struggle to get the value. So then, even just through, anecdotally right, or even if you can't do it as an enablement, if you go to like a sales leader that you believe in and ask them to look at their team, i think, yes, it's a lot more subjective, but it gives you some variation of a way forward. Again a little bit too much in the gray area for me. But again, if you don't have the budget, you can really only do what you can do and I think that's how I'd still. I'd just try and like go about that and I'm already been three fashion. I don't know that it changed my approach, to be honest.
Speaker 2:And I agree, as you said, i've been around a little bit longer, which is a really nice way of saying I'm old, so I appreciate that. But before the tech right, we did, we found ways to measure. But, you're right, it was very manual. Right, it was in spreadsheets, i remember, and it was effective. But I remember it's doing a company framework. Once it was all in Excel, as you said, right, and we broke down what are the skills needed by each stage of our sales process, and then we went through and had the manager. Yeah, very manual, but it can be done.
Speaker 2:And that's really the only takeaway that I wanted people to have is not to be discouraged or feel like they can't start to move into a strategic direction without a budget. So that was the big thing I wanted everybody to be comfortable with. So another thing that anybody can do that doesn't require tech is how they talk about the enablement function, how do they brand the team, how do they manage the perceptions? internal brand management, in my experience, is critical, and do you agree? and what advice would you give to people about crafting the right narrative?
Speaker 3:Yeah, i think this is probably one of the biggest things I hear enablers talk about, to be honest, in terms of that credibility piece of being able to speak to salespeople, sales teams or the Beal and Endo, the CRO, and I think the thing is it's a chicken and egg conversation for me, right? Either you've been called a cost center and you need to change the mind internally, or you're about to be called a cost center, whether it's three, six, nine, 12 months down the line, and you have to get out in front of it. I think the only way that you can kind of do that depending on how close you are to the sun in terms of how close you are to the CRO but someone has to be having that conversation with them and be like look, this is where we are right now. We're fighting fires, or we're constantly being. we're order takers, right. We're constantly being given things to do, and then we never hear about it, or it's not even being reinforced by managers where we'd like to be. And again, it's a watch in it for the CRO, right. You've got to almost do a sales pitch to them and you want to get them on your side And be like this is why we want to be involved. If you allow us, maybe that's too submissive of a term, but if you get us involved, then this is the impact that we can have, for if we work together, we can help influence these things that are important to you.
Speaker 3:And I think one of the biggest things is language. right, you and I have a somewhat similar past and we both came from sales leadership into enablement. So I think that, again, i always refer to that being my superpower, but also my kryptonite at times. right, because on the superpower side is, i know, like, if you look at the sales velocity equation from the point of view of an enabler, right, when I was a sales leader, my stick was to go into companies that were failing and turn them around.
Speaker 3:And what do you think? what I looked at, i didn't know it was called the sales velocity equation, but it was essentially the same thing, right? How much is in the pipeline? What's the percentage? So the conversion percentage, stuff like that. So if you can start speaking in those terms and you almost get the back, for me, you need to get the buy-in from the CRO first and foremost, and that almost gives you the be able to give you the gumption to push back on other sales leaders ago And to give you an example when I first joined my first job in enablement, one of the first things I was asked to do by a rep was to add a logo to a slide, to a pitch deck. And I was like what? And I was like well, i was like enablement is new to me. Is that really my job? Because that's not what I thought Plus it's really lazy.
Speaker 2:That's a sales rep. I mean, come on, That's very difficult.
Speaker 3:But again, where I was before I joined Starbase, we went on a tremendous journey over a shop. The time we matured as an enablement function exponentially. in the space of 18 months we matured to the level of the team that had been together for three years just because we were focused on what we wanted to do. But even within that, we had like Q3 of last year and we were just fighting fires And we looked at that at the end of it and we will never do that again. as a quarter first team We wouldn't have survived, right, because we'll get so many things.
Speaker 3:But I think when you go back and be the language and then towards the end of the year, the question was asked of us so what are you doing? And it was a fair question because we started here super strategic but we've been pulled in so many different directions that we had to get back on track. So I think, using the language and again I was in a thoughts of position that we had like a phenomenal tech stack there, So we had every bit of data under the sun so we could be like hold on, we did this, this happened, or in order for us to make X amount more revenue here. we need to fix this and this is how we can track it. This is how we can do it. So I was in a thoughts of position, but realistically, as I say, it's a chicken and egg. If you've been called across to enter, you need to explain what needs to change from other people's point of view in order for you to help make an impact, and if you haven't, you still need to start positioning yourself that anyway.
Speaker 2:anyway, because that question is coming, it just is yeah it is well, or or they may be asking it, you know, behind closed doors. So I think it's fair that you just assume That question is being asked, whether it's being asked of you or not. Someone is right And and you know especially I mean you read a lot of same-brain church, i do from Forrester, gartner and others that CFOs are becoming more involved in the buying process than ever before. So guess what else they're becoming more involved in, right, any kind of internal Staff costs and that sort of thing. And so you need to. In fact, the one thing I'll add to that is I have found that having a relationship with the CFO as an enablement leader Also pays dividends. Let them know what you're working on, make sure that they're aware of the enablement roadmap, make sure They're aware of the enablement measurements and successes and that sort of thing. I I Just just another, just my two cents that I have found that you know if you're in, if you're in a company where you can do that, it will just pay that benefits back.
Speaker 2:So how do someone listening they recognize what you're saying is as Something they need to do, any any final, you know recommendations to them. How do they go about? You know changing. So so start talking about it more, like the sales leaders do. I think that's really, really solid advice. And and Actually I'm gonna back up here and ask you any questions What if the enablement Person did not come from a sales background like you and I? how can they start to learn to think and communicate in the terms that the sales leaders do? Because, because maybe you and I take some things for granted, some sales, long-term granted, because we grew up in it But how can someone learn that?
Speaker 3:I think we have an unlimited access to information right now. So again, you've got something that most people have as a destination website now in LinkedIn. So you've got some great sales leaders out there that'd be worth following. You've got the likes of John Barrows, again, depending on what it is you're looking for. You've got people like Morgan Ingram, who you know. They They're on the top of funnel type stuff.
Speaker 3:But I would say probably there's one book in particular That I would recommend to people, and it's by a chap called John McMahon. I don't know if you're familiar with him. He's like taking things, the CRO, it's taking the most amount of companies public, like snowflake and sprinkler and all these types of companies. There's a book called the qualified sales leader, and that's good. It's a fantastic book for sales leaders never, but for us as enablers, it's. It almost gives you a blue, a blueprint, an ideal sort of unicorn of what a sales leader should look like, how they should be, what sort of questions they should be asking the team. You know how they should be coaching the team like what does a pipeline sound like? and it's, it's, it's. It's a great book. It's not told as a novel, but you can read it as a bit of a story in the process. I like those. Yeah, it's great. I mean I've recommended to so many people And also, you know what he's doing. He's taking quite a few well.
Speaker 2:Most importantly, it's not theory for this guy.
Speaker 3:What was his first?
Speaker 2:name again, john John McMahon and qualified sales leader. I've made a note for myself because I haven't.
Speaker 3:I'm not familiar with it and Brilliant book, i think, get involved in some conversations, going, sit into meetings, trying, if you can get along to forecast meetings, going see what people will care about what they're in. That make the document on that. Could that could tell you what not to do as well as you want to do. Yeah, that's absolutely fine. And but yeah, i think you just you've just got to, even though you're not a sales either, you've kind of got to be a scholar of sales. You just that's my opinion.
Speaker 2:I like that. Scholar of sales.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you can have to be like one of the favorite, my favorite things that someone has ever called me is sales Wikipedia. There's a sales director. I worked with her. I pride myself on that because I genuinely love the profession of sales. I genuinely love it. Yeah, i found my, my second passion in the neighborhood And but Yeah, i think you just have to be a scholar of sales. You have to understand What is top of funnel, what does it mean? Like, when you say conversion rates, i say like a simple thing to look up is the sales velocity equation. It's not simple to to execute on, but it's simple enough to understand. But that's, that's what I would go. I think you just have to again, just just just learn, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, i agree, yeah, i think the important thing that I'm hearing you say, though, is the The start. today, Do what you can with what you have today. Don't put it off, because the thing I've noticed is is, if you start aligning to strategy and communicating, that, your chances of getting those other resources or additional team members down the road go up exponentially Right. And so, again, it's just one more reason Don't wait till you have more. Start now with what you have and build.
Speaker 3:Thank you, yeah well, i think, i think, if you can, you can use your impact that you have had and you think you'll have to as your, as your business case for this tool, for this extra headcount for this that you say, like, well, if we, if our target is 10, you know, 10 percent on, you know, conversion rate or close rate, and we push that up, that means 10 million to the business. For, in order for me to do this, i need a headcount And that's gonna cost me X amount of thousands of dollars. Right, thousands of pounds. That's that's your business case, right, that's what it is. But if you base on, if you basically based on impact rather than I would really like this, then you're more like it's already a more robust anyway, you might know you still might not win. However, like you're, you're betting the hook to suit the fish there. Right, they care about the outcome. So, right, talk to them about the outcome and why this will help me meet that outcome.
Speaker 2:That's, that's fantastic advice, thank you. Before we wrap up, i'd like to give you a chance to just step away, maybe, from enablement even it's up to you And and just share some life experience. And so the setup is you've been given the gift of time travel. You're allowed to go back and any younger version of yourself It doesn't matter when in your life But but you can only coach yourself in one area. What do you most wish you'd understood earlier that you'd focus on So this might, this might be overly vulnerable for me.
Speaker 3:However, i'm gonna go with patience And the reason for that is I've always been in a hurry and I've probably not stopped to enjoy. I've always looked back to enjoy. I've been a chronic overachiever, chronic over worker. I'm a little bit sometimes they're like Icarus flying too close to the Sun I get such tunnel vision that and I think the thing is, as I've got an older or, as you and I say, when we get to our vintage, more experienced, i found that see, can't Certain vintage of our life, right, i think I found that when I focused on work, your family life or your health goes, you know, goes, you know, becomes less of a priority Just by virtue of you giving a hundred and fifty percent.
Speaker 3:And I've suffered from that in the past, not not anything major, but just like I, have room for everything. Be patient if you, you know like, if you can work Not quite to the point where you burn out and you still get there. You might get there three months later, but it seems terrible, but in the grand scheme of things It's actually okay, right, because in that other time you could have spent time, your family, your kids, you could have gone to the gym, you could have eaten better, you could have slept right, all of these things.
Speaker 3:and I've unfortunately found that out the hardware a couple of times. So I would go back and it's not much of a coach in, it's just suppose. settle down, son, i have a bit of patience, is the advice. Yeah, all right, i appreciate that.
Speaker 2:What a great conversation. I think we range from football to Greek mythology, with a lot of solid Enablement advice sandwiched in between, so I appreciate that. I appreciate your time, kieran. Thanks for spending it with us. Thank you, and we also always appreciate all of you that have just invested some of your time with us. And before we go, we want to do a final shout out and thank you to our sponsors. A Lego and again, as you're starting to look at your Enablement platform needs, please think of a Lego and fact. Go out today and register for a demo at a Lego comm slash demo, and we'll see you again in two weeks. Thanks for joining this episode of stories from the trenches for more sales enablement resources.
Speaker 1:Be sure to join the sales enablement society at s e society org. That's s e s o c i e t y dot org.