Ever wondered how to successfully make the shift from "doing digital" to "being digital"? In this episode Paul "Norf" Norford, VP of Global Enablement at Ivanti enlightens us with his insights on this topic and discusses the usage of digital platforms like YouTube and LinkedIn for skill enhancement.
Paul ‘Norf’ Norford is the VP Sales Enablement and Chief Evangelist at Ivanti. He's super-passionate about helping people, partners and customers change the way they do business. Norf brings vast industry knowledge, influence, insight, creativity and passion to drive the introduction and adoption of new solutions and services to increase supply chain and I.T productivity and operational excellence.
Please subscibe on Apple, Spotify or Google.
Ever wondered how to successfully make the shift from "doing digital" to "being digital"? In this episode Paul "Norf" Norford, VP of Global Enablement at Ivanti enlightens us with his insights on this topic and discusses the usage of digital platforms like YouTube and LinkedIn for skill enhancement.
Paul ‘Norf’ Norford is the VP Sales Enablement and Chief Evangelist at Ivanti. He's super-passionate about helping people, partners and customers change the way they do business. Norf brings vast industry knowledge, influence, insight, creativity and passion to drive the introduction and adoption of new solutions and services to increase supply chain and I.T productivity and operational excellence.
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:Welcome everyone back to another episode of Stories from Trenches, the only, as far as we know, podcast that's truly by enablers for enablers and where we bring together leaders and individual contributors from all across the world that are doing innovative and different things and seeing success. Or sometimes we talk about when it didn't go as well as they thought and how they backed up and ran at it and was successful again. Sometimes just as much learning there. So before I introduce today's guest, which I'm very excited to do, I want to ask you all a question Are your marketing and sales teams playing well together? Are they still playing the same old game? You know what I'm talking about Marketing creating loads of content that just gathers digital dust.
Speaker 2:Sales teams are onboarded with lengthy and, frankly, snooze training, underwhelming buyer experiences. You know today's sellers and buyers expect so much more. So time out To take it to the next level, you need a modern approach. With Allegos, modern revenue enablement, the go to market team can unify and synthesize their best stories to delight customers and deliver results. Game over. Ready to up your game? Go to wwwalegocom. All right, everyone. So now, as promised, I want to introduce you to our guest. His name is Paul Norford. He is the VP of global enablement at Ivante, and actually a lot of us know him as Norf, so if you hear me say that at some point, don't be surprised.
Speaker 3:So welcome Paul, it's nice to have you here, it's great to be here, paul, and you might actually feel like this is a bit of a Paul convention, so I like the fact that you call me Paul. That's great, p2. Maybe we call the echo. Maybe we should. That's right.
Speaker 2:All right. So why not just share a little bit about yourself and the work you're doing, and then we'll jump into the James Corden challenge.
Speaker 3:Sure, okay. So firstly, paul, it's great to be on the show. I'm a massive fan of the podcast and I only recently discovered it probably a year, maybe 18 months ago and I have been a fan of it ever since. You've had some great guests on. There have been some great content that's been shared. Like you say, it's about enablers for enablers by enablers. I think it's phenomenal. So Norf, what am I about? So Ivante? So Norf, what am I about?
Speaker 3:I work for a company called Ivante and we effectively create IT service management software that allows people, companies, their stuff to ensure that their data is secure, both at rest and in flight. And if you think about it now, with the world as it stands, as long as you have an internet connection, you can work from anywhere, and that's effectively what we help companies do. We help companies and their people access their data at rest securely because we enable the everywhere workplace. Our marketing slogan is everywhere work elevated. But what it means for people like you and me, paul, is that I can unplug my laptop, I can use my smartphone, plug it in, have it wirelessly connected and access content on the Ivante network behind our secure firewall, so I can do what I need to do Effectively making technology seamless and making me interacting with that technology and making sure that I am productive with the time that I have, with the access to the data that I require and that's done seamlessly.
Speaker 3:That's what we do. We also have an element of being able to look after that data from a supply chain perspective as well. So Ivante is broadly made up of two parts. There's the IT service management part and all the catalog of things that we do there, but we also focus on supply chain. So, for example, you'll know this if you order anything from your favorite online Western retailer, without the Ivante Wavelength supply chain software in play, you won't get your packages delivered to your doorstep.
Speaker 2:All right, Well, thanks for that. You know, fun fact, you're in the UK but I drive by Yvonne headquarters multiple times a week. It's not right for my house, you do.
Speaker 3:That's right Part of the tech quarter here in Salt Lake City.
Speaker 2:All right, so we're going to mix it up a little bit this time. Normally we have what I call the Jimmy Kimmel Challenge, but you and I were talking beforehand about just as equally funny if not more so sometimes James Corden. So let's have some fun with it. We're going to switch it up to the James Corden challenge. James Corden decides to retire. Through Friends of Friends, you're offered his show. You can have anyone, either in the car or on the couch, anybody you want for your first show. Who would you choose, and why them?
Speaker 3:Wow, okay. So I'm going to have a bit of fun with you, paul. I'm actually not going to pick one or two, I'm going to pick three, and what I'm going to do is I'm going to have one in the car, one on the back of my motorcycle and one in the studio. Okay, so I will have as a UK gentleman called Lenny Henry. For anyone that's listening who knows Lenny Henry, he is a Brit, he was born in Birmingham and as I was growing up, lenny Henry was that kind of de facto black comedian who I latched onto and a lot of my characteristics modeled myself on him. So lots of people will kind of put my photos side by side with Lenny Henry and say, no, if you look just like Lenny Henry, to which my response would be one of his jokes or one of his anecdotes. So I would have Lenny Henry. Okay, do it. So Lenny Henry I would probably have, let's say I'd have him in the car, on the back of a motorbike.
Speaker 3:I would have a guy called Fred North. He's a French stunt helicopter pilot and he, I think he's based in the US now. But one of the things I wanted to be growing up was a helicopter pilot and the stories that I hear from Fred North have really inspired me to push the envelope of things that I do not just around kind of. You know, personal things like you know, playing drums, for example, but also work wise in a neighborhood, and I'll kind of come to that a little bit later as we unpack some of the elements that we're here to talk about today. So Fred North I would have on the back of my motorbike. Given that he's a helicopter pilot, I'm sure he's a bit of a speed freak. So I'll put him on the back of my bike and, out of interest, the bike that I currently ride is an Aprilia RSV 1000, aprilia RSV 1000. So I'd have Lenny Henry in the car, I'd have Fred North on the back of a motorbike and in the studio I would have somebody else who also inspires me.
Speaker 3:I alluded to it a bit earlier when I talked about drums, the person who got me into drums and was a really great conversation that I had with him. I called him cold, called him up cold one day and said do you give drum lessons? And he said no, I don't. I'm just in the middle of recording an album. Once the album was released I went out and bought that album and then he called me back a couple of months later saying you remember calling me and you said you wanted drum lessons. Well, I'm free now to give you some drum lessons.
Speaker 3:And his name he's from Barbados and his name is Richard Bailey. He used to play for my favorite band, a band called Incognito, who have been going for 40 years, and he used to play drums for them. And the thing that really inspires me about Richard Bailey is that he claims that he was self taught, and to be able to listen to a particular drum pattern, kind of slow it down in your mind, learn it and then add your own flavor to it, for me is again very, very inspiring. So I used to play, I still play drums. I haven't played for a while, but all of the three people that I mentioned are huge inspirations for me. So Lenny Henry, comedian, fred North, who is a French stunt pilot, helicopter stunt pilot and Richard Bailey, drummer.
Speaker 2:Well, we need to find a way to make that happen. You'd watch it All right. Well, now we got to get into the serious bit, but don't worry everybody, it's going to be really interesting too. Let's talk about, I mean, and broadly we're going to talk about the digital aspects of enablement, and so why don't we start off with this? How you define that and the role that it has in enablement to set the base. Yeah, what are the digital aspects of our jobs?
Speaker 3:Well, if you stop and think about it, there's, there's, there's digital enablement everywhere. Okay, and let's think about the digital platforms that are out there that we learned from. The biggest one, of course, is YouTube. Right, you, you know that age-old adage which is if you want to know anything, you want to learn anything. Youtube is your friend.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and it may be that you're looking to, I don't know, wire a plug. Not that you should do that, you should have a qualified electrician to do that. But you know, if you're looking to wire a plug or you're looking to wire in your hi-fi or plumbing or whatever, you'd go to YouTube, right right. Also, if you think about it, the ways that we've historically learned are the old ways. You know, sitting in front of the classroom having hours and hours of somebody talking at you, monologuing about whatever it is. For me because I have a very short attention span, I think I have maybe some ailment like ADHD or something like that I just I can't, I can't stay tuned in for long, so that's probably why I was never particularly good at Academic subjects, whereas if you give me something physical, I can pretty much build you anything. At least that's what I used to tell myself. Now we're in an age of Almost instant gratification, of being able to access anything instantly. Yeah, when it comes to a neighbor woman, why can't we have that same mindset? Strictly speaking, I am generation X, so I was. I was born I'm not gonna tell you when I was born, but I am definitely a generation X yeah, but I think like a millennial, and the reason I say that is that if you think of generation X, they had a Acoustic acoustic. If you think of generation X, they had a Analog childhood, but they now have a digital adulthood. Yeah, if you think about millennials, or even Gen Z, everything that they do is around digital, correct they. Therefore, they have a different mindset.
Speaker 3:So for me, as a generation Xer, it's easier for me to change my mindset to embrace the digital world. So, again, time those two things together. Youtube and you've want to learn anything, you would go to YouTube, but why can't we have the same sorts of forms of enablement, like YouTube videos, 15 minute short clips on demand, whenever you like, wherever you are in the world? So if I want to learn anything around enablement and let's just say Territory planning or account planning, if I'm not too sharp on account planning, why can't I go to a YouTube type platform that Avanti has built or bought in with great Content that I can consume Wherever I am, to sharpen my skills? I'm a I'm a big fan of the fact that skills of the currency for the work of tomorrow. So if I can sharpen my skills on a week by week basis or a regular basis. It means that Whatever I'm learning is going to be up there with my name and address.
Speaker 2:When we were talking before the show you, you referred to the difference between doing digital versus being digital. I thought that was. I thought that was a really interesting way to put it. So what? How does that, what does that mean and how does that translate into what we do when we support our teams? With enablement, Great question.
Speaker 3:Great question for me, being digital is Is part of what we do as enablers, day in, day out. Obviously, we connect with people and if you think about it, people haven't really evolved. Technology has. Look at where we are with AI and the different types of AI generative, additive, all of those elements but if you think about humans, we haven't really changed. We still communicate in three basic ways. There is the element of Nonverbal communication. Then there's the words that we choose to use and the tone that we put those words in.
Speaker 3:And if you think about Doing digital versus being digital, if I'm just gonna do digital, it's very much. Well, I'll put a post out here, I may take a picture and send that out there or whatever. Right for me, being digital is Embracing those aspects of communication on any digital platform that I choose to use. I've realized that LinkedIn, for me, is a great platform. I love LinkedIn. I'm also a visual person, so I'm a visual learner. I'm an auditory learner as well.
Speaker 3:So for me, overlaying that notion of being digital, creating video and pictures for me allows, allows me to, rather than just making one-off transactions of conversing or starting a conversation of this is what I'm seeing today. It's actually, what I'm trying to do is to open up a digital dialogue by connecting with other like-minded individuals Around the globe. Of this is what I'm seeing. What are you seeing? It starts those conversations. That then defaults back into those three ways in which we communicate nonverbals the words that I choose to use, or the words that we choose to use as we communicate, and and then the tone in which I use those words. So, for me, doing digital is I'm gonna dip my toe in, but I'm not really focused on it. I'm still gonna have the fixed mindset of doing what I do, whereas being digital allows all of us to open up and share what we do on those digital platforms like LinkedIn or even, dare I say, instagram and YouTube.
Speaker 2:Okay, so let's translate that for our audience, because I'm sure some of them are wondering Sounds good, I think I get it, but how do they Help them take that to the, to the, to the street, right? How does an enablement team or an enablement individual make that second nature To their programs? And maybe let's apply that to continuous learning.
Speaker 3:Is that right yeah?
Speaker 2:sure.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, absolutely great point. Rather than having one-off transactions of training, let's just say, and let's pick something presentation skills, for example, paul. Rather than just having a presentation skills course that is just rolled out once and you expect people to take it, how about you create that presentation skills course and you roll the course out and then you roll parts of the course out as elements of micro learning or elements of looking to drive people's behavior to change how they present? I don't believe in this day and age people will sit for any longer than 15 minutes learning content, and you know me, paul, we've worked together for quite a while Boring, monotone content really will not be consumed, and it may well be the best content on the planet, but if it's being delivered in a way that's very, very monotone, you'll end up turning people off, and I put that voice They'll play and we know what we're doing.
Speaker 3:That's right. That's right. They've completely switched off, they've completely unplugged. I'm going to go off and do something else. So by leveraging simple things like the power of your voice, pitch, the speed at which you deliver content, you're able to create a story out of the presentation skills course that you may have just put together, putting it into bite size chunks as well. Think back to what we talked about and what we alluded to earlier with. If you want to learn anything, youtube is your friend, but put it in short, bite size pieces.
Speaker 3:It may well be that I'm kind of sat here and through my mind I think hang on, I've got a presentation to give later. I need to learn about how not to be monotone. Okay, let me do a quick search on our internal learning platform how not to be monotone. Great, there's a video here that Paul's done. What does Paul talk about when it comes to not being monotone? And it might be that it's just a little bit of micro learning that I need. I don't need to sit through an entire presentation skills course. What I need is that single element of micro learning where I am Almost think about it as just in time learning.
Speaker 2:All right, how do enablement teams take advantage of that? Because I'll bet a lot of folks listening. Maybe they've even read about it. They're hearing about it not for the first time, but maybe they don't know how to do it, or that's not fair to say. Maybe they don't know where to start or doing a special platform or some things like that Right.
Speaker 3:So I think that you say that, paul, and I consider. For me, the trigger was the pandemic where we had to leave the office. We couldn't travel anywhere. We had to create studios, create places where we could create content in our homes. Some people picked it up and learned it very, very quickly. Others perhaps not so quickly.
Speaker 3:So one of the things that I found that I was passionate about is presentation skills. Now, there's a huge difference between presenting in person to presenting virtually. So one of the things that I did was I just grabbed a camera, pointed the right end of the camera at me and just started to create content. There were some subtle elements that I did before I actually hit record on the camera, one of which was creating a script, creating a story what do I want to talk about and what's in it for my learners? But from starting with that, I started to create content. Now, if you look at my first video, it was awful. The coloring was terrible, the backdrop was awful. I think I was relatively unmonitoned, but I didn't know what I didn't know. But I started with something that I was passionate about, which was presenting. So what I did was I simply took that and I taught myself how to edit video by going to YouTube. I learned how to craft words and to use a microphone.
Speaker 3:Historically, I spent a bit of time learning how to be a radio presenter, so that skill came with me when I was creating those videos. And even now, with creating this podcast, those skills came out. So I started with something that I was passionate about but started to create content that would scale. Video scales, podcasts, scale they're ubiquitous. You're walking around with a smartphone in your pocket broadly, which is a television, so how can you create as an enabler, how can you create your own internal TV channel that has got high quality content in that people can consume and the fact that your teams know you, you can be talking about something that you're passionate about. That is going to help the teams improve their skills.
Speaker 3:So that's where I started, but investing more and more time, more and more energy in learning the craft of how to tell a story and telling it well, pulling in areas around just-in-time learning, creating short form content that's in a series that will help people scale and change their behavior. Okay, there's going to be checks and balances in there as well, and you've got to be able to measure where people have started from versus where they finish. You know again, you can't manage what you can't measure and you can't measure what you can't see. So, with all of those things in place Impact Right, correct, exactly. So I would highly recommend start with something you're passionate about. Start to develop a digital strategy around creating a YouTube-esque, dare I say content that is fully functioning, that is high quality for the sales teams that you serve. That's what I would say.
Speaker 2:You've alluded to this a little bit but I want to make sure we covered effectively and that is finding adjacent I guess a Jason sees from other fields and areas and there's innovation going on that has nothing to do with enablement. How do we, as enablement, find that and and bring that in and incorporate those best practices?
Speaker 3:I'm a huge fan of focusing on the swim lanes that we're in. Equally, I'm a big fan of looking left and looking right of the swim lane that I'm in, so say, for example, we're talking about presentation skills, like we did. There's a huge difference between presenting in person and presenting online. If I'm presenting in person, I'll be using Similar skills or similar attributes as I would be if I'm presenting virtually. However, if I'm presenting virtually, there are slightly, there are more skills that I would bring in that differ to that of presenting online that's sorry to that of presenting in person. If I also want that to scale, if we think about the virtual deliveries, if I want that to scale, why can't I simply just hit record and record the contents that I'm delivering virtually? But then why can't I use that content in In elements of reels, instagram reels, youtube shorts and I'm pulling the notion from that adjacency of what's out there in the public domain, of YouTube shorts, instagram reels, even TikTok videos why can't I take that same notion and plug that into my neighbour, my content? Why can't I use elements of humor to talk about? This is how you would present versus how you don't present. Why can't I use some of the elements that I see if I'm watching Ted Lasso that we talked about a little bit earlier. You know, why can't I bring those elements in Into my neighbour content right? Because, remember, I'm talking, I'm trying to communicate with a human, when us humans have lots of different facets, right and and lots of different attributes. So why can't I pull some of those levers? Why does it all have to be serious? Why can't I lean into some of the personality Aspects that I have to bring my neighbour content to life? I keep alluding back to online platforms like Instagram and YouTube, because there is so, there are so many ideas and nuggets that we can pull out To either underpin our enablement content or overlay on top of it. So, for example, I'm a big fan of creating video content.
Speaker 3:I've set up my little space in here. It's a six by six box. It's about just over 3.3 meters square. I've got acoustic paneling on my wall as well, yeah, but I've I've set my space up in a way that it's not just my workspace, it's also my content creation space as well. So, even if I'm creating enablement for Evanti, I will use this space to create that content and Constantly teaching myself. Are there new things that I can bring in. There are a couple of youtubers that I follow. I take how they put their content together and apply that to my enablement content as well, but I'm forever trying to sharpen my skills. You know the fact. We're talking about it in a meeting today. Seven habits of highly effective people. Stephen Covey sharpening the saw number seven.
Speaker 2:Podcast episode. I worked for Stephen Covey while in college. By the way, I got paid for a brilliant education. Yes, he was an old phenomenal my alma mater. Wow before he went big time, you know.
Speaker 3:I've got an idea, paul. I think we probably should switch the tables on this. I think you should be interviewed next.
Speaker 2:I Do I enjoy doing podcasts? I've got, I've got one coming up that I'm looking forward to, but you're right, it is fun. It's fun being on both sides of the mic, right? So it is absolutely absolutely.
Speaker 2:We're coming close to time, but I think we have one more because we want to end with our usual, you know chance for you to drop some non-enablement related knowledge on everyone. But I know another thing that's important to you is Leading with stories. You talk earlier about that. We still Communicate in the three basic ways we've always done. So how do we sharpen our skills for not only hearing but listening? I think that'd be a good one to go out on great point.
Speaker 3:You, If you think about where we are now, you think about the world of selling. That whole world has changed. Buyers don't want to buy from salespeople Not anymore, right? There is so much content out there that buyers will make up their own mind. So what is it we need to do as sellers? If you think about our sellers, what they need to do is, rather than telling them speeds and feeds and all those boring things, why not lead with a story? Stories are timeless and if they're told correctly, those stories will stick in your mind. A friend of mine was telling me a great story around when he bought a brand new television I think it was a 65-inch television and his son, I think, was only three at the time. So he bought this TV. He was with his son his son it was bigger than his kid.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly, that's right. So he and his son unpacked this TV, they set it all up and they turned it on and his three-year-old son walked up to the screen, put his index finger on the screen, went to swipe the image that he could see on this huge 65-inch TV and then he went to pinch and zoom and none of those attributes worked on the TV. And he turned around to his dad and said Dad, it doesn't work. Yeah, and every time I talk about that story, people remember it. Why? Because it's relevant, but also there's an element of being able to push the mental envelope of some of the and challenge where we are today.
Speaker 3:So if we think about the technology, it's not about the technology. That's not the end game. A lot of it is around human skill and how we improve through technology, the skill of being a human. One of the things that I will leave you with is you wear typically the masters of our own destiny and to be able to sharpen our skills, to sharpen the sore, if you will. One of the things that I've learned to do is block out two hours every Friday with its mine that I can spend time sharpening my skills. It means that that time I can choose to use to do whatever I want. It also means that other people can't block time or book meetings during my sharpen the skill and sharpen the sore time.
Speaker 2:So again, we still communicate in those three basic ways.
Speaker 3:Going back to Covey Correct, exactly, that's my time, it's ring fence and it's mine. But again back to those three ways in which we communicate. We haven't evolved from that. So how do we embrace technology to be able to up, level our game, to ensure that we're sharpening our skills Again for the skills of being listened, listen to the skills of listening as opposed to the skills. No, forget that. Cut that. Sorry, paul. Let me just pretty quick revert back to that. Sure, so let's think about how we can utilize technology to ensure that we level up those three basic ways of how we communicate.
Speaker 2:This has been a lot of fun, you know, I can tell there's a reason why next to your LinkedIn profile you have both a clapboard and a microphone.
Speaker 3:It does. Thanks, Paul.
Speaker 2:One thing I know you're a big reader and we don't have time to get into it too deeply, but if you haven't read storytelling what great sellers do by Mike Bosworth, I think you'd really enjoy it. My biggest takeaway from that was that research has shown as humans we are hardwired to respond to stories differently. Stories light up different areas of our brain. Scientists think it's because for most of our history as humankind it was all oral communication, oral traditions and stories to convey those things from generation to generation. Anyway, you'd probably really enjoy the book because it talks a lot about some of the things you're interested in.
Speaker 3:Outstanding.
Speaker 2:Want to give you a chance. Like I said, this may have an enablement. It doesn't have to at all. You're given the gift of time travel. You can go back to any version of young Paul and coach yourself, but only in one area. What would you choose?
Speaker 3:Wow, I would probably go back to my 19 year old self and I would say to 19 year old North take calculated risks earlier. Take calculated risks earlier.
Speaker 2:I would probably choose the best choice, although when I was 19, that would have been the greatest results. I didn't know half as much as I thought I did. That's for sure. All right, well, thank you so much for taking time to do this with us, and thank you to everyone who's been listening and investing 30 minutes of your time. Again, thank our sponsors of this episode, alego, and wish everyone a safe and fun two weeks until we're back with you in new episode and a new guest.
Speaker 1:Thanks for joining this episode of Stories from the Trenches. For more sales enablement resources, be sure to join the Sales Enablement Society at sesocietyorg. That's sesocietyorg.