Revenue Enablement Society - Stories From The Trenches
The Revenue Enablement Society's "Stories From The Trenches is where revenue enablement practitioners share their real world experiences. Get the scoop on what's happening inside revenue enablement teams across the global RES member community. Each segment of "Stories From The Trenches" share the good, the bad, and the ugly practices of corporate revenue enablement initiatives. Learn what worked, what didn't work, and how obstacles were eliminated by enablement teams and GTM leadership. Sit back, grab a cold one and join host Paul 'Norf' Norford, for casual conversations about the wide and varied profession of revenue enablement where there is never a one size fits all solution.
The wide and varied profession of Revenue Enablement ensures there is never a one-size-fits-all solution to be successful. Amidst constant change the journey to successful outcomes is never the same. Learn from your peers and gain insights on topics like:
-Building strategies and metrics that correlate back to revenue impact
-Gathering requirements to identify stakeholders
-Gaining buy-in and executive sponsorship
-Aligning with sales leaders
-Facilitating cross-functional collaboration
Revenue Enablement Society - Stories From The Trenches
Ep. 56 - Felix Krueger - Developing Strategic Stakeholder Relationships
Get ready to secure your seat at the table where business decisions are made as we unravel the important role of stakeholder management in sales enablement. We're joined by the always insightful Felix Kruger, a name synonymous with sales enablement, founder of FFWD, and the voice behind the popular podcast, State of Sales Enablement. We talked about:
- The importance of stakeholder management in Enablement
- Effective strategies for building strong relationships - even difficult ones
- How to demonstrate value and impact to stakeholders to secure buy-in
- The importance of effective strategic communication
- How to avoid the most common pitfalls in stakeholder management
Felix has been a seller, sales enabler, and independent Sales Enablement consultant in organizations ranging from early-stage startups to billion-dollar enterprises.
He is now the Chief Enablement Officer of consulting firm FFWD.
Felix supports enablers around the world in adopting best practices with his podcast, The State of Sales Enablement, webinars, newsletters, and conference speaker assignments.
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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 the Sales Enablement Society Stories from the Trenches. We are, as far as I know, the only exclusive for us by us format where we bring on enablement professionals from all over the world to talk about things that we're working on in common. A lot of times we talk about the things that people are doing that are really successful and we can learn from. Sometimes we talk about things that didn't go so well because they can be equally educational. So I'm excited to introduce today's guest. A lot of you are probably familiar with him and may follow him already. Felix Kruger is our guest. Felix is the Chief Enablement Officer and Founder of FFWD, but where most of us probably know him from is as the long running host of the podcast State of Sales Enablement. So, felix, welcome, appreciate you being here.
Speaker 3:Paul, thank you so much for having me. I've been a long time listener of your podcast and it's great to finally be involved.
Speaker 2:All right, so you know the drill. Before we get into the work stuff, we're going to find out a little bit more about you. It's the Jimmy Kimmel Challenge. So Jimmy Kimmel's retiring. You've got connections, you're offered his show. Who's your first guest and why did you bring them on?
Speaker 3:All right. So, without a doubt, and without even a second thinking about it, it has to be his air nurse, michael Jordan. So I'm a massive Michael Jordan fan. I've been idolizing this guy since I know what basketball is, and I don't think there's a human being in the history of mankind that has been as good as what he or she does, as Michael Jordan has been at playing basketball, and I think he had a really interesting journey. I've read his book, i've watched the documentaries or everything that could get my hands on, and I think his journey is a really interesting one. And, yeah, i would invite him straight away, without a doubt.
Speaker 2:He'd be an amazing guest. I can share more sometime offline if you'd like, but the NBA was a client of mine for several years when I did a different sort of consulting in the late 90s, and so you remember those series between the Utah Jazz and the Bulls. Oh, there were a couple of great series in there, love it. I think it was the 97 series where Michael was so sick Yeah, he had the flu. So I'm there with the NBA, i'm on site, my pass took me anywhere in the building except for the locker room, and so I'm watching the Bulls come off of the floor to go to their locker room.
Speaker 2:Halfway through the game Michael walked by me, maybe within 15 feet, and he looked like death, warmed over, i mean it was. You could tell the man was so sick, watched him come back out And it's like you said there's something about this guy, because it was as if it was a different person on the floor As soon as that jump ball went up. You'd never know he was sick But was. Having seen him up close and seen him look so bad, it was amazing to me. How does he do that? How do you? what is that in someone? You can just overcome any physical challenge and do that.
Speaker 3:I remember watching it on TV in Germany, so it's pretty amazing to think that you were actually there and so close up as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah, it was a good, they were good client, okay. But we're here to talk about not basketball, but enablement, and the topic you proposed is one that I actually was immediately excited about, because it's so critical to the success of any name, one program, whether you look at yourself as revenue enablement, sales enablement, et cetera, and that is, how are you managing and what is the relationship like with your key stakeholders, and there's a lot that goes into that. So let's kick off, if you wouldn't mind, just briefly explain the concept of stakeholder management as you look at it in your experience.
Speaker 3:Yeah, i would start off by saying that stakeholder management is one of the, i think, most underrated skills of enablers. We talk about all the technical skills, but why stakeholder management is so important is because sales enablement or revenue enablement or any sort of enablement function. Hardly any holds formal power within the business, which means that we are extremely reliant on stakeholders being aligned with us and actually supporting our initiatives happening across the business. And I think the other aspect to that as well is that you might have heard that phrase before, but any enablement initiative is a change management initiative in disguise, and I think that is incredibly true. And if you look at the existing body of knowledge around change management, you'll soon realize that it's all about stakeholder management, no matter if it's the senior leadership, no matter if it's adjacent departments, no matter if it's the actual stakeholders that are affected by change. It's all about people and it's all about stakeholder management.
Speaker 3:And I think that, if you translate it that way, that is oftentimes an aha moment for enablement leaders when it comes to stakeholder management, and what I've seen talking to enable is pretty much every day of the week and also maintaining close relationships with a lot of enable us that have been really successful in their roles for a very long amount of time is that sound stakeholder management and a deliberate effort around stakeholder management is really a key success factor for those strategic enablement leaders that have found long term success And they don't. I think a lot of enable us that might find success early on in their career underestimate the relevance or the impact that stakeholder management has on their success, and I do find that sooner or later and in the long run, enablement leaders that are successful often identify this as one of the key factors of their success.
Speaker 2:I would agree with that and I don't want to give away stuff we're going to talk about.
Speaker 2:But, yes and especially, there are certain functions and leaders of certain functions that I don't believe enablement can really do their job if they don't have those relationships, those stakeholder relationships you're referring to. You're doing work, yes, but you're not really fulfilling the purpose if you're not doing it with the right relationship. So that's why I was excited about this. So I'm a you know we've got folks in the audience that are all over the spectrum, right, brand new on the job, three years in the job, small companies, large companies, but I think for everyone it would be helpful with starting with that identification. It's probably not much different than how we teach salespeople to do discovery and do account planning and that sort of thing, but would love for you to touch on that right How do you identify those key stakeholders? And I like that idea of how do you be intentional in creating those relationships, because, especially at the beginning is probably going to set up how you're seeing during your entire time there. So how do you do it properly?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I mean just to give a bit of context. You know, like around the, what I'm sharing here, and this is basically a process and a thought process that I have to go through over and over again in my work as an enablement consultant, because it's so many situations where I start working with a new organization and I have to get a good idea of the stakeholder environment, because if I'm not deliberate about it, there's no way I can effectively support that organization and collaborate with those stakeholders. Yeah, so, just just to give some background. So that means I have gone through that process that I'm about to share several times. And typically what is worth considering is three key buckets of stakeholders And first of all, as of course, the teams to be enabled.
Speaker 3:And those are the teams, you know, depending on what the remit of enablement is, with a net respective organization, there could be, you know, the sales managers, there could be field sales, there could be the SDRs. You know those are the people, the end end users, so to speak, of any sort of enablement initiative that is going to happen. So that, of course, is really important to understand. So you know your target audience within the organization, the second big group that would typically try to map out is the collaborators. So, based on the people to be enabled, who are the collaborators across the organization and especially the leadership across those different departments that you need to work with in order to make certain initiatives happen, and there could be teams like marketing, there could be teams like human resources, it, and the list goes on. You know there's, there's a, as we spoke about before, there's such a broad range of enablement initiatives, and the actual skill contained within the enablement function might not always be enough to actually to actually make those initiatives happen. So it really comes down to the skill set contained within those collaborating departments on who you would engage on that front.
Speaker 3:And then the third big group I would always look at is the executive sponsors, right, and that might be one person, that might be several person people, but though that's this person, such as the small organizations, most likely the CEO, or it could be the chief revenue officer or the VP of sales, and those are really the senior leaders that you want to buy in from so they can create alignment across the organization on your behalf as well.
Speaker 3:So those, those are typically the three buckets that I will be looking after And I think, specifically for the people that are new starters in organization, i think they're in a really great position to be deliberate in mapping, as they're called, environment, because they have the freedom to explore right. Still they don't have to know it all and they don't have to know all the departments in and out. So those initial catchups that you would typically do when you start in a new organization to actually understand how the organization is structured, what the KPIs of the different teams are and what the objectives are, what the challenges are, those are all conversations early on that can contribute to that stakeholder environment mapping. That then comes in beneficial when you actually start trying to align the stakeholders and make enablement initiatives happen for you.
Speaker 2:I'm a big fan of playing the I'm new here card for as long as you can reasonably do it, because, you're right, people expect questions. They're usually prepared to, you know, answer them for you, and that may not come back around. So that's great. It's a great point. You know there is a lot of talk right now about enablement showing business impact, and I'm glad to see that, because it's needed to happen. I'll just put it that way.
Speaker 2:Some of us came directly from sales leadership into building enablement, like myself, and so I really never knew how else to look at it. As a sales leader and a sales rep, i'd sat through more than my share of useless trainings, and so I was determined that anything that I built I was going to be able to track back to something that we could measure, that the sales people and CS folks would be more successful. But not everybody has a sales background. Not everybody in enablement needs to have a sales background, for that matter. And so, as we're talking about this, how can anyone in enablement demonstrate that value and impact of their initiatives? Because you talked about building those intentional relationships with stakeholders, but I think you'd agree that only goes so far, and in the current economy, maybe more so than ever. So what should enablement folks be doing, now that they have those relationships, to start to show value?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so it's extremely important to make stakeholders part of the planning process. I think that is one of the most common pitfalls that I see in enablement initiatives And in some cases, unfortunately, even the whole enablement functions failing. So having those relationships in place and then involving those stakeholders that you started building relationships with in the planning process is the best way to create alignment and make sure that not only the overarching business strategy is supported by the enablement plan, but also the individual goals of the department of those stakeholders that you involve, And I think it is a underutilized stakeholder management tool to make them part of the planning process. I think if you inverted, the worst case scenario would be that you sit in a dark room for a few months, develop your entire enablement strategy and then you share it with the world and go out, And that's typically when the stakeholders then look at it and ask themselves why wasn't I involved in this process?
Speaker 3:You know who are you to tell me what I should be doing with my resources and so on, and you can completely mitigate that by involving stakeholders in that process. And to your question about the business impact, I think that that is the groundwork that you need to do. Then in terms of the specific steps, it's really important to relate the initiatives to senior leadership goals and priorities as often as possible. So always ask yourself, based on the insight that you have around the strategic goals of senior revenue leadership, how that supports. Each initiative that you develop supports that goal and map it accordingly. And if you don't have a transparency around leadership goals, you should definitely be intentional about sourcing that, because any other approach would be a step in the dark from my point of view.
Speaker 2:And I'm loving what you said at the beginning of that segment where if you go off into dark and create enablement which I agree with you that happens sometimes, but how do we even know if we haven't involved those stakeholders? It would be sort of like a salesperson. Can you imagine one of our salespeople that we work with going off and creating, having a discovery, meeting with themselves, right, and then going and pitching the solution to the prospect? I don't see where it's any different than that, right.
Speaker 3:It leaves at least a lot of room for chance, right.
Speaker 2:No, it really does, and so having that buy in. I do have a question for you that I think I know I've come up with this and others may have as well How do you find that line between getting reasonable amounts of input from those stakeholders which I'm in agreement with you need to do, but also showing leadership and sometimes needing to make the hard decision, because what they want sometimes may not be the thing that their team needs? Any tips on that?
Speaker 3:I think it's extremely important to take any sort of politics and any sort of opinions or that discussion, because I think that's a common pitfall on that front As soon as people feel like what you're proposing is supporting your own agenda and is only self-serving.
Speaker 3:I think you can avoid that by always referring back to the overarching strategic goals In those discussions. Of course, it's ideal if senior leadership is also involved to make sure that there is alignment on that front. But then also bring data to the conversation and make sure that you have either external qualitative research that you might get your hands on in terms of actual customer conversations that you might conduct as part of, for example, win-loss analysis any third-party research that might be out there around contributing factors to self-effectiveness but also then internal data, from RevOps, for example, that might shine light on certain issues and self-effectiveness that you might come across. Having that focus on data and insights, rather than making it feel like you're just playing politics and you just support your own agenda, is my preferred approach to actually break down those barriers and to have just sound conversations around how do we make this work, how do we make this work for the business and how we can we align our resources for the benefit of the overarching strategy.
Speaker 2:We've been talking all around the concept of communication, but let's focus directly on it for a couple of minutes. What role should? Well, i think we've talked about what role communication should play, but what about effective? What does effective communication look like And what specific recommendations do you have based on what you've seen?
Speaker 3:I think effective communication is extremely important. We stakeholder management, or effective stakeholder management, is not possible without communication, and one of the tools that come up over and over again and I can also only advocate for and barge for, based on my experience as an effective communication tool to enable me to charter And developing that charter collaboratively with all the key stakeholders as early as possible is a great tool to open up communication channels and discussions on a recurring basis. So the conversation happens around the initial development of the charter, where you clarify what enablement does as part of the organization, who it's serving, what sort of services are involved, who the collaborators are, what the goals are and so on. And this approach to actually developing a charter collaboratively with your charter partners is a really great way to open up conversations around those different areas that are otherwise completely in the dark And those things oftentimes are then overlooked and assumed to be true, but you don't know if those things are actually valid or those assumptions are valid unless you actually have that conversation.
Speaker 3:So I would say the charter should be the foundation for all communication around the enablement function.
Speaker 3:And then I think it's important to also realize that the charter should be a living document and you should create as many situations as possible to iterate on the charter and to update it according to the latest structure of the organization, around the latest market dynamics, around the latest resourcing across the collaborating teams, and always use the charter as a reference point.
Speaker 3:And one of the ways to actually create that forum for ongoing communication and ongoing updates is a format which I call the Sales and Ablement Advisory Board, which is a regular meeting that has been conducted, which is a meeting that combines all the key stakeholders involved in ongoing conversations around enablement and that really gives everybody a voice in their conversation and also always gives a opportunity to update the charter according to the latest requirement. So those are kind of the two approaches that I would generally share. Of course, there also has to be room for communication on an ad hoc basis, based on certain initiatives that are running that I don't want to discount, but just on a meta level. Those are kind of the two key communication channels that I would recommend.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree You need that ad hoc communication, but if you don't have something like you're describing planned, it often gets missed just in the fury of the business and everyone running as hard as they can to achieve the same goals. And yeah, so scheduling that, I would agree, is critical. It might be helpful for folks. Maybe share a couple examples of the types of people you would invite to your enablement advisory board. What roles might they be in?
Speaker 3:It fully depends on the organization that you're dealing with, But again, it makes sense to refer back to those three key stakeholder groups the people to be enabled, the collaborators and the senior executive sponsors.
Speaker 3:From a point of view the people to be enabled, they will be most likely the frontline sales managers or certain representatives of the frontline sales management, depending on the size of the organization, to make sure that they're part of the conversation and they feel a degree of ownership, which is extremely important, as we all know, in terms of actually implementing enablement initiatives and scaling enablement efforts. From a collaborator point of view, Those are really the key departments that are involved in an ongoing basis. For example, if you conduct initiatives around buyer engagement content or sell support content, marketing is a typical collaborator. In that case, the most senior marketing leader that is responsible for resourcing and has a say in terms of how resources are allocated will be the recommended person there. When it comes to, for example, redesigning the hiring process, a partner like human resources, for example, would be a typical collaborator, But there can be a lot of variation, as I alluded to earlier, in terms of the stakeholders from the collaborator bucket But from the third bucket was the senior executive sponsor.
Speaker 3:The senior executive sponsor, or a close, a direct report of the senior executive sponsor that has somebody like a chief of staff, for example, would be somebody that should be present, always to make sure that ongoing alignment is maintained and there's a certain degree of visibility around what is happening in enablement right now. So those are the typical roles involved But again, as I said before and I always have to add this disclaimer this might vary wildly depending on your organization, the structure and the remit of enablement.
Speaker 2:Right, no, that makes sense. Your mileage may vary. Okay, all right. One of the benefits of being around any profession for a while is you learn what not to do. So let's see if there's a couple of pitfalls that maybe you've encountered that you can warn some of our listeners about. What should they be looking out for?
Speaker 3:I think the biggest pitfall to avoid is not to answer the question for your stakeholders, not in it for me, because that, at the end of the day, is the determining factor whether somebody will play ball or not.
Speaker 3:Departments have their own goals.
Speaker 3:you know.
Speaker 3:individuals have their own goals and not supporting those in some shape or form is sure that there won't be any time spent supporting your name and function.
Speaker 3:So always answer that question and typically when you have the conversation around the overall strategic goals how that department that you're collaborating with feeds into those strategic goals that's typically a good way to find common ground and to answer that question, you know. So how do we create the maximum impact for the strategic goals of the organization and how can we make sure that your department contributes as effectively as possible and how can we also make sure that you are seen as being a key contributor in making that strategy happen? So those are typically the starting points for that conversation. I think the other pitfall to avoid, especially for people that haven't operated on a senior level before, is not to see yourself as a peer to senior leaders, If you see yourself as a nuance and nuance, and if you see yourself not being a peer of those senior department leaders and the senior executive sponsors, then you automatically come across that way right And people right out, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:You have to have that self understanding of being a peer. Okay, we're sitting here on the table, we're trying to achieve something together. Let's work on this together. If you're just a little self-enablement person in the corner, you know, afraid to speak up and having those tough conversations, it is a major pitfall when it comes to alignment And I agree If you're still struggled with that imposter syndrome and if you haven't created that self understanding of being a peer of those senior leaders across the organization. I can only recommend overcoming that as quickly as possible if you want to be successful in doing this. They call the management efforts as well.
Speaker 2:I don't think I could agree with that any further. Again, i think about how we talk to our salespeople. It's the same thing. If they act like the prospect is doing them a favor from the very beginning relationship, they're setting themselves up for a really painful negotiation down the road. That's right. So you don't even get that far, and I agree with you. It's the same thing.
Speaker 2:And what I tell salespeople is look, if you know your product, you know your market, you know your ICPs and you've honed your craft as a seller, you are bringing value And you should not feel any differently than that. And it's the same with the enablement folks, all the things that you have mentioned up till now having a charter, the communication, getting input should put you. If you've done that, you should feel confident that you are bringing value to those relationships. Sometimes, i realize, easy to say, hard to do, but got to find a way to do it. And I think sometimes just speaking up in executive settings even if you, you know, skin your knees a couple of times, sometimes it's the only way to get better. The only thing is to put yourself out there and do it.
Speaker 3:Any other pitfalls to be aware of. The last point I want to mention is the lack of focus in communication and Execution. Sorry, okay, no, go ahead, i'm just agreeing with you, yeah, yeah. So the last point I want to mention is the lack of focus and communication and execution. I think focus is a luxury, especially in large organizations, and Being focused in your communication, being really to the point in your communication with your stakeholders and really focus on the goals will Signal to everybody that you are focused on making those things happen that you set out to do and that you know They are to fiddle around the edges. you know like you're really there to generate results, and that should be reflected in the way you communicate.
Speaker 3:In terms of the execution, another pitfall that I come across over and over again especially We're in well resource organizations that are new to enablement.
Speaker 3:They oftentimes Bid of more than they can chew right, and they get all excited about enablement everybody buys in and That oftentimes leads to them attempting to boil the ocean right, and what I mean by that is that they then suddenly planned for an ablement to be the a major transformation driver for the organization, which that means that they look after 10 different initiatives at the same time, right with enablement just starting out and I think that is a Lack of focus and then typically leads to none of the initiatives really truly creating an impact. People get sidetracked all the time because there's too much to juggle, stakeholders don't know where to focus those contributing resources and then, at the end of the day, the senior leadership then comes to the conclusion that enablement wasn't for our organization and Unfortunately, now that we have to cut costs, it doesn't really make sense for to invest further, and I think that focus is one of the key values that enablement can really bring to the table in those complex stakeholder environments as well.
Speaker 2:Everybody loves a great success story. Share one with us. When have you seen things you're talking about done really well and and and? what were the outcomes?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So one of the recent projects that I ran with a client of the UK comes to mind, where We were doing a top-perform analysis and for the purpose of then Kicking off other initiatives. You know so the top-perform analysis, which means identifying the best practices that set top performers, apart from the mid-performers, it can be used in so many different ways, like the onboarding program, the general training offering, and it can be used in the content development to create self-support content, buyer engagement content and so on. So, and we embarked on that journey of conducting a top-perform analysis and then translating those insights into all those different initiatives. And I, as part of this project, i initially engaged the enablement leader of that organization as a consulting partner and We first, you know, identified the objectives, how we wanted to approach that project. And then we did the rounds and ran this past the frontline sales Leadership, so frontline sales managers, and also the, the revenue leadership, so the frontline sales managers across North America and Europe were involved, and we also involved the chief revenue officer and to get sign off on the approach. And during those meetings there were some, some, some practicalities that we identified in that weren't feasible as part of the approach that we initially developed. So we modified them instantly and accommodated for those difficulties, which then Made it a better approach, right. But at the same time, as I mentioned earlier in terms of involving stakeholders in the planning approach, that also made everybody feel like they They're part of the initiatives and made feel like they had a certain degree of ownership in this initiative because they contributed to the approach. We then actually executed the project, so we did those top-perform analysis interviews and data analysis Across the different sales teams. We interviewed all those partners again, which also increased the degree of perceived ownership of sales reps Across those different formats that would then be developed in the follow-up. So they feel like they've contributed to training being developed. They contributed, or they feel like they contributed, to Effective onboarding programs being developed, which also has value in itself. And then, once we captured all this information and started to synthesize the insights, we then again engage the frontline sales managers and the revenue leadership and presenting the results and also then sharing on how we plan on using those insights and those Results that we have captured in those follow-up initiatives, right? So this was the cadence that we developed and The sort of results that we have seen on the back of it was, as I mentioned, the, the level of buy-in Was was really great.
Speaker 3:So everybody was excited about the initiative. Everybody understand what we're trying to achieve. There was a great degree of transparency, there was a great degree of engagement across all those different stakeholders that we engaged. There was a little resourcing being allocated to make those follow-up initiatives happen, also with internal resources and external vendors as well. And Then, on top of that and we've also seen, you know, revenue impacts on the back of that initiative as well, which was obviously one of the, the KPIs that we had developed, and because the one of the key teams to be enabled Referring back to those three buckets that are outlined earlier was the SMB sales team and They had seen an increase in deal size on the back of this project of 40%.
Speaker 3:Right, so there was a very tangible impact of that and I couldn't have asked for a better project, you know, in terms of the, the impact on the stakeholders as well as the business impact. And You know, apart from the actual execution, which obviously requires a subject matter expertise and certain skills, and I would say stakeholder management was one of the key factors in the success of that initiative.
Speaker 2:Those are great results, whether you're a SaaS organization, no matter what kind of sale it is, 40% increase in in deal size Yeah, that's gonna get people's attention and. Probably helped. A lot of sales people take home bigger checks, which is always a nice part of what we get to do as well.
Speaker 2:So that's right, all right, well, let's I I want to give Before we go. Let's just one more thing, just thinking back what we've talked about, or even in general, and what are, what are some pro tips that you think our audience would benefit from with driving stakeholder Engagement and managing those relationships and the things we've been talking about the best way to become better at stakeholder management is to be intentional about it and to really and Create that focus.
Speaker 3:You know, i think when I think back to early on in my career, stakeholder management was kind of like a necessity and was something that was happening as a side effect of me trying to do my work as well as possible. I do believe that it is worthwhile looking at it as a As a stream that runs simultaneously to the skills that you're trying to develop, to develop right, so you develop those technical skills as part of your enablement role. Stakeholder management is the second big, a big bucket that you need to look after and it is worthwhile really being intentional as quickly as possible and about it and I think You know there's there's two ways you can be intentional about it. One, i would say, is to learn about robust change management approaches, and You know part of that might be seeking out resources like this podcast and also looking into books and, in terms of this Change management, the best change management book that I have come across Is better change by the PWC Change management team. This book is not in print anymore, so you have to get a used copy, but it is still one of the best books I've come across.
Speaker 3:And Then, on top of that, i think it is also important for Enablers to really seek out coaching. You know like to really think through and live situations that they're dealing with right now to to really Establish the best approach right. There's only so many scenarios that you can read about and come up with In your own mind without being in that situation, and a coach or a mentor can really help you to think through those situations and maybe also Share insights into similar Situations he or she has encountered. So those are kind of the two things I would recommend and everybody look into it to become Intentional about stakeholder management.
Speaker 2:Thank you, felix. This has been a really strong conversation, and what I mean by that is, you know, what we're always trying to do on This podcast is give people very specific, actionable things that they can go and take and incorporate into their business, and you've Done that quite. Give them quite a bit to think about and talk on. If people have questions or they'd like to follow up, is LinkedIn the best way to reach out and connect with you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, linkedin. I That's my second life. I'm always on LinkedIn, so reach out to me at Felix Kruger of FFWD, and You can also find us on goffwdcom, which is my website. And, yeah, i would also encourage you to To listen to the state of sales name and podcast, where I interview great people like Paul Butterfield. So, yeah, please, please, make sure to tune in if you get a chance, all right.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you again, felix, and thank you everybody who's just investing another half hour of your time with us. We appreciate it, You're why we do this, and we'll see you again in two weeks with a new guest at a new topic. See you, everybody.
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 s e society org. That's s e s o c i e t y org.
