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. 75 - Tim Riesterer & Chris Kingman - DigitalNow Revenue Summit Topics and Trends
This episode features Tim Riesterer, Emblaze's Chief Research Officer, and Chris Kingman of the RES board, sharing their observations from the Emblaze conference earlier this month.
Tim and Chris delve into details about insights and practical strategies shared by speakers and panels on integrating enablement . They also discuss the undeniable impact of strategic enablement, when it aligns perfectly with company revenue objectives.
You'll hear their insights on:
- The digital transformation in Sales
- Enablement driven by intiative
- The role of AI in sales coaching
- The critical role of customer feedback
- The evolution of sales discovery
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Welcome to the Revenue Enablement Society Stories from the Trenches, where enablement practitioners share their real-world experiences. Get the scoop on what's happening inside revenue enablement teams across the global RES community. Each segment of Stories from the Trenches shares the good, the bad and the ugly practices of corporate revenue enablement initiatives. 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 go-to-market leadership. Sit back, grab a cold one and join host Paul Butterfield, founder of Revenue Flywheel Group, for casual conversations about the wide and varied profession of revenue enablement, where there's never a one-size-fits-all solution.
Speaker 2:Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Revenue Enablement Society podcast Stories from the Trenches. Typically, we bring together practitioners from all over the world and we talk about what's going on in enablement, where they are, the innovations that they're coming up with, and seeing the things that are working, what's not working, and we learn a lot every time. This is a little bit different episode. Once in a while we like to jump outside of the box a little bit because we have just wrapped up an amazing week in Chicago, schaumburg. If you want to get technical, with the Emblaze Conference and if you haven't picked up on it, this year was the beginning of a partnership between RES and the Emblaze organization.
Speaker 2:So the guests that we have here today to talk about it with me are Chris Kingman, who is a member of the RES board, and Tim Reisterer, who is the chief research officer from Emblaze. So welcome to you both. Appreciate you being here. Thank you, paul. Thanks Paul, appreciate it. Chris, you really were the one that championed this to the rest of us on the board, I'd say going back to I don't know, early last fall maybe. So I would love to start off if you could maybe give everybody a little bit of background. What did you see in the vision of this partnership and how it's come together? Then let's talk about the conference Sure.
Speaker 3:To answer that we need to go back a few more years before that. I've been involved with Emblaze, formerly AISP, for quite some time. What I really think about my career trajectory started at an Emblaze conference years ago in which I saw an executive from Microsoft detail how they built digital sales and I said I need to do that more at my organization. Through the years I've been involved with InBlaze and the value that I've derived from it as a enablement leader is that I get to hear from sales leaders and folks who are experiencing challenges on the front line Enablement. White papers and content and conferences are line enablement. You know white papers and content and conferences are great, but this was sort of it was untapped knowledge and access to the things that are going to impact my organization. And over the years I, you know, I got more and more value, more and more exposure and over the I think the last two years I was attending the conference, I met Tim and I also attended an Emblaze executive retreat and I got to see really firsthand with a lot of heads of sales of very large organizations what their challenges were. And the real surprise, paul, was that these were not sales management challenges, these were not sales leader challenges. These were enablement challenges. I like to say that sales manager challenges were solved a long time ago. Right, I think we really know how to do that job. There's endless amounts of resources, but what a lot of these folks were faced with were challenges that were emerging as sales moved to a digital platform all digital or half digital, you know, especially after COVID, the emergence or the speeding up of that transition, and so you know, I started talking with the leadership team there and I said, look, I really think there's some value here Around.
Speaker 3:That time I joined the RES board and, you know, with our mission of elevating the profession, I thought this was a great opportunity to introduce our members to our members to maybe a part of the business that they're not closely tied to, even though we serve sales leaders. I observed that I didn't really think enablement folks were engaging at that level, at the CRO level, and so over the last two years we've been working with Tim and the leadership team at Emblaze to really bring this to life, and I believe last year was their first year for an enablement track. I believe most requested and most attended is what gets thrown around. Hopefully Tim does not correct me on that and this year you know he's too polite, he wouldn't do that. He's too polite.
Speaker 3:I think you know the enablement track and the enablement practitioners that presented really brought a lot of value and you know some of the things that we'll go over from the takeaway is really elevate the conversation and you know I'm very excited to see where this goes. We've got a lot planned for the conference coming up in October, also in the Chicagoland area, I believe you know, and I think this is just the beginning to provide more value to not only our community but also the Emblaze community as well. The other side of the coin is introducing these sales leaders to enablement and the capabilities of enablement.
Speaker 2:We were talking about some of the cool things, the takeaways. I mean we, you know, anybody that was on LinkedIn last week surely saw pictures. I can't imagine anybody is not aware of the conference and saw the pictures. Sorry, I missed the Back to the Future Delorean. That probably was the worth the price of admission alone. But, tim, I want to pivot to you for a minute, because one of, at least I thought, most interesting observations that you and Chris shared with me was the one that and this I'm going to put it, that AI. You know people talk about AI coming for people's jobs. Right, the AI may be coming for a manager's job as coach, but not necessarily coming after the seller's jobs, which is what people sometimes theorize. So we'd love to start with that. What did you hear or what are you seeing in that? Right? How is AI going to take over the coaching role, or could it?
Speaker 4:Yeah, we joked at the conference that um, uh, you, you. It's going to be a lot of content that you're going to have to absorb over a couple of days and you're going to have to stay well hydrated. And the way to stay well hydrated is take a drink of your water every time somebody says AI, because you'll be plenty hydrated. You might even suffer from water toxicity, but so, no, the AI call out there is. So the conference, the Emblaze conference, is for sales leaders and it's called the Digital Now Revenue Summit and really it's for the digital first buyer and seller which is coming for every part of every enterprise and every sales team in that enterprise. So, and I think the thing that, to your point, that jumped out at me, at least from the AI information that was being thrown around, is one Everybody wants to convince you it's for certain activities not going after certain jobs. You, it's for certain activities, not going after certain jobs, and maybe this was because this was a sales leaders conference. What seemed to emerge was here's the thing that it's going to do really well Is it going to be able to take in some signals. Ai is going to be able to look at the signals coming in how people are or aren't responding to your emails. They're going to be able to look at the signals coming in, how people are or aren't responding to your emails. They're going to look at the conversation intelligence and start to make some assessments on that. It's going to look at buyer feedback and client experience feedback on what the sales experience was like and how your reps performed. There's a myriad of signals coming that AI can process and then AI can help search databases to give sales reps coaching from that. So I'll give you an example One of the most provocative things I heard was using AI to review a call recording.
Speaker 4:This is something that the call recording companies haven't even figured out yet. This was a separate little company there that reviews call recordings and within five minutes sends the rep an email after that call and says here's three or four things to work on specifically, and then it gives you a video, a little, you know, nudges, just little things to give that rep. So it happens immediately. So there's an element of immediacy, which is always good, and it gives you the learning, not just the insight. It's the insight and the action.
Speaker 4:Now here's where it gets really crazy. So I'm a rep, I had a call, ai, listened to it and scored me, gave me feedback and gave me a couple of remedial sorts of enablement or coaching content. And then it sets up an AI simulation that that rep can take to try to get better on those things. Based on that scenario, it literally pulls the call recording in and makes that simulation like a redo on that call with that client, since hopefully that client somebody you're going to meet with again, right, and this is just all happening and how could a manager ever keep up with that? Why would you want them to try?
Speaker 4:And um and so the scale of that, the pace of that and really the, the, even the consistency and quality of that that I think we can see. And then a manager can get pinged on all that. Hey, I got my one-on-one with that rep. They can get pinged on all that. Hey, I got my one-on-one with that rep. They can get a quick analytic showing up in Salesforce associated with that rep that says here's what happened to them this week and now, if you have to do a little coaching, super highly directed, and I just have to say there was so much more. But that to me, was the example that expressed that skills, coaching and the ability to do that consistently high quality, at pace and scale, even with a level of repetition that managers just can't do, because we, as enablement people are asking them to do all that on top of their day jobs. We want to think managers are going to be the ones who make enablement stick, but I think we're asking them to do like one too many things.
Speaker 2:I'm just sitting here thinking, wow, with the time we're giving back to them, what can they be doing? You know, um, in that transformation that you've gone through, and the teams that you're supporting go through your VP there at TransUnion. So one of the other observations that you and Tim brought back is that all sellers are digital sellers, versus the outlook that all selling is digital. So you want to talk a little bit about that. Tim, you can jump in as wanted, but I. That's an interesting concept.
Speaker 3:Sure, I mean in this post COVID world. I'm not exactly sure that percentages of sellers are returning to face-to-face meetings, and I think that's a universally accepted truth at this point. Right, we can reach more customers, we can have more valuable conversations, but that's only through the adoption of digital means and it's not necessarily just by a bunch of tech. Right, it's leverage the channels and have the right conversations. And I think the real benefit to pivot off of Tim's comments is AI is not going to replace human sales manager skills. I think what AI is going to do is give you capability over time. You're going to be able to do more with the time that you have, and if you're talking about digital selling, it's almost like adding bodies to a workforce. How long does it take to review sales calls? We have this at my organization. It is very time consuming, but when we put an AI layer on there, instead of reviewing one call and making a coaching conversation around one call, you can review 10. You can review 20. You can review 20,. You can review all of the calls in a quarter, in a matter of moments, and score them and then have a coaching conversation focused on one singular or the most important aspect of someone's skills, right, I think there's these enablement multipliers, if you will, or that really can aid to the, the sell, the nature of selling, as opposed to meeting a customer face-to-face, even for a discovery conversation.
Speaker 3:I don't think face-to-face will ever go away, especially post COVID.
Speaker 3:The other thing that we learned is wow, I really like human interaction, you know, and I like connection and I even even the most antisocial person, will agree like I, could probably sit down and have a conversation with somebody.
Speaker 3:I think where we find this happy medium is digital selling can help you go a lot farther in terms of establishing yourself with a customer and getting to you know what is really their problem and also, hey, how does the solution align to this? As it, you know what is really their problem? And also, hey, how does how does the solution align to this as it? You know, as it relates to us, our challenges in the market, but also prepares them to. When you do get face to face, you have the most valuable organic conversation you can have, whether you're digital selling where you're selling in person I think you know those are. That's where we're going is, instead of 50% or 60% in person, you're going to be 30 or 20% in person, but those in-person moments will be bolstered and supported through digital activity, ai based, you know, preparation, if you will, coaching. So the people that we do send to our customers are going to be the absolute best representation of our organizations.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I'll just add on to that, paul. I went and dug up the stats from this week after Chris so boldly proclaimed which track was the top track and said I was too polite to dispute it. If I have data I may not date it, just your opinion, right. So here's what I will say Now.
Speaker 4:Remember that the bulk of the people at this event are leaders of sellers. The number two attended track was training and enabling sellers in the flow of work. So it was the second ranked track. But what's interesting to this enablement audience listening is in a group of 700, primarily 700, sales leaders. The second most attended track was how do I train and enable sellers in their flow of work? That's what we call the track, because we wanted to put a digital spin on it, the idea of the flow of work versus, you know, traditional learning paths, et cetera.
Speaker 4:The top track was engaging digital buyers. So, of the eight tracks we had, 21.8% of the attendees chose to attend engaged digital buyers, and that was by the second one. Train enable sellers was about 15.24%. So and so, and the third one was increased new business rates. What was interesting is it dropped off pretty precipitously after those three.
Speaker 4:Uh, which makes sense, um, but this idea of engaging digital buyers. So your question was um, like all selling is digital, but it all sellers are digital. Basically, all buyers are digital and digital a lot of the time, and the thing that confounded and caused, I think, what we're hearing and seeing in the data sales leaders to respond to is how do I engage digital buyers? Because they're trying to do things without me until they need me and they do still need you. But making the sales team savvy on how to do that, you know and so like. For example, one of the this is sales leaders. Remember One of the top attended breakouts in that track was the effectiveness and how to improve your automated lead nurturing, and I'm like, wow, you would have thought that was a marketing topic, right, but it just goes to show you Well, yeah, but it impacts.
Speaker 4:thought that was a marketing topic, right, but it just goes to show you that nothing can be dismissed as well. This is a marketing topic, or this is a such and such topic. It's like we're all in this now to reach this digital buyer in an effective way and leverage whatever tool or button we have at our disposal.
Speaker 2:I want to continue the conversation with one of the other observations, which is that enablement and this is the proposed position enablement is driven by initiative, not competency models, True or false for either one of you. Let's talk about that, for a minute.
Speaker 4:I'll let Chris answer that one first, as he's actually gainfully employed as an enablement leader.
Speaker 3:It's a tough one. I would say yes to both, but I think that's evolving. How so Timco presented on, I guess, gartner's enablement mandate right, and I think I read that the paper. My takeaway was there's some commonly held beliefs right, enablement can't be box checking exercises and it can't be focused on just in time enablement exclusively. And that it needs to kind of anchor in driving behavior change that aligns to, let's say, specific outcomes and goals. Right, so if you want to, you know, grow by a certain percentage, your enablement programs need to be aligned, you know, from the strategy all the way down to the tactics of how to drive that growth.
Speaker 3:I forget who co-presented with Tim. I apologize. It was exactly what I believe enablement should be. There was a strategy. There was a clearly defined strategy of here is how we align to the broader strategy of the organization. And then there were the tactics and it was. It was just an expert example of this is exactly what enablement should be. It's both aligned to executive leadership outlook here's what we're going to do but also it brings the strength of enablement of here's how we're going to do it and I think that's I think what you're going to see over the next few years with an enablement is less and less about the actual individual tactics, right, how much time can we spend talking about new hire onboarding before it's like, okay, this is kind of, there are standards, there's best practices and more aligned to how do you understand a broader strategy?
Speaker 3:Right, if you want to grow by a certain percent, you want to enter a market, what are the enablement tactics? And then how do we do those? And then how do we measure that they're successful? Right, I don't think revenue up is the greatest metric of all. I think there's other things that you can look at all the way down to the individual competencies. Right, if you train on discovery and let's say you train, you're training on sort of a change in discovery from you know just questions to really sort of problem solving, right, or or deeper discovery, and you know, as we touched on, kind of discovery. That also plays off of the customer's level of AI and engagement and knowledge. That's going to reflect in metrics different ways, right. And so how do you get down to the individual? Well, if discovery skills improve, we should see you know lead conversions improve or opportunity creation improve, or the quality of the conversations improve. It's you know specific to the organization, but I think it's kind of from my takeaways, that's really the direction we're headed in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've been a big fan of the concepts of strategy mapping in the balance scorecard from Kaplan and Norton. It goes back a little ways Harvard Business because it does those things that you say. However, you know now, in a digital world, tim, it seems like we've got maybe that's still a great methodology, but it seems like we have even better options. Anything you want to add to what Chris said?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I'll give you the specific example that was presented at the conference. Since this is a conference recap, I'll share this. It was amazing to me. So the strategy is we have to find a path to growth and then you go in and you look at where are the potential sales impacted, constraints to growth, and in this case they identified the no decision indecision rate. No shocker there.
Speaker 2:Always our worst competitor.
Speaker 4:Right, and then it was particularly pronounced and expanding for them. And they said the focus for the next two quarters is going to be on the growth initiative. Sure, but on this particular problem. And what they did is they looked at all of their skills, rack those things like how do you create, disrupt, status quo bias, how do you gain executive access, how do you build-thread in a client or an opportunity, Because they were able to track at some level that those had impact. But they'd all been trained separately as classes in the past, but not done as a concerted effort to move a certain metric, no decision. So they repackaged that up then in a series of coaching nudges and some re-enablement and even a little bit of training and management train the trainer. And it was we're going to go deep into these four behaviors, these four skills, and put you in a position, Basically, they launched it in about six weeks, built it, launched it and it was designed to move the needle on a known metric that was giving them pain of between a 5% to 6% decrease in no decisions for those people who had completed the majority of this pathway.
Speaker 4:And so what you had on the front end was the whole idea was driving sustained behavior change, but doing that because you attached it to a known deficit and a measurable outcome.
Speaker 4:And I think sometimes we do competency maps, we do learning paths, we do large scale onboarding and we spread everything like peanut butter over everybody. And the reality is we're going to pull this lever no decision for the next two quarters and we're going to go after it with those specific skills and what they were able to ascertain is if they everybody had gone through these courses somewhere in their history at the company. But so, as a result, the program wasn't let's just redo those trainings, it was sort of a net new advanced expert experience to re-enable those things so that the learner didn't feel like wait, I've done this before. No, it was all contextualized to this business problem, not this course, and it clearly had an impact. And I think that's where you're going to see the future A named initiative that you can have a subset or derivative sort of custom enablement coaching experience that happens quickly and then in the flow of work and then is absolutely measurable because you're targeting a KPI that you can track before and after In that.
Speaker 2:I'm thinking because one of the other takeaways that one of you shared was the idea of using I mean, hopefully we're using customer feedback loops in our revenue orgs already, but specifically using that as part of the rep feedback and coaching loop. And so, as I'm listening to you know, as we're talking about this last topic, I'm just wondering where does customer feedback fit into that, fit into everything we've been talking about? Because, yes, their point of view is the one that should matter the most. If it doesn't think about, you know, think about fixing that, but is it getting into our enablement? Is it getting into being fed back to the reps, that feedback, in a way that's going to help them? Let's talk about that for a minute. What do you? What do you? What do you? What did you see at the conference? Or what were people talking about?
Speaker 3:I sat in a session with uh left, bonnie and frank p, and it was all about buyers using AI. I pride myself on staying at the forefront and I was extremely surprised at how far down that path buyers have gone. You know, I ended up questioning myself what do I think my buyers are doing? Just sitting around waiting for me to call? You know? Just twiddling their thumbs, waiting for the best solution possible?
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, wait for me to bump that email up one more time, right.
Speaker 3:Uh, buyer, I mean, it's critical, right, and it's a it's a great time to start talking about how is this woven into how our sellers operate? Um, I think there's a couple of things to consider here. One it's uh, I'm I'm trying to work with these individuals versus, you know, my boss was trying to coach and develop me. So there's where the source of the feedback comes from, Right, and I think Meaning the customer's feedback as opposed to my boss's top down feedback.
Speaker 2:Right, right.
Speaker 3:I think there's just Grassroots. Yep, I think there's a baked in in all of us of like, oh, it's just my boss telling me to do this.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Right. But you know, I think there's increasing avenues for our customers to really tell us like, hey, this is, this is how you show up, right? Maybe you show up with five individuals from your organization and it's too much for your client, right, there's too many people, or they have to go through too many hoops to deal with you. I think that's critical. The technology exists to thoroughly capture not only what your customer's feedback is, but their sentiment, their reactions, what they're saying, what they're talking about, how they respond to your questions, and all of that can be analyzed deeply and it should feed back into how you approach them. And you may not be as advanced as Tim detailed earlier, although I do hope we all are someday.
Speaker 3:I think that stuff is critical. You know it's at the end of the day, these are the folks that you want to inform and persuade, to a degree right that you provide value. If they're telling you this, you know your solution doesn't do it, or how you present it doesn't resonate, or you don't. You don't really capture or understand the difficulties I, the buyer, am experiencing. That's going to carry a lot of weight. I mean, tim, and I could probably, you know, just talk about this all day, but the psychology of buying is probably getting more complicated, right, you know, and I about this all day, but the psychology of buying is probably getting more complicated, right, you know, and I think there's more pressure than ever to make the right decision, and so how you show up- or at least less tolerance for making the wrong decision.
Speaker 3:That's a great way to put it. Paul right, I think you know everybody's running on a one strike and you're out policy at this point. I think all of that information is really valuable. How you can collect it, how you disseminate it and how you sort of gather your inferences, your insights, is going to be organization specific, but I would challenge enablers listening, or even CROs, put it on your strategy and even just start, just baseline what you're doing today.
Speaker 2:Tim, what of research? Or or maybe just to summarize some things research has shown about reps? You know where organizations have brought the customer feedback in as part of that coaching cycle and that sort of thing. What are the sales people? What are you hearing sales people? They spawn well to it, do they? Do they roll their eyes? How's that working out?
Speaker 4:um, I think sales people are always going to roll their eyes. It's a degree of eye roll.
Speaker 2:Can you see it, or just?
Speaker 4:and see it or hear it. No, there were three pieces of data that came out at the conference that I thought were fascinating. One piece of data from folks who are running customer win loss, let's say at scale, is what they were able to identify is that 53% of their losses were due to something that the sales rep could control or something that happened in the sales experience. So let's say something that was coachable, fixable. 47% of losses is maybe you got to go back to your product roadmap or you got to go back to your pricing schedule or the politics were out of your control, but that means there's a lot of losses to be recaptured and a lot of unforced errors. So that was a big number 53% of losses. There's a problem to be found and fixed that a manager and a rep can address.
Speaker 4:Now what was interesting is the next piece of data that was interesting is 35%. By a factor of 35%, reps are more receptive to feedback from customers than feedback from their managers or their peers. Managers and peers were about the same, but feedback from customers reps were more receptive, both in terms of willing to hear it and willing to do something about it. So that came from Dr Lefboni, who did a totally objective test. In fact, the results he said shocked him. He thought peers was going to be the winning answer, yet it was customer feedback, buyer feedback, that was most highly regarded and had the potential to impact behavior change. So I think enablers who are trying to show a team hey, we probably need to fix some things Buyer feedback is going to get you a lot further in that than really any other feedback mechanism.
Speaker 4:And the third number was 40% that was presented. So, again, dr Left Bonnie looked at some win-loss research and found that year over year, 2022 to 2023, reps that got zero feedback on their deals from customers versus reps that got at least three deals worth of feedback. The reps that had at least three deals worth of feedback had 40% higher win rates than reps that had zero buyer customer feedback from deal experience. Now, it's a correlation. I'm not here to say it's cause and effect, and neither was left, but he goes. That was an interesting finding that he was able. It was like one piece of feedback and a rep's like yeah, that's a piece of data. Two pieces of feedback, that's interesting. Three pieces and more seem to be like I think this is a trend. Maybe I should do something about that or at least it's a lot harder to dismiss it.
Speaker 4:It's harder to dismiss it and um and and and. I guess then the idea that they're more receptive to it sort of it all clicks together at that point where you're like, huh, there's something you can fix. They're more receptive and it seems to a critical mass or some level of scale it seems to help motivate that actual change and, as a result, performance. So I think win-loss feedback at scale is a totally missed opportunity for the sales side of the house, because most time win-loss feedback at scale is a totally missed opportunity for the sales side of the house, because most time win-loss is done on the marketing side of the house, where they do a snapshot of I don't know 30 customers and they're like we're good until next year and they work on their product roadmap and we're like wait, the research shows that the people in charge of like.
Speaker 2:in fact, maybe sales enablement should own win-loss at scale because it could drive so much of what goes into behavior. I agree. I mean when I, where I was running enablement programs at a couple of different companies we co-owned that it was, it was, you know, it was us and RevOps. Ultimately that you know, we were delivering that information back to the sales leaders, the sales organization. But love that. You said that because I to me, having access to that information and having that inform we were doing enablement side was also huge. We loved getting, in fact, going back far enough.
Speaker 2:There weren't a lot of other ways to get some of those early indicators that the sales team was evolving, except that we'd get that feedback and we used a company that did this. This is what they did professionally. We didn't do our own. We did not do our own win-loss analysis. It made all the difference. We've burned through the time here. I mean this is really great stuff. I'm more and more sad that I wasn't there, but I want to wrap up with one more of the insights that you brought back, and this is around AI tech stack. So we're going to start with AI, we're going to go out on AI, and that's that I'm looking at the way that you worded it system of execution versus system of record. Now, that's not a frame or reference I've heard before, so I'm curious to hear a little bit more about that. What were people talking about at the conference regarding AI tech stack?
Speaker 4:um some of the most and the the ceo of gong and the ceo of outreach were on the main stage um and did a nice job because they're founders who have thousands of companies using their stuff and they're they're they're watching the the trends right. One of the things that was noticeable is that, um, two companies got on stage ibm and fis and in both, in both cases, the sales engagement platform had started with their digital teams and now both companies, which were small percentages of their sales teams, and now both companies had bought enterprise-wide access to sales engagement platforms for all their reps, meaning that it's more likely reps are going to be on a cadence than they are on an expense account and the expectation of the productivity and the number of touches and all that is now being referred to as a system of execution or a sales execution stack, where these are all like these platforms are consolidating and they're going to do all of those things, and that CRMs are going to be relegated to a system of record this idea that it's basically going to be a database, but what salespeople are going to be operating in. Moving forward, is this sales execution stack driven by the consolidation of sales engagement, conversation, intelligence and forecasting and deal health, and that will be the gateway that a salesperson wakes up to every day and where their dashboards and where their activities and, frankly, where their coaching is going to take place, based on the signals, the insights and the actions that are recommended. So just, I need people to picture this layer of system of record, which is the CRM, and then the system of execution, and I like one analogy.
Speaker 4:I heard from somebody the system of record reports the news analogy. I heard from somebody the system of record reports the news. The system of execution makes the news because it's driving the daily activities from the signals that it's receiving, from the myriad of data points it can collect and tell you what to do next and then make sure you did it next and then keep driving that. So what I see in the AI tech stack is consolidation, but there's now this layering and I love the idea of part of your tech stack creates the news. The other part of the tech stack reports the news, because then a simple person like me understood what the heck they were all talking about.
Speaker 2:That's a good analogy, chris.
Speaker 3:we got to wrap up, whether you want to comment on that or just comment on the conference in generally? Why don't you take us out? What's the last takeaway you want everybody to have? I agree with your perception of what's coming. I've always called it prescriptive selling or data-driven selling, and the great thing is now all of these platforms are merging and they're coming together and I think what we're going to see over the next few years is what I think a lot of us have always wanted is the one-stop shop.
Speaker 3:Tim highlighted the things I think are also critical, and I've always said conversational intelligence probably the most important tool after your CRM, with with the aid of AI. You know the. The thing I I want to encourage enablement folks and sales leaders both think about is not you know what is this going to replace, but what time is this going to give me back, or what insights is this going to provide me? More importantly, you know what is this going to replace, but what time is this going to give me back, or what insights is this going to provide me? More importantly, you know how is this going to make my life better in sales and you know supporting from an enablement perspective, who to call with what message and when I think is at the core of some of the work that we do and, if you know, systems have now evolved and moved along through acquisition or development. To say, call this person, say this thing at this time and, by the way, here's what you said to them and here's what they said in a nice tight summary. And, by the way, call them on this date and this time. And, by the way, mr Sales Manager and Ms Sales Manager, here's how that call went and the takeaways and the sentiment and the customer's perspective. And oh, by the way, at a macro level, here's your pipeline and here's all your deals in nature.
Speaker 3:Where we're going is simply a realignment of what we need to focus on and, with the tools evolving the way that they have, I think the things that we are going to focus on are what are the holes in the boat? It's no different than 10 years ago or 50 years ago. It's just technology is going to help us look at even more finite places Deals that are in the fuzzy areas of maybe too old or not moving fast enough, or conversations that could be a little bit more crisp, or customer sentiment and feedback, or even they're saying the name of your competitor over and over again. All of those things are going to get bubbled up and I hope, to Tim's early example, it gets extrapolated out to this really tight, closed loop of feedback and coaching and development. So when the seller sits down with their manager, it's a very short but impactful conversation of. This is the one or two things that you really need to think about. Here's your report out, here's your pie chart, your whatever kind of display. You need to tell you how you're tracking, but if you just tweaked right here, you know you get a lot better. I I think this is one of those things that we're still gonna. It's gonna take time but it will. You know the high tide will raise all boats. It's just thoughtful deployment of these tools around the right areas of improvement. I think what you and I'll give you one more takeaway I got just because Tim didn't touch on it Every session had a mention of AI, but when it was always hey, show of hands, who's brought it in, it was in my groups.
Speaker 3:There was a small percentage. I still think we're in this hesitation phase. Um, I know, I certainly am. You know, the, the chat, gpt writing legal cases that didn't exist was was enough for me to be like, okay, pump the brakes, but that's only a matter of time, right? I think you know the adopted thinking about the adoption curve or whatever we're we precipice, tim, you said it we're all in this together. Now we're facing sales in a just totally new environment. It's almost completely digital. There's an abundance of tools. Our buyers are enabled and more educated, but also more confused than ever. So it's going to take your CRO, your enablement and revenue operations team and your marketing team to really sort that out, to get to the right person at the right time with the right message that clarifies who you are, what you do and why it matters to that customer.
Speaker 3:To summarize this conference, paul, I think this is my fourth or my fifth one, without sounding like I'm promoting this too much or any other side. I think this is my fourth or my fifth one Without sounding like I'm promoting this too much or any other side. I think this is a place to come and learn. It's to come and learn and to make sure that, if you're newer, that you're understanding the trends and what's happening and if you're tenured, that you're on track or you can test your plan there.
Speaker 3:There's a lot of times and sessions I've been in where it's like, yes, we're doing the right things and some of the sessions, like I said, buyer, buyers and AI we were not thinking about the right things. I think, you know, engaging with Emblaze can help you. You know, test your ideas but also keep you on course and, you know, make sure and this is the session I moderated that you're staying in line and staying in touch with your CROs and your sales leaders. I'll give you one more piece of what I took away. So, after our session, one of the participants in our panel said somebody came up to me they're an enablement professional. And they said and our session was on CROs and enablement folks working together at the strategic level. And they said I never actually sat down and talked to my CRO, I never thought about it. Next year, that should be like yes, I'm in lockstep with my CRO, I know the strategy, I know how to execute, we're moving in the right direction, we're moving the needle.
Speaker 2:You know, you name it, I can't imagine, but I won't go into all that now I cannot I literally cannot imagine functioning that way, but that's okay yeah, um, it was a shocker too.
Speaker 3:Uh, I'm curious what the cro has been doing as well. Um, so, anyways, I think that's the value in in this conference in terms of a partnership. Um, you know, it's bringing the CRO and the head of enablement and making sure that everyone understands the value in each role and sees things from the other's perspective. But also was partnering on you know what I said strategy to execution and back.
Speaker 2:Well, I don't think that you oversold the conference at all, because I had FOMO for three days last week, so you know there was also a DeLorean there, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right To back to the future, but no, I, seriously, I uh, I I almost positive I'll be there next year because I cause I missed this year and I wish I hadn't. But I want to thank you both, Appreciate you both taking time to bring back these insights Cause I wasn't the only one that didn't make it and so, bringing back these insights and what everybody was talking about, Appreciate everything you both do to support the community and for everybody else. Thank you for spending another half an hour with us we wouldn't be here if it wasn't for your support and stay safe for the next two weeks until we're back.
Speaker 1:Thanks for joining this episode of Stories from the Trenches. For more revenue enablement resources, be sure to join the Revenue Enablement Society at resocietyglobal. That's resocietyglobal.
