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. 76 - Stephanie White - The Power of Community and Personal Network
None of us is as smart as all of us. Engaging with peer groups and industry networks can accelerate your career, enhance your skills, and provide invaluable professional development.
In this episode, we explore the transformative power of communities and personal networks with Stephanie White, Sr. Director of Revenue Enablement at Medallia. Stephanie highlights the tangible benefits she's gained from participating in various revenue enablement communities, fostering a sense of belonging and camraderie.
Whether you're looking to tackle complex challenges, stay ahead of industry trends, or simply connect with like minded professionals this episode is your roadmap to leveraging and growing your professional network.
Join us and hear how to unlock the potential of community-driven growth in your career!
Stephanie White is the Sr. Director, Revenue Enablement at Medallia. For Stephanie, Revenue Enablement is People Enablement, driving revenue and impact strategically to scale. With 20 years of experience in Sales, Marketing, Enablement, Operations building and scaling teams of passionate people to drive revenue is at the core of her approach.
A people focused enabler by nature, Stephanie thrives on engaging, connecting and learning with others.
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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 the only podcast that we know of where we go around the world and we talk to folks in the enablement profession that are doing great things, that are having impact, that are figuring out new ways to do it all and sometimes ways that didn't work so well but they're willing to share with us what they learned from it and be vulnerable. We always appreciate that as well. So we're back with another great guest and I'm excited. Some of you may know her, some of you may not. You all know her. In another 30 minutes. Welcome, stephanie White. How are you, steph?
Speaker 3:I'm great. Thank you so much for having me, paul. Hello everybody.
Speaker 2:Stephanie recently joined Medallia as the Senior Director of Sales Enablement, so congrats. And would love to give you a couple of minutes to talk about. I know it's early days, but what are you seeing? What are you working on? What are you excited about?
Speaker 3:I'm about a month in at this point give or take and this is my fourth go around starting in a new enablement role and leading a team. I think what's really cool for me about Medallia uniquely is my personal why Whether I was in sales or marketing or customer experience, any of that stuff was always were people helping people, helping people to have a better experience. Okay, so for enablers helping sellers to then help their customers to help their customers, and that that kind of butterfly effect. What was really cool for me when the opportunity came up with Medallia is that's the whole underlying mission of Medallia. It's how do you improve your customer experiences at that very end of the chain by better understanding what they're experiencing and what matters to them, and changing your business and how you're supporting your customers so they have improved experiences, which then drives your revenue. So it was like this beautiful full circle moment that kind of came up for me when the opportunity presented and I just thought, oh, I'm so in for this.
Speaker 2:Like I'm, so in for this. I get it. I'm a fan. I mean I think we've talked about this that I trademarked a phrase that I started using a year or two ago of customer journey enablement. And so when I launched my company full-time about a year ago now, at least in the US when I checked nobody had trademarked that, and I felt so strongly about it that I did, and that's my book that I'm writing. It's coming out later this year.
Speaker 2:It's primarily about because I love what you said when enablement is done holistically and done well, it aligns so many sometimes seemingly small things across those go-to-market teams. That and the customer feedback is such a big part of that and when you get it right, it does lift up the whole organization because it lifts up the customer experience. In fact, I've seen it become a competitive differentiator, which is so I mean it's getting worse and worse right To differentiate and get above the noise. So you're doing some really cool work over there, so I'm excited for you. So, before we get into the meat of the conversation, we got to do the Jimmy Kimmel challenge. So here it goes Jimmy Kimmel retires at the end of this year and through your extensive LinkedIn network, you are offered his show and you're allowed to have anybody you want on for your first episode. Who is your first guest and why that?
Speaker 3:Unprepped. My immediate response for this question is hands down, ryan Reynolds, canadian. Keeping it real. I didn't know he was Canadian, that's cool, okay. Yeah, he's a West Coaster, so we'll just pretend there isn't like a Toronto versus Vancouver situation happening right now, right?
Speaker 2:right East Coast West.
Speaker 3:Coast. So definitely him. Yeah, I mean, that's hilarious. But I think anytime you come in with that self-deprecating humor that just humanizes everybody, and he's a master of that Right yeah yeah Thread that everyone in the audience can relate to, regardless of where you're from, and I love that. So he would for sure be my first guest on the show.
Speaker 2:Isn't he also an owner or part owner of one of the cellular network phone networks now mint, isn't that his too?
Speaker 3:So he's like in all kinds of stuff, yeah, in addition to soccer teams, not football for my friends over in the uk karen's with you on this one don't have a cow, so let's talk about some fun stuff.
Speaker 2:You strike me as a connector and one who's very conscientious about doing that right. Connecting people might be with other people, might be with jobs, might be with mentors, but that's that's one of your jams and right now, in the last two years, it's probably been more important than ever to be part of bigger communities and have mentors and and do those things to get outside of our own head and our own space for a few reasons. The challenge that I've seen is and I guess this is a good challenge to have is oh my gosh, there are so many Look at what's become available to enablement folks in the last year or just the last year or two. So many communities, so many Slack groups, so many events you can go to. So would love to start with your perspective, for everyone is where did they start and how do you prioritize? Cause you can't spend. You have a job. You can't spend all day interacting, right, so I?
Speaker 3:mean you really can't. So, as you said, the cool thing for better, for worse, for our calendars is, you know, five years ago there was one or two communities really that were up and running. There was limited in-person events. You didn't have all these Slack channels. You didn't have, I mean, shout out to those who have created enablement awards in the last year and a half. Let's not forget about that either. Yeah, I agree, this is important. We're a amazing profession, so there is more selection than ever. But we don't have time. I don't have time, um, for all the things.
Speaker 3:So what I've really tried to do is, you know, for better or for worse, I've gone out, I've engaged in the different Slack communities, the professional growth communities, a bunch of the events we can chat through some of those, and I basically picked one per category where I personally find that I meet the people that I have that kind of instant connection with.
Speaker 3:For those who have seen the children's movie Transylvania, it's like that professional zing you get with somebody right, yeah, yeah, uh-huh, oh, these are my people, um, so I'll try to identify one of each of those categories. So one Slack community where I really have the most folks that I zing with right One to two in-person events because travel's expensive. As I said, I'm in Canada. Most of them are in the U? S. Unfortunately, travel is not cheap. Um, and really looking to invest professionally and personally in each of those that I choose. So it's got to be a two-way street. And I say that because if we're just looking for professional development buy a book, take a course- but even then, so many choices you've got to narrow down, yeah yeah, but it's if we really want to learn and grow.
Speaker 3:Like what we do the majority of us, it's not just writing a book or creating a course. It's learning from and interacting with people to grow together. That's what we do professionally. So doing that in our personal professional connections also, that for me, is where the money is to be honest and where I get the ROI back on my time.
Speaker 2:So we've got people listening that are like yes, I get it, and then we have people listening.
Speaker 2:I'm sure they're whatever reason, even maybe not new to enablement, but new to doing this kind of network building. I love what you said about find where the most of your people are, where's your tribe, and focus on that. But if I'm just starting to do this, my question might be Stephanie, how do I even go about figuring out who people I'm zinging with to do that? Do you have any recommendations, Because I know a lot of folks that are just coming on the scene and starting to do this.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah, um. So there's a couple of ones that you can go into where it's really low cost of entry, and I'm going to say cost of entry in terms of actual price and the amount of time you need to spend. Um, I am a sales enablement collective ambassador. Um, for those that don't know. One of the cool things, though, is they have free drop-ins over lunch hours. They can be career workshop conversations, they can be on all different topics. The cool thing about it, though, is the way those are structured. You'll get 20 to 30 people joining this Zoom room, and you're not listening to a talking head. It's a conversation. People are coming off mute, adding their own point.
Speaker 3:Yeah on a topic, and so I personally love those spaces. They're about once a month don't quote me, but about once a month and I've met some of the coolest people in those that I otherwise would never have guessed or would never have found them to learn that they have a very specific opinion or experience about this thing that I personally find really interesting. So you know, some examples of that there has been, you know, Kieran Smith and I I was joking earlier about football versus software.
Speaker 2:No, I love Kieran, yeah, so Got to actually be with him, see him, meet him face-to-face last fall at a conference. It was awesome, great guy. Yeah, it was a great table. It was me and him and, oh my gosh, kate Lewis. Yeah, it was a really great table People that I've been talking to for ages and then actually got to hang out with. You need to do it. You need to do it anyway, but I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off.
Speaker 3:I just, I'm a big Kieran. I'm a big Kieran fan. So Well, we'll plug him on this afterwards. No-transcript about conversational intelligence tools like Gong and how they're so underutilized and how so many sales leaders and enablement teams are sleeping on what's possible with them. And it was one of those moments, you know, in a crowded virtual room with people where I was just like you. You're interesting to me. I need to unpack that a little bit.
Speaker 2:That was a little creepy. Hopefully you didn't quite come on that way. I'm going to stalk you.
Speaker 3:And that was kind of the impetus where I was like heard what you said, today Would you be up for a virtual coffee chat?
Speaker 3:And once we worked through some of the time zone things, it was like you know, you have your virtual coffee for 15 minutes. Again, it's low commitment and I find you either hit it off right away with folks in those initial coffees or you're just like. I respect your personal you know and personal accomplishments so far, but you're not one of my people. I really kind of found those SEC and other events where there's people just openly sharing their opinions almost like a sweet dating forum, where it was like you quickly get a sense for who people are and you connect with them. So this is the thing to everybody when you go to these events, go on LinkedIn immediately, drop your profile in the group chat, can look with everybody and do those follow-ups, even if just to say, hey, it was great to meet you today. If they found you interesting, they will likely ping you back and say, hey, you want to have a virtual coffee sometime, and this is how we start building relationships.
Speaker 2:Great advice? Yeah, it's. It's, um, I know what you mean If people you just meet for the first time, and that's one of the things I've been doing this now, believe it or not um, over four years started this podcast in March of 2020, cause we're all home, right, got time on your hands. But anyway, and that's been my favorite part of it is getting to know people and because in outreaching and looking and sourcing for guests and getting recommendations for guests, it's the same sort of thing. And then when I was at my last corporate gig in Instructure, I actually we had been a Toma Bravo portfolio company while I was there for a little while. Then they sold us into this public again.
Speaker 2:But my point is, I was asked to advise their CRO operating group and as part of that, I had the opportunity to create a center of excellence for enablement across the portcos and I met some great people One, I think, someone else, one of your people and I met some great people like one, I think, someone else, one of your people um, uh, Kunal Pandya and, and so, because of the time, kunal was leading enablement for another TV portfolio company and the first time he and I so I was out looking for volunteers. I was asking CROs, who do you have? It's a strong leader that would love to build a community like this within the portfolios, and so that's how I met and was I remember the same thing. The first time he and I talked we're like yes, yes, we, yeah, we. We kind of we got each other.
Speaker 2:Chelsea grove is another. I don't know if you know chelsea, um, chelsea grove was somebody else that I met through that and helped us put that community together. So you're right, those communities and that was a very specific community only for you know those 70 or so companies, but still made connections that to this day I find valuable and I don't know if I would have run into any of those folks if not for that. So great advice for folks.
Speaker 3:We're taking part of it.
Speaker 2:Paul, what about people that are outgoing? Is not their default mode? That might be a challenge for some. What are your thoughts?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean for sure. You mean I'm not going to pass for an introvert right now. That's not.
Speaker 2:If you are, you're faking it really well.
Speaker 3:I can't. So I can't empathize with an introvert. I am a hardcore extrovert. Those lockdowns were rough for me, so I get it. I would have probably started five podcasts just to be social.
Speaker 3:I would say, though, is it doesn't have to be a live conversation, right? Maybe it's not. Hey, do you want to have a quick 15 minute coffee? Maybe you go back and forth for a little while with the person? I really liked what you said in this group conversation about this. Is there a insert here, book, resource, ted talk or something that you've come across on that that you wouldn't mind sending to me? You can start building those bridges without having to go in your face with somebody right away and build that comfort level. It will take a little bit longer, but sometimes those relationships can get just as deep within six to nine months, and then, suddenly, you don't feel like you have to be an extrovert because you've already built that rapport with somebody. I would say we're talking about virtual get togethers, but in-person stuff. If you are going to an in-person event, never sit at a table of people.
Speaker 2:You know, it just got me thinking of something else.
Speaker 2:In Slack communities, you have people that hang back in different ways and I said hang back, not hang black, who is also not, does not have a problem meeting people, hi, hank, but you know what I mean. I think, whatever reason, reason they're just sort of they're not they, they don't feel like part of the the flow yet. Yeah, and I think that for those of us that it's maybe a little easier to reach out, that we should look for that and maybe just make introductions and see if we can help help help bring them into the group or bring them over to the table where we're sitting, if it does happen to be an event, or you can tell from people's body language when they're kind of like yeah, I'm here. You know, we've all been there. We were all new at one point. We're all so, um, but, but I think that's that is really solid advice. And since you mentioned books or podcasts or things, um, a couple of resources that you want to throw out that you have found helpful for people to think about.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean. So I've actually posted about this one. I do not get any kind of financial impact from this, by the way, but the Sales Coach Playbook by Corey Bray and Hillman Sorts yeah, I love that book. I'm a longtime Coreyman Zortz. Yeah, I love that book.
Speaker 2:I'm a longtime Corey fan. Good friend, yeah, I agree, great book.
Speaker 3:Hands down. Great book, Easy to apply, Easy to read. There's also an online course you can do. I mean 30, 40 bucks, including your cost of shipping, depending on where you live. Great, great read that every enabler could benefit from One where you live. Great, great read that every enabler could benefit from Um, one of the ones that I've actually recently gone back to. I so happen to have it on my desk. This was not plugged, um, is actually this book? Um, I don't know that one Um, but it's the energy energy bus Okay.
Speaker 3:Um, so this book is not new. It's probably 10 plus years old. Um.
Speaker 3:Don Gordon is known for writing and has a lot of bestsellers for positive thinking, refocusing your energy kind of books. I actually love this book as an enablement person. When I got it, I was a sales person, Um, and I keep going back to it because it's talking about how we have the ability to impact the environment that we come into and impact good, and even when it feels like we can't control things like are the sellers hitting quota and are there macro economic factors there's things that we can focus our energy on and control. Um, that is a book I love for morale boosting during the tough times, Cause we need that too, Um, and I do also think it's cool and a friend of both bars as well.
Speaker 3:Roderick's book I like reading about how we got to where we are in terms of sales enablement, I mean for those of us who are under 40 and barely barely everybody, but still, technically there, our experience has been very limited to, you know, ARR models A lot of people are SaaS companies in terms of their experience, but understanding how we got to some of these best practices, what it took for the IBMs and others of the world for decades and that are things you all know well to get us to where we are. So we understand what a strong framework is. To me, that's really important as well.
Speaker 2:I really like, yeah, great recommendations. In fact, first time I mentioned this publicly, so people are hearing it here. First is, you probably know, coreyory's partner hillman, and he and I have done some collaborations together and we're working on a concept for a podcast that we're going to launch together assuming that we come together the concept. But I'm really excited about that because he's just a ton of fun to work with, um, and I probably should do full disclosure that I also have an investor in cory hillman company, coach CRM, just since we're promoting them and again, it was not the intention here. But I also really like it's a little older, but Tamara Shank and Byron oh shoot, pretty sure Byron Matthews wrote a book on sales enablement. It's a few years old but, steph, if you go back and read it, they were so prescient in some of the things that they talked about that would be coming in sales enablement and you go back and you read it's like wow, nailed it. Um. So that's, that's another one that I would recommend. I'm just trying to to see.
Speaker 2:I can't quite see the title, but if you look up, tamershank S, c, h, e, n, k uh, not difficult to find at all. And um, also a really, really good book. Um, any, any podcasts or courses? What about those things? What do you? What do you?
Speaker 3:what's out there that people should look into? Yeah, so I mean, besides this podcast, right, yeah, obviously, um, but I would say it's hard, you know? Yeah, my analogy is like enablement has more flavors than jerry's. At this point, it's like there's like 42 different flavors of enablement.
Speaker 2:There's no one size fits all, even if you're we don't have cherry garcia sorry, ben, and jerry's cherry garcia. That's my favorite flavor. Okay, favorite flavor. I hope you have it in canada. They're doing you wrong if you don't. Anyway, sorry it's fine.
Speaker 3:yeah, we'll. We'll eat our feelings, um, but yeah, I've lost my train of thought. Oh of, of course, sorry. So when we think about that, there's, I would say, you know, so many different ways that we can go with competencies for enablement roles. Really depends on your business and your seniority and the structure of your enablement team. However, if we think about big buckets, you got to learn how to use metrics and how to report on data On the metrics front. If you're just looking for an intro, sales Enablement Collective has a metrics certification. It's async, it's like 8 to 10 hours. It'll give you a good understanding of. Here are the core metrics that I should be tracking. Here's how I can report on them. Very much an entry course, um, but it is something to get yourself familiar with. Um, cassie young is not affiliated with Cassie, but a fan of her. She's on LinkedIn.
Speaker 3:Okay, yeah, and then young like young Um so Cassie, she's going to be like who is this deaf white person that's talking about me? It's all good things, but I came across cassie when I was in pavilion which you and I are both in pavilion as well and I was taking a course, um, a program that was three months long. Also shout out to the folks at pavilion for this um and it was on basically leveling up as a go-to-market leader, and she delivered this hour-long talk one week talking about how to effectively tell go-to-market leader. And she delivered this hour-long talk one week talking about how to effectively tell go-to-market data-based stories to like C-suite and above. And the way she did it was with such passion and simple graphics that I was immediately like I'm going to find you, I'm going to connect with you Like I now follow you. I was immediately like I'm going to find you, I'm going to connect with you, like I now follow you. Yeah, it was wonderful. So I definitely, and it's totally free. She posts stuff all the time so you can take one of her courses through Pavilion. I don't get commissioned, but even just following her on LinkedIn.
Speaker 3:Data is a key thing. We need to be thinking about Metrics and data. Let's shout out Coach K at the same time, because AI is real. It is real. I don't know about the rest of you. I find some elements of it overwhelming, and I'm actually pretty well versed in it, and I still find it overwhelming to think about everything that's possible. He has a AI foundations program, let's call it through his Go-To-Market Academy, which I don't think, which smells like it. Nothing else is remotely close to that. So like, if you want to learn AI, how you can do basic commands in different programs, how you can leverage it in your enablement flows, nothing remotely comes close to Jonathan's course.
Speaker 2:So we're really lucky because I live in Salt Lake City, so does he, and so does actually Stephanie Middaw. Stephanie Zeravian.
Speaker 1:We have kind of a cool mafia here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, jesse Potter, anyway. But at our next RES chapter get together. In a few weeks he is going to do a workshop on GTM prompts for enablement. So yeah, that'll be good. That'll be really really good.
Speaker 3:And this is it right, so okay. So, data metrics, ai, you got to do it. Honestly, no one comes anywhere near close to Jonathan's course at this point. I've seen, which is huge. Um, we talked about coaching already. Um, corey and Hillman um have an online course plus the book. I think we got to play that game right now and make sure that we're reinvesting in how to coach effectively. So that's really important.
Speaker 2:And then I would just let's talk about their coach frameworks. They have a book on coaching as well that on the surface appears to be written for sales leaders, but as someone who has implemented that as an enablement VP, it is not just for sales leaders, but as someone who has implemented that as an enablement VP, it is not just for sales leaders that book. I highly recommend their book on coaching.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, and I think if anyone is looking to develop their skills this year, start with those categories that we just talked through. Those things, even if you leveled up on them a year ago, they've all evolved and changed.
Speaker 2:It's true, it's true. Yeah, the world's just constant, constant, the only what is it? They say the only constant is change. Yes, so for sure. The one other thing and I the time is just flying by, steph, so thank you for this that I would want to add is those people. That maybe a couple things, if you're, if you're still kind of wondering, you know, I do, I have anything to contribute.
Speaker 2:I knew, or I, this enablement community and I've been in it now about 12 years. I've never met excuse me, any dicks. I haven't, though, right, enablement people for the most part are, are people that want to meet people, I think a lot of times in this profession, because we enjoy developing people and building relationships and all that. So that would just be my two cents. To folks is yes, it feels intimidating, I get it, but at the same time, just in my experience, this is a very welcoming group in general, and so jump in, don't be shy. And since this is the RES podcast, I also want to make sure people know that find out if there's an RES chapter in your city, because if there is, also jump in, membership's free and the kinds of things, like I just described, that Coach K is going to be doing with us. That's not just a Salt Lake thing. That's happening in Chicago and Miami and New York City, etc. And so definitely take advantage of that.
Speaker 2:You've shared a lot of great insights and I want to give you a chance to share one more, and this might be enablement related, it might not be, it doesn't matter. But let's say you've been given the gift of time travel, but with a couple restrictions. One you can only go back and talk to yourself. No butterfly effect, right. So you can only go back and talk to some younger version of you and you can only coach yourself in one area. What is the thing that you most wish you'd understood or processed earlier in your career or in life? Or processed earlier in your career or in life?
Speaker 3:I think for me when I first got out of school, university or college for those in the US.
Speaker 2:Uni for the others.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I found myself in the business world and I was 20 years old and blonde and often the only female in the room making my way in sales, and I spent a lot of time and a lot of energy thinking I had to be somebody else, some other version of me, and I didn't even know who that was because I was just still trying to figure it out and I thought everyone else had the answers and it was only me that didn't.
Speaker 3:So I think my off the top of what would I say to my younger self it would be that early 20 something self that had just started the workforce and landed at a really cool company is you can be you and do all the things you want to do and you can be successful, and nobody else truly has anything figured out like anything, anything, anything. And I think the sentiment there to younger staff would be when you learn to embrace who you are, you will never feel more energized and excited to run into those boardrooms where you are the only female or the only one that is insert adjective here. It was really like embrace yourself would probably be my message to that younger person, because that's how we connect with people. People connect with each other's imperfections, not their perfections.
Speaker 2:Oh did you just come up with that? Seriously, that is a seriously, that is a meme. You should, you should, find a way to share that. That's that speaks to me, at least. That makes a lot of sense. But I've never heard it quite that way.
Speaker 3:But that's what it is right. Yeah, I love that that will be my message to my younger self and hopefully something that other people can take away from. And just lean into who you are, because who you are is amazing and it'll help you find your vibe attracts, your tribe right. It'll help you find your people and you will never feel better than when you find your room of your people what a strong way to go out on the episode.
Speaker 2:Thank you, thank you very, very much, appreciate your time and I appreciate the time that all the rest of you have invested another half an hour with us here at stories from the trenches. Thank you, for we wouldn't be here doing this without you. We'll be back in two weeks with another great guest, another great topic. In the meantime, stay safe.
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.
