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What Sales Enablement Actually Is (And Why You're Doing It Wrong) · Revenue Problem Solvers

0:00
So I kind of call this the moon problem.
0:02
It's like if I'm a sales Rep and I look at my sales manager, it's
0:06
kind of like the moon, right? I look at it and it goes full
0:09
and it waxes and wanes and all that stuff, but I only see the
0:12
one side. And then I get a sales manager
0:15
job and all of a sudden I get to see the backside of the moon,
0:18
the dark side of I'm like, oh, this is what's going on back
0:22
here. Welcome back everybody to the
0:24
Revenue Problem Solvers podcast, where we try to crack the code
0:27
on growing your business by tackling challenges that keep
0:29
revenue leaders up at night. I'm Karl Ormans and on today's
0:32
episode we're going to dive into, I think one of the most
0:35
fun topics and also misunderstood sales enablement.
0:40
Today's podcast is sponsored by the great team at Virtual
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The result? Fewer cold motions, more high
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virtualcauseway.com. Oh, and don't forget to mention
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the show for a special rate Now. My guest today is a partner of
1:19
stage two Capital, Mr. Andrew Quinn.
1:23
Andrew Start. Andrew started his career at
1:26
Yellow Pages back when earning trust meant knocking on doors
1:30
and building relationships face to face.
1:32
From there, he moved into Microsoft during the early
1:34
Internet days, selling Sidewalk platform as the digital world
1:38
was just beginning to take place.
1:40
He then joined HubSpot when they were only 60 employees and as he
1:45
said, they just needed a trainer.
1:47
But he didn't inherit a machine, he actually helped to build it.
1:50
He went on to create and scale Hubspot's learning development
1:53
organization into a global team of around 40 people, shaping how
1:57
thousands of reps were developed, coached and LED.
2:01
He understood that scaling revenue, it isn't just about
2:03
hiring more sellers, it's about changing behavior across an
2:06
organization and that sales enablement does not mean more
2:09
onboarding decks and playbooks. It's actually change management.
2:14
Today, as a partner of State Shoe Capital, he gets to work
2:16
with founders and revenue leaders to build systems the
2:19
right way. His velocity is very simple, but
2:22
it's disciplined, sequence, coordinate, communicate,
2:26
execute. Most companies just jump
2:28
straight to the execution because that's where the scaling
2:30
breaks. Andrew, welcome to the podcast.
2:33
Thank. You.
2:35
So to kick us off a little bit, kick us off, could you give us a
2:38
little bit about a context about your world?
2:41
What industries or verticals do you work with?
2:42
What are the selling motions? What size companies do you work
2:44
with? Sure.
2:46
So I guess what I'll lead with, you know, relative to the stage
2:49
two thing, Mark Roberts, if anybody's read his book right.
2:53
This one right here. Bill, the previous.
2:56
Or the other one. Yes, exactly.
2:59
I'm the guy that had to execute all that stuff like if you've
3:05
read, you know the what is it the the.
3:07
Sales acceleration formula. Yes, sales acceleration formula,
3:10
like my job was actually doing a bunch of that stuff.
3:13
It all works. So I was actively involved in
3:15
doing all that, you know, and, and now what I do after coming
3:20
off of HubSpot is I, I tend to work with, I would say somewhat
3:26
early stage technology companies that are at the point of having
3:32
to scale a lot of the revenue enablement type of stuff.
3:37
Like they're now getting to the point where they've gone beyond
3:40
trailblazing their sale. They figured out what that sale
3:43
is and now they need to duplicate that behavior with
3:45
people. So do a lot of work with
3:47
companies that are at that stage, do a lot of work with
3:50
senior leadership. One of the things that I also
3:52
did at HubSpot was leadership development.
3:54
We were very, very big and promote from within.
3:57
So one of the things we had to do is help people acclimate to
4:02
whatever the new level of responsibility is because, you
4:05
know, being a sales manager is one thing, being a sales
4:07
director is a different job. So how do we get them oriented
4:10
to actually doing that job? Or if I'm a director of
4:13
marketing, I'm now AVP of marketing, that is a different
4:16
job. And just doing the director job
4:19
well doesn't mean that I'm set up to do the VP job well.
4:22
So I did a lot of work also helping executives.
4:25
So the main work I do now is in three areas.
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I do a lot of work with enablement practitioners,
4:31
helping them think through how to actually scale their
4:34
enablement operations, ways to think about what enablement
4:37
actually is and how it executes. I do a lot of work in sales
4:42
value stories, sales methodology, sales process, and
4:45
advising organizations how to establish what those might be or
4:49
make a shift from one to another.
4:51
And then I also do leadership development work where I work
4:54
with leaders in these organizations to become more
4:58
effective in leading the organizations they're
5:02
responsible for. You know, one of the things that
5:03
tends to happen is the higher you rise in organizations like
5:06
this, the lonelier it gets, right?
5:09
Because, you know, let's say I was a director, I'm promoted to
5:12
VP, I'm in a fast moving start up.
5:14
Well, the senior leadership team expects you to be able to do
5:17
that. Like they're not really in a
5:19
position to coach you or, you know, teach you how to do that
5:23
work the expectations you're going to be able to do it.
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So you don't have a lot of people to talk to, to go.
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I'm not really sure what to do here, right?
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Can't talk to my peers, can't really talk to my boss, can't
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talk to people below me. So I'm just really thinking
5:34
through it myself, and that's not an ideal spot to be.
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So I spent a fair amount of time working with organizations on
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that front too. Amazing.
5:42
It it really is a a different shift and I'm glad that you
5:45
called it out because when you jump to a manager,
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congratulations. Most time the conversation
5:52
sounds, congratulations, I need this output by this date.
5:56
It's not here's what makes a great manager.
5:58
And then you go to director and you're like, this is a new
6:00
world. What I've got to lead managers.
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And then you go into VP and you have to continue to rebuild
6:06
yourself. It's my belief you got to have
6:08
to continue to rebuild your skill set.
6:09
So I, I love that you, you call that out because it is
6:13
incredibly important. And if you're as the topic of
6:17
enablement, if you're listening to this and you're thinking
6:19
about your own enablement, don't just factor it in as the reps,
6:23
make sure you're enabling your leaders and how are you helping
6:27
them develop into better leaders?
6:29
Yeah, and we'll talk about it. One of the things that was under
6:31
my responsibility to Hubslot was a leadership enablement function
6:35
as part of our sales enablement organization.
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Like what are we doing for sales directors, sales VPS, sales
6:42
managers, in addition to Rep level enablement.
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It was a full stack approach that we took and something I
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want to point out. And I think this happens a lot
6:52
in sales in particular, which is, you know, the level above
6:56
protects the level below from the sausage making that's going
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on up above, right? Because we know in sales, like
7:04
if the reps are worried about, hey, like what's going on up
7:07
there, they're distracted from what they need to do today,
7:10
which is go out and slay the dragon, right?
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I need to go out and create a relationship out of thin air
7:14
today that results in somebody giving me money.
7:16
So I don't want to distract from that.
7:19
So I kind of call this the moon problem.
7:21
It's like if I'm a sales Rep and I look at my sales manager, it's
7:26
kind of like the moon, right? I look at it and it goes full
7:29
and it waxes and wanes and all that stuff.
7:30
But I only see the one side. And then I get a sales manager
7:34
job and all of a sudden I get to see the backside of the moon,
7:37
the dark side. And I'm like, oh, this is what's
7:40
going on back here, right? Because the reps like that looks
7:43
like a great job. Like I just basically tell
7:45
people what to do. They go out and sell stuff and I
7:47
make a lot of money and they have no idea what's actually
7:50
going on back there. And they get the job and they're
7:53
like, wow, I had no idea that's what this is.
7:56
And happens again at director level, happens again at VP
7:59
level. And one of the things I did was
8:02
help them navigate the dark side of the moon that they've never
8:05
seen before and realize what it is and what you're supposed to
8:08
do within it to succeed in the job.
8:11
And that's rare. A lot of people don't get that.
8:13
Yeah, that's, it's very well said.
8:16
And as we sort of, I'll try to jump it off here because it's,
8:20
it's it, you can see that this conversation is going to go a
8:23
whole bunch of different ways. If you haven't figured out,
8:25
'cause I asked Andrew, just like everybody, what's the most
8:28
successful revenue initiative you led or an existing challenge
8:31
that you've either solved or solving?
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And one of the most fun prep calls, by the way, if you can't
8:36
tell even just by the beginning here, it became so clear that
8:40
building the enablement function from the ground up is both the
8:42
most challenging and successful because you're right, their
8:46
enablement takes on so many different functions.
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And for me, having you spent a bit of time in this arena
8:51
myself, this is like near and dear to my heart.
8:54
Couldn't be more excited to talk about this because it's so often
8:57
misunderstood, in my opinion. And Andrew's already given us
9:00
some Nuggets already, right? Like there's the moon, but
9:02
there's the dark side of the moon.
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And if you haven't seen that other side of it, well, what
9:06
does that world look like? And then you get into that
9:08
world. It's, you know, be careful what
9:10
you wish for because you just might get it.
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Now you get it and you're like, oh, oh, so as we sort of launch
9:15
into this, Andrew, you've said to me that is sales enablement
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really becomes change management.
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And maybe the question to start is like what are the behaviours
9:25
most revenue teams are trying to change and why do they struggle
9:30
to change it you? Know it's an interesting
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question and I, I don't know that there's any specific
9:36
behavior in particular or set of behaviors, right?
9:39
Because every organization has its own nuances relative to
9:43
culture and things along those lines.
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But what primarily happens is we have people operating in a
9:50
certain set of conditions or a certain set of behaviors.
9:53
We'll call that condition a right.
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In other words, let's say we've got 4 salespeople.
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We realize that what they're doing is working, but we now
10:03
need to get it to where we've got 10 or 12 salespeople.
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We need to scale that up in some way.
10:07
So how do we enable that change? Well, part of it is
10:11
understanding what are the behaviors that actually work.
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Do I actually know what those predictable things are, right.
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Do I? Do I know that if this behavior
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happens, it's going to yield that outcome.
10:23
So I need to have a clear understanding of the outcomes
10:26
I'm trying to drive and back into which behaviors yield those
10:29
outcomes. And then from there, as
10:33
conditions change, right? And that could be new value
10:35
propositions inside the organization, could be new
10:38
products, new motions, new methodology, could be external
10:42
market factors that are changing the dynamics that we're in.
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I now need people to move from where they are to this new
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thing. I need to get them from A to B,
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and enablement is the the the, the motion of getting them from
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here to there. And a lot of times that ends up
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defaulting in shorthand to training, right, Which
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enablement equals training? And that's a false equivalency
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in my mind, because training could be a tool of enablement,
11:11
but it is not enablement. Enablement is enabling the go
11:14
from here to there. This is where I would make the
11:17
argument that enablement actually is a business
11:19
discipline, not a department. And the word itself is
11:23
problematic, right? Because enablement is hard to
11:27
define. You could make the argument that
11:29
the entire company is set up to enable the generation of
11:33
revenue, right? That's really what it's set up
11:35
to do, is enable shareholder value or whatever you want to
11:38
call it. Well, great.
11:40
Then what are the things we have to do to enable finance to
11:43
execute what they need to execute?
11:45
How do we enable sales to execute what they need to
11:47
execute marketing, so on and so forth.
11:49
So if we have an enablement discipline inside the
11:52
organization, we need different groups that are responsible for
11:56
moving from here to there. Now some groups, they don't have
11:59
a lot of change that occurs. So that can be done by, you
12:03
know, a general training organization or an HR
12:05
organization or something along those lines when you're trying
12:07
to move people. But sales is a unique
12:09
discipline. So you typically need a group
12:13
that is focused on because a lot of things tend up tend to
12:17
resolve into sales. Like every group in the company
12:20
touches it in some way. Legal touches it relative to the
12:23
contracts they're writing. Finance touches it relative to
12:26
how they run their, you know, quote to cash.
12:28
Motion marketing touches it, product touches it.
12:33
Sales leadership touches it. The customer success
12:36
organization touches it. Everybody touches and is trying
12:39
to shape the way those people behave and operate in the things
12:43
that they're doing. And how do I get them to move
12:45
from here to there as those here to there's?
12:50
I totally do. And I, I like that you're
12:52
calling it out because it's something that is immediately
12:56
when you're talking about this. I have, I have two questions
12:58
that come to mind and I don't want to ask you both at the same
13:00
time, but I'll sort of preempt them and we can dive into one of
13:02
the two because there is a come, there's a question there that
13:05
lives with and I think you're, I think you're right.
13:07
Sales enablement, the word sale, the enablement is driven towards
13:11
sales most regularly because it's probably the function that
13:14
has the highest turnover. It also has the most, the most
13:18
skill sets that are required in order for that job to be
13:21
successful. I've got to understand the
13:23
product. I got to have some technical
13:25
skill sets. I got to be able to negotiate
13:26
money. I got to be able to talk to all
13:28
these things. I got to be a little bit of a
13:29
mark. There's so many functions,
13:31
facets that go into sales enablement.
13:33
So it's there's a gravitation in my gravitational pull of like,
13:37
OK, your sales enablement, but you've also talked about, which
13:41
I think is important, is that revenue enablement portion or
13:44
just global enablement across the company?
13:47
Because if you think about a company and you're being
13:51
recruited, who's the very first touch point you have with
13:53
somebody? What's HR or it's a recruiter?
13:57
Well, does anybody look at the HR team and say, Hey, this is
14:01
how to write a great e-mail. Here's how you do that outbound
14:04
prospecting. Here's how you do these things.
14:06
And the same time of like, Hey, I want to launch a new thing.
14:08
Oh, you know, how often have you heard?
14:10
Like you said, Oh, we got this new quote to cash thing.
14:12
I'm going to just be able to share with you.
14:14
It's quick. You just have to do it and just
14:15
carry on and go, well, hold on a second.
14:18
Now it touches multiple different departments and how do
14:21
I get it? So there's, there's AI think
14:23
there's a bunch inside of just one topic because the question
14:26
is like, should we thought part of a sales enablement?
14:28
Should it be thought as a revenue enablement?
14:30
And then even part of it is where should it live?
14:33
Should it be its own, like I think you said, it's a
14:36
department on the discipline. So all of that context is we
14:40
jump to sales, maybe is do we jump to sales because of the
14:43
multiple facets that exist inside of company or should we
14:48
be rethinking this about enablement is more than sales?
14:53
I think it's the latter. And I think, you know, in some
14:56
ways words matter and enablement became the sort of term of the
15:08
moment because training became this like old way of doing
15:14
things, right? We're not training, we're
15:16
enabling, right? Just felt more, you know,
15:20
empowering or more just a bigger thing.
15:25
But the problem is everybody has a different definition of that
15:28
word. I would say the most common
15:29
definition is just training, like training equals enablement.
15:33
I don't believe that's true. But what also happens is when
15:36
you take a department and you label them as enablement, they
15:41
end up becoming a dumping ground because what happens is in
15:44
enablement, there's a lot of stuff that goes on.
15:46
As I told you before, that notion of like sequencing,
15:49
coordinating, communicating, executing.
15:51
What that really means is I need to understand all the things
15:55
that might be. We'll use the sales organization
15:57
as an example. Like at the peak of that
16:00
organization, when I was running it, excuse me, we did probably
16:07
somewhere between 510 and 520 discrete enablement initiatives
16:13
in a year. All right.
16:15
And those ran from, hey, there's a new login portal that you need
16:20
to use to spin up instances of HubSpot to do your demos to,
16:25
hey, we're rolling out a whole new hub.
16:28
You know, this is like when we're rolling out the CRM and
16:30
then we're going to roll out the services hub on HubSpot like a
16:34
big product suite. We need to roll out to, oh,
16:37
we're going to do a methodology change.
16:39
Oh, we're changing fields in sales force, like all kinds of
16:43
stuff coming from all sorts of places.
16:47
And what tends to happen is all these groups that are creating
16:51
things that are going to affect the sales team.
16:53
Maybe it's product marketing, maybe it's product, maybe it's
16:56
the sales organization itself. Like those things don't happen
17:00
in a vacuum, but those different groups don't realize that,
17:04
right? They're sitting there going, I
17:05
got my thing, I got to get my thing done.
17:07
I got to get sales to do this, which is contributing to the
17:10
thing I need to get done. They're not looking at the fact
17:13
that, oh, there's fifty other things that all these other
17:16
groups are pushing at the sales organization at the same time.
17:19
Well, the sales organization is trying to meet its monthly
17:22
quota, right? Or its quarterly quota or what?
17:25
However its objectives are set. So part of this is somebody
17:29
sitting in the middle and going, what are all these things that
17:32
are being pushed at the sales organization?
17:34
What is the optimal sequence for them to be flowed into these
17:37
people so that they can get from A to B on all these things?
17:42
Because they're in a curtain current state, I need to get
17:44
them to this new state. And that might be new fields and
17:47
sales force you need to use. It might be new login
17:50
credentials you need to use. It might be a new value
17:53
proposition. We're saying whatever it is,
17:55
what is the plan to get from here to there?
17:58
That's the coordination piece, because when I'm sequencing, it
18:01
means I need to understand what it is, where we are now, where
18:04
we need to be. What are all the pieces that
18:06
need to be created in order to drive that change?
18:09
What content needs to be developed?
18:11
Who needs to know about it? What's the timing of the whole
18:14
thing? What are the mechanisms we might
18:16
use to communicate this stuff? Is there learning that needs to
18:19
happen? Like is it just simply people
18:22
need to change behavior and they just need to know that, hey,
18:24
this is the new way you do this and it's a fairly light lift?
18:27
Or are there new skills they need to acquire to execute this,
18:29
which means we need to train them on those skills, give them
18:32
practice opportunities for for that.
18:34
Like what is the scope of that? And how do I coordinate all the
18:38
different players that are going to contribute to this effort?
18:42
And then how do I actually communicate everything to all
18:44
the right people so they know what they need to do, when they
18:45
need to do it, how they need to do it.
18:47
So then I can then execute in a way that is optimized for
18:51
adoption. Because that's where all this
18:53
stuff breaks, right, is we just keep pushing stuff to the sales
18:55
organization. And a lot of times we push it.
18:59
We push it to the sales organization at all levels at
19:03
the same time. In other words, the, the senior
19:05
leaders up top have all agreed we're going to do this, but they
19:08
never told their directors, never told their managers, never
19:10
told the reps. And those people will learn
19:12
about it at the same time. So then the Rep goes to the
19:15
boss, you know, the manager, how how do I do this or what is this
19:19
thing and that the sales manager goes, I don't know, I'm learning
19:21
about the same time you are. And then the sales manager goes
19:24
to the director, like, have you heard about this?
19:25
They're like, no, first time I'm hearing about it too.
19:27
So everybody just kind of goes, let's see what happens, right?
19:31
And they don't. You don't get the adoption and
19:33
the change and it makes change way harder.
19:37
I put a lot into that so. Yeah, I agree with you.
19:40
I, I've used the analogy and some people didn't like it or
19:44
some people do like it, but I think sales enablement kind of
19:46
takes on this persona of like the Secret Service or the
19:49
bodyguards to the sales team or to any of the teams.
19:52
Because like you said, oh, we have a new change.
19:55
There's a new login. Oh, here's a new demo flow.
19:57
Oh, we have a new quote to cash. Oh, there's new fields or a new.
20:00
And it's like, we'll just send it to them and they'll figure it
20:02
out. Well, the sequencing of that is
20:04
important. And I like how you said that is
20:06
because, well, there's a sequencing of when.
20:08
Hey, remember, they have quotas to hit.
20:10
So OK, great. Do we want to give them all of
20:12
this training and have them distracted?
20:14
Or do we want to give them little sequences?
20:17
We want to give them little bits at a time so that it one
20:20
operates into does this and maybe there's a there's a this
20:24
sequencing and maybe this is how you think about it.
20:26
I could be wrong. Is like, is it, is it a
20:28
immediate need right now? Or is it a passive need?
20:30
Do we have to make sure that, hey, there's a major change
20:33
coming to I'll use it. Maybe this example, we're
20:36
changing the way HubSpot operates.
20:38
We're no longer just looking at it from the marketing side.
20:40
We're also deploying ACRM. That's a major change.
20:43
So that's something that you're going to have to be totally
20:45
invested in. Hey, we've got a couple of
20:48
fields that need to be changed. Maybe that's something a little
20:50
bit more passive, but the sequencing is important.
20:53
And so I don't know if that's a good analogy for people to think
20:57
of is like that bodyguard of the Secret Service of, hey, look,
20:59
I'm going to protect them in order for them to be focused,
21:02
but constantly be giving them information.
21:05
So they're leveling up. Yes, I mean, that's, that's
21:08
exactly the role we played. It was like a, a governor on an
21:11
engine, right? That ensures that it doesn't run
21:14
too hot or run too fast. And you know, part of that is
21:20
like we had to make sure that we understood well, we set
21:24
ourselves up and, and what, what this really requires is the CRO
21:29
or the the highest level sales leader as well as I would say
21:36
other senior leaders can buy into this.
21:38
But basically you need a strong senior sales leader that
21:43
enforces this charter. And like when I was working for
21:47
Hunter Madeley, who was our CRO at the time that I was running
21:50
enablement HubSpot, like he was exceptional at that.
21:55
Like he made it abundantly clear because he recognized the
21:57
problem and there was so much growth happening.
22:00
Things are moving so fast. He's like, I need you to stand
22:03
in the breach of this. I need your team to be the
22:07
filter through which all this stuff flows because I have
22:10
people coming from all over the place pushing stuff into our
22:13
sales organization with no flow through.
22:17
So he set me up that way and we had an agreement and he was very
22:21
much an advocate and would back that up because the minute I'd
22:25
start pushing back on people, they'd try to end run me and he
22:29
wouldn't allow that. And that's required, right?
22:31
Is it needs to be really clear that Nope, that's how this
22:35
works. And the other thing is you raise
22:37
something interesting, which is a lot of people will look at
22:39
enablement and say just give it to them.
22:41
They'll figure it out. I would argue that's wrong
22:43
because they're the subject matter experts.
22:45
They're the ones that know this. I will never know it as well as
22:47
they do, but I know the sales organization better than they
22:51
do. I know all the things the sales
22:53
organization is currently facing.
22:54
I know the optimal time that you can flow this in to get the
22:57
highest level of uptake with the least amount of effort.
23:00
I have the communication vehicles to get into the sales
23:03
organization and they pay attention to me and they pay
23:05
attention to the communication vehicles that we manage.
23:08
So like you, if you and run this, you're never going to get
23:13
it done. Your best option is to run it
23:15
through this and allow us to be your partner.
23:18
But let's be clear, you own the content, you own the expertise,
23:23
we'll help you shape it. We'll we'll work on the
23:26
packaging of it. We'll work on the different ways
23:28
in which it might be, you know, bundled up and the way that it
23:33
might get into an, an LMS as an example, or if it's going to be
23:37
a train, the trainer, the managers are going to deliver.
23:39
Like we'll figure all that out, but we're not also going to come
23:43
experts in what, you know, you're in charge of providing us
23:47
with everything we need to know and all those assets that we can
23:51
then convert into the things that will be used for this
23:54
effort. But we're not building all that
23:56
stuff. And it, it came to the point
23:59
where like this is going to sound really goofy, but it
24:01
worked like we were originally called sales enablement team,
24:05
right? Which everybody's just like, oh,
24:06
it's enablement. We're going to enable them, give
24:08
them all the stuff. Well, I worked really hard and
24:12
it was funny. I, I came up with this mantra of
24:14
enablement as a business discipline, not a department.
24:17
And our whole team, I made a mandate.
24:21
Every conversation you have with any person of any significance
24:25
in leadership where you're working on this stuff, you need
24:29
to say that phrase, right? And I would actually quiz them
24:33
on it. I'd have like, if I you're
24:34
working for me, I'd be like Carl, We were in a one-on-one.
24:37
I'd be like Carl really quick. What's enablement?
24:39
And you'd go it's a. Business Department.
24:41
Absolutely. How many times, how many people
24:43
did you tell that to today? And we did it as a campaign and
24:47
it worked because everybody started to realize, oh, this
24:51
actually is part of the business.
24:54
It's not just one group. And I took it to the point where
24:57
I changed the name of the team. We changed it to sales
25:00
productivity and enablement, which we then shortened to SP
25:04
and E. So then it was, oh, we have an
25:06
enablement effort. We need to bring in the SP and E
25:09
team to help us do that. And what it did is it it cleared
25:13
the fog in the language because everybody uses enablement to
25:17
represent the people doing the work, but then also represent
25:20
the actual initiative itself to represent the materials that
25:24
need to be created to do that. Like it just creates so much fog
25:29
that no one really knows what's going on in trying to change
25:33
behavior. The labeling matters a lot.
25:37
Yeah, and it goes back to words matter, right?
25:39
Like there's the the people that are bringing you something.
25:42
They're the content. You're in my opinion, the
25:45
enablement team becomes the context.
25:48
How is this translate to the sales team or to the team?
25:50
What do they need to know specifically?
25:52
What is it going to do to their day-to-day?
25:54
Because you understand much more of their, the context of their
25:56
world and you take their content, you try to weave it
25:59
together. And I I I go back to.
26:02
Query being like a, a producer, like a, a music producer or a
26:06
movie producer, like their job is sort of to make sure things
26:12
happen, right? And to try to get the best out
26:15
of everybody and coordinate all these different moving parts to
26:20
create this end product, right? It's very similar to that.
26:26
Which is a great, Yeah, the orchestra, the, the conductor,
26:29
you know, they're, they're pulling, you're pulling all the
26:30
teams together to create beautiful music.
26:33
Corey Bray actually brought something up.
26:35
He was on the podcast a while back and he's got, he's in
26:38
enablement function. He's written a bunch of books
26:39
around enablement. But he he talked to me a lot
26:41
about this when he said sales enablement or the enablement
26:45
function has to be very good at product project management as
26:50
well. Absolutely.
26:53
OK. So how did you, how did you
26:55
think about that project management when somebody said,
26:57
hey Andrew, we've got a major thing or we got a little thing.
27:01
How did you translate that and and did you how did you bring
27:04
that project management skill set?
27:06
Maybe if if that's a good way of asking.
27:08
This is this is, this is deep and I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll try
27:11
to stay somewhat high level, but I actually had like the way our
27:16
team worked is we had an intake process, right?
27:20
So anything that was going to get flowed into the sales team
27:23
went into this intake process. And part of what we looked at
27:27
was basically a AA24 box framework.
27:31
That was urgency, importance, effort and impacts.
27:34
If you imagine two, well, we've all heard the urgent important
27:36
one, right? That's, but that's important,
27:38
right? Urgency has to do with there's a
27:40
lot of different ways to define it, but basically, you know, I
27:44
want to make sure I understand where I am in that, you know, is
27:46
it highly urgent, highly important?
27:48
Obviously that upper right box we really want to do.
27:50
But then you've got another one which is effort and impact.
27:53
Like how much effort is it going to take to create all the things
27:56
to make this happen? How much effort is it going to
27:58
take on the people on the receiving end that need to adopt
28:02
all these things? Like what does that effort look
28:04
like? And also what's the impact this
28:06
is going to have not just on the business, not just on results.
28:09
What's the impact on the people that need to do the work?
28:12
What's going to be the impact on the people that need to, you
28:15
know, consume this work and internalize it and then start
28:19
using it in their jobs? Like, and there was a scoring
28:23
system attached to that so that we could level out all the
28:27
different things that were coming in and then have very
28:31
open and transparent conversations with senior
28:34
leadership on what how does this get sequenced?
28:36
How does it get coordinated based on the urgency, effort,
28:40
urgency, importance, effort and impact scores that we had.
28:43
So we could say, hey, this can't be done yet.
28:46
Like the lift is too heavy both in production and both in roll
28:50
out because it's sitting right on top of this other big thing
28:53
we're doing like to provide visibility into how this stuff
28:58
is layering in and what it would take to produce it and what it
29:01
would take to consume it on the the recipient's end, which is
29:05
the person needs to learn this stuff or navigate the change,
29:08
right? So that's a big part of it.
29:10
In the intake process, we'd scope the whole thing right and
29:13
then try to figure out where does this all slot in to all the
29:17
other things that are already in progress.
29:20
And then from there, we had a whole enablement flow to get
29:24
from A to B, right? And it's essentially scope it,
29:27
assign a project manager to it, then go figure out who were all
29:31
the subject matter experts, content content contributors
29:34
that are going to be involved in fueling this effort.
29:38
And then we had this little process called CND and it stood
29:42
for concept, narrative and design.
29:44
In other words, concept. What are we actually trying to
29:47
accomplish here? What are we trying to get people
29:49
to move to has a lot to do with the, the outcomes, but it's,
29:54
it's the, it's the overall like theme of this movie.
29:59
Like what is what is the, the, the core story we're telling
30:03
here or the core like moral of this thing, like the moral of
30:08
the story? What is that?
30:09
What's that core concept we're trying to tell?
30:11
OK, great. What's the narrative?
30:13
Like what's the actual storyline that we need to follow to get
30:18
people to navigate this change? And then the design is OK, what
30:22
are what are we going to build? Do we have to build e-learning
30:24
materials? Do we have to build Cheat
30:26
Sheets? Do we have to build train the
30:28
trainer modules? Like what are we making and
30:31
creating and designing to do all this?
30:34
And then there was the actual like that would flow into the
30:37
actual build process and we would build and then we would
30:40
execute. And then in the execution, this
30:44
is where the communication piece comes in is like as we're in
30:47
that build and execute, there was another model in there which
30:50
is the communication is senior leadership.
30:52
And we had a cascading communication plan.
30:55
Like I met monthly with all of my key sales leadership
30:59
stakeholders individually. So in other words, we had like
31:03
the small biz segment, mid market corporate partner and
31:10
then a couple of international groups that weren't quite
31:12
structured the same as we were in the USI would meet with each
31:15
one of those leadership groups individually.
31:17
And I would project to them, here's what's coming over the
31:20
next quarter or the next six months, but I would do this
31:23
monthly so they'd know well in advance.
31:26
This is what we currently have sequenced.
31:27
This is going to be pushed into your teams.
31:29
Anything new comes in, I would introduce that in the next
31:32
monthly meeting and say, hey, this is what's coming based on
31:35
priorities. We're backing this thing off.
31:37
We're bringing this over on top of it.
31:39
But they were read in well in advance.
31:42
And then as we were getting close to an initiative being
31:45
rolled out, we would always have a manager pre session.
31:49
We would make sure the managers and directors knew well in
31:52
advance what's going to be hitting their reps and we would
31:56
make sure they knew and whatever their role would be, and it
31:58
could be just promoting, it could be just ensuring your
32:01
people participate. They may actually have a role in
32:04
training things, whatever that was.
32:07
We made sure they were briefed well in advance.
32:10
Then we would actually do the Rep roll out, but everybody in
32:14
the stack knew well in advance what was coming to when the reps
32:17
got it and they look up and they go, what am I doing?
32:19
The managers like, I'm on it, I know exactly what it is.
32:22
And if the manager's like you're not sure, the director's like,
32:24
oh, I've been, I've been in this and they've been seeding it with
32:26
their leadership all along. So we had a very involved
32:31
project management process, which is why we were able to do,
32:35
you know, upwards of like 520 discrete rollouts in a year and
32:40
have them all work. OK.
32:43
If you're as you're listening to this, if you're an enablement or
32:46
you're, or if you're a leader in inside of a company and you have
32:50
fun, you have sales teams underneath of you go back, I
32:53
think it's about 6 or 7 minutes and listen to everything that
32:57
Andrew just said because he just rolled out exactly the playbook
33:02
for you to build that whole, as he said, content narrative
33:06
design, that CND and all the functions and all the things
33:09
that are required. Like you just gave, you just
33:11
basically gave a master class in a very few pieces in a very
33:14
short period of time. And I also like that you make
33:17
sure that you highlight the connect the connective tissues
33:20
to the leadership team. Actually, I got to work with
33:23
Hunter at when I was at Salesforce and he came and he he
33:26
some trainings with our team. And then he was very specific
33:28
about, about the sequencing of when things happened even way
33:32
back then. So as you're, as you're saying,
33:35
like here's what it looked like, I could envision hunting be
33:37
like, OK, we're going to do it in this order.
33:39
OK, great. Oh, by the way, that thing is
33:42
now a much more priority because it's ahead of schedule.
33:44
OK, back something off. And it's, it's that push pull.
33:47
And I like how you've really framed that, of making sure that
33:50
you understand what it's aligned to, where's the sequencing of it
33:54
and how does it all come fit. And so I really like how you've
33:57
said that all of this. Now the next question I would
34:00
like to maybe pose to you, because as you've built this
34:04
great function, you've got all this stuff going and you deploy
34:07
all this stuff. There's a question that I'd like
34:10
to ask you that I've experienced and I'm not going to, I don't
34:13
want to give the answer of my perspective is like, who resists
34:16
this, these enablement the most? Is it reps?
34:21
Is it leaders? Is it top performers?
34:23
Is it bottom performers? Who is it inside the company?
34:27
From your, from your experience, it resists any of these
34:30
enablement functions or these enable programs?
34:33
So I'm not going to single out any particular group.
34:38
I will put it this way. In my opinion, the core sales
34:42
philosophy that drives pretty much everybody that's in this
34:45
game is the path of least resistance to the outcome on
34:49
gold to achieve, right? Which you could arguably say is
34:53
the path of least resistance to a dollar because sales is the
34:57
most measured organization typically inside a company.
35:02
And a lot of that measurement has to do with dollars, right?
35:05
And if I figured out a path that for me, gets me to that outcome
35:11
as quickly as possible, I'm going to want to stay on that
35:15
path. And there's an excellent book
35:17
about this. It's called Switch by the Heath
35:19
Brothers. I don't know if you read that,
35:21
but it talks about this human nature and I've read a lot about
35:25
habit. There's a lot of great books on
35:26
habits because sales people are very habitual, like they
35:30
generate a series of habits that are producing A predictable
35:33
outcome that ideally get me to my number or exceed it.
35:37
I and what I've seen happen in a lot of organizations is I'm on
35:41
that path, all right? Something has changed, right?
35:46
Either the market conditions have changed, the new product
35:48
has come out, and you know what? I don't want to leave the path
35:51
that I'm on. And I'll double down on the path
35:53
that I'm on to the point that I get into a slump and I'm like,
35:57
Nope, what I did will work again.
36:00
And I keep doubling down on it and I keep digging myself deeper
36:04
and deeper into a hole until I don't have that job anymore.
36:07
I can't tell you how many times I've seen people do that, resist
36:11
moving from the path that I'm on.
36:13
It can be reps, managers, directors, varying levels of
36:18
performance, but they're in a groove and they do not want to
36:21
leave the groove, right? And there might be a better
36:25
groove, but they don't necessarily believe it.
36:28
And they want to believe that, hey, what I used to do will work
36:31
again and everything will be great.
36:33
And it rarely works that way. And it's the people unwilling to
36:37
get out of the one groove and get into another one and deal
36:39
with the discomfort for a short window of time to be on an
36:43
equally productive path or an even better one.
36:47
That's what I've seen in my experience.
36:48
I like it and it's that whole going back into being, you know,
36:52
you're, you're either you, you need to be comfortable being
36:55
uncomfortable and, and you know, the, the skill set because a lot
36:59
of the, I, I do like the analogy of sales teams should be like,
37:04
you know, professional or sports teams as an example, because
37:08
you're going to have your highs, you're going to have your lows.
37:10
But in sports, it's so common to have a coach and be able to go,
37:16
you know, if I'm working in HubSpot and I go, I can go to if
37:20
I go to Andrew and say Andrew, something's off for me and I
37:23
can't figure it out. That's as an as an athlete.
37:27
I can go to my positional coach using it as as sports and I can
37:30
go, Hey, you know what? I'm not able.
37:32
I I find them struggling with this thing.
37:35
Can you help me? But in the business world, for
37:39
whatever reason, it seems like sales reps have a hard time
37:43
being like, hey, you know what? I need some help.
37:45
Hey, Andrew, you know what? My discovery, I haven't my, my,
37:50
my conversion rate from discovery to demo has actually
37:53
dropped. And I can't figure out why I
37:56
don't, I don't understand the resistance from sales teams or
38:00
sales reps or even people inside of it in the business world to
38:04
raise their hand and say, I have troubles and can you help me
38:07
internally? But what they will do is they'll
38:09
talk to friends and be like, yeah, you know what?
38:10
I'm, I'm struggling here. Or they'll go and get a mentor
38:13
who's not as integrated into their company.
38:16
Now there's positives, there's pros and cons to both.
38:20
How did you? And so maybe I'll ask you is
38:22
like, how did you create that, that experience?
38:24
And I, I think I'm sort of pulling this all together, but
38:28
you created and what it sounds like a great environment for
38:31
people to be able, comfortable and go, hey, you know what,
38:35
Andrew? Or hey, you know what, my team
38:37
is struggling here. Or hey, could you help here?
38:39
How did you create that culture across the team?
38:43
Yeah, You know what? I, I'm, I'm actually going, I'm
38:45
not going to take credit for that.
38:47
I will credit Mark Roberge. I will credit the early sales
38:52
leadership team and HubSpot people like Dan Tire, Brian
38:55
Thorne, Heidi Carlson, Catherine Durham, so on and so forth.
38:59
Pete Caputa, We had established one of the most, I would say,
39:07
unique sales cultures in my experience in that it was not
39:10
internally competitive because that's the thing I think that
39:14
actually creates the phenomenon that you're talking about.
39:18
We managed to create an environment where everybody on
39:23
the sales team wanted everybody else to succeed.
39:26
And even though I might have been the top of the chart, I am
39:29
very willing to share with somebody else how I got there.
39:32
Most sales organizations are not like that.
39:35
A lot of salespeople are like, I'm not sharing my secret sauce
39:38
with you. And it might not be really, you
39:40
know, as direct about it, but they're really not going to do
39:44
that. And when you have that
39:45
internally competitive environment, that's where reps
39:48
get really reluctant to raise their hand and say, I don't know
39:51
what I'm doing. So like, I coached literally, I
39:55
don't know, probably well over 1000 people over my career at
39:59
HubSpot who would do exactly that.
40:02
Exactly that. And part of it was I was their
40:04
trainer, I taught them how to sell HubSpot and I actively got
40:09
on calls with them when they were ramping up and you know,
40:12
was helping them get acclimated to that.
40:14
And you know, I would meet with them.
40:17
We and we we keep working on it. Another thing we did too is like
40:20
we always listen to game tape. We always listen to to
40:24
recordings to try and get better.
40:27
And of course now every organization has gone like, as
40:30
an example, you know, when we adopted that, there was no push
40:35
back at all. Like some organizations, it can
40:38
be really a hard thing because the sales people like, oh, now
40:41
we're bringing in, you know, surveillance and all that stuff.
40:44
We've listened to each other's calls from the very beginning.
40:47
Like when I first got there, I've never really experienced
40:50
that. I was shocked by it.
40:51
I'm like, oh, this is different. I remember sitting in the first
40:55
one, it was like, I think at that point we might have had
40:58
like 20 sales reps and we'd all get together and we'd listen to
41:02
a call and we'd have somebody who was designated to give, you
41:05
know, the positives, like what's going well here, Like, let's
41:08
call that out. And somebody else who'd then
41:10
call out the stuff that we could adjust.
41:13
And we'd have a really open, very vulnerable discussion about
41:17
all that. And everybody was really willing
41:19
to do it. And we just baked that in from
41:22
the very beginning and we just kept it all the way along until
41:27
we got up to like, I don't know, 8-9 hundred reps, but that still
41:31
was a thing. Like everybody listened all the
41:33
time and everybody was willing to talk about the things that
41:40
were they were bumping into or running into challenges with.
41:43
There was, there was No Fear of exposing where I might be, you
41:49
know, running into issues in whatever stage of my process I
41:53
might be running into it, whether it's, you know, my, my
41:57
discovery to demo conversion rates off or I'm just not
42:00
getting the right commitments coming out of discovery, or I'm
42:03
just not asking for the order the way I need to.
42:05
Like whatever it was. That was a very cultural thing.
42:11
I, I played a role in it. I contributed to it, but I have
42:15
to give credit where credit is due.
42:16
Like that was a a very core HubSpot thing and we maintained
42:21
it as leadership shifts occurred in the sales organization over
42:26
time, as they often do. That's awesome.
42:27
I, I think Mark wrote in the sales acceleration, I want to
42:30
say it was Friday night at Friday at 5:00.
42:33
I want to say it was the, the game tape.
42:34
There was a, there was a day specifically that you called it
42:37
out and, and it was like somebody was in, in the hot
42:39
seat. OK, great.
42:40
You're in the hot seat. Let's go.
42:41
Let's learn from each other. Yeah.
42:44
And I was responsible running those for years, like I was the
42:46
guy that ran that. Yeah, that's so cool.
42:51
I Andrew, I just realized we're 40 something minutes in and I
42:55
said I'd get you out of here in an hour, so I apologize.
42:57
We've gone long. Not.
42:58
A problem. I it's been, I'm very passionate
43:01
about this. Stuff and it's been so much fun
43:02
because I've I'm, I'm learning. I've got a whole page of notes.
43:05
I'm actually on my second page already.
43:06
But as we maybe transition to get you out of here, I don't
43:11
want to, I don't want you to be late for your next thing.
43:14
As I, as I like to ask everybody towards the very end, I say, you
43:17
know, everybody likes new and nobody likes different.
43:19
And when you do both at the same time, it can cause friction or
43:22
uncertainty. So for somebody who's either
43:24
building their sales enablement function or they're looking at I
43:27
need to up level my sales enablement or my enablement
43:30
function across my company. What are two or three actionable
43:33
things that you would say go do this on Monday and it will help
43:37
you increase or get to a better level of productivity?
43:41
Sure. The first thing I would say is
43:43
you need to absolutely clearly define enablement and get by
43:48
into that definition for your organization.
43:51
Like what do we actually mean by enablement?
43:53
What's what's in it and what's outside of the scope of it?
43:57
Let's just define that whole thing, right?
44:00
That's that is step one in my opinion.
44:03
And once that's defined, then you need to start thinking
44:07
about, all right, what are the outcomes that we are trying to
44:10
drive, right. And you know, that might be
44:14
we're trying to reduce ramp time of reps that are brand new in
44:18
the sea. We're trying to ensure that
44:21
whenever a change occurs, we have the highest uptake rate
44:25
with the least amount of friction possible, right?
44:30
You know, we want to be in a position where, you know, if we
44:36
need, if a new product rolls out, we have all the things in
44:39
place to get adoption of that and movement into the market as
44:43
quick as possible. Whatever those outcomes are, and
44:46
there's not going to be a ton of them.
44:48
It's probably somewhere between 3-5, maybe 7 tops.
44:52
Like what are those key outcomes that ultimately end up shaping
44:57
the charter of the enablement organization?
44:59
This is what we are responsible for.
45:01
We're responsible for driving these outcomes and then you need
45:05
to back, you want to back into it.
45:07
This is the mistake a lot of people make is they go, oh, we
45:10
need to change this thing. I guess we need training.
45:12
Let's start building stuff, right?
45:15
You need to think backwards. You need to go, OK, what are we
45:18
trying to accomplish here? Great.
45:20
Well, how do we measure this accomplishment to know that we
45:23
actually got there? What are the indicators we're
45:25
going to look at that are early and that are lagging to know
45:28
that we actually made the change we need to make?
45:32
Great. If this is something that you
45:34
know, is that that change is defined and we're defining how
45:39
we're going to measure it, well, what are the things that we need
45:42
to do to order to be able to make that measurement occur?
45:45
Let's say that measurement is a test, like I'm going to be
45:48
testing reps to make sure that they know this thing, or I'm
45:51
going to be running a certification to make sure that
45:53
they can speak through this the right way.
45:55
Well, great. Like if we know that's the
45:57
measurement, how do we give opportunity to actually
46:00
practice, engage so that they can pass the test?
46:03
And then how do we actually get them to acquire the knowledge
46:06
and skill necessary to be able to practice in whatever practice
46:09
is necessary to pass the test? I need to back into this.
46:15
Those are my three most important things is define it,
46:18
understand what you're you're overarching like objectives are
46:23
the things you're tasked with accomplishing and then figure
46:26
out what are the outcomes from any given an initiative we're
46:29
going to do and how do I back into that?
46:31
By understanding this is what we want to accomplish.
46:33
This is how we can measure it. This is how we can set up to
46:36
ensure we have the right activities so that we can
46:38
measure like what is that measurement?
46:40
How do we get people to practice to be able to pass that
46:42
measurement or execute in a way that passes that measurement?
46:45
And then we need to give them to be able to do that thing, to be
46:48
able to make that measurement work so we know that it worked.
46:52
Amazing it is. This has been effectively a
46:55
master class today. For those people listening,
46:59
Andrew just gave you all the insights.
47:02
This is amazing. I had a lot of fun.
47:04
Glad you found it valuable. Well, if you can't tell, I, I,
47:07
I'm a little bit passionate about this area as well.
47:09
And I think we could have talked for a lot longer.
47:11
So I'm trying, I've been trying to like calm myself of asking
47:14
too many questions. But on that, if somebody does
47:18
say, hey, I'd like to know a little bit more, Andrew, where
47:21
could people maybe look to connect or follow?
47:23
What's the best way? LinkedIn is the best spot.
47:28
OK, like most people, LinkedIn is a spot to go and he shares
47:31
some amazing stuff too. So if you get a chance, Andrea,
47:36
I, we've only had one chance to speak and it was short.
47:40
We ran out of time quickly. It's so highly engaging.
47:45
You have such a passion for it and it comes across and I very
47:48
much have enjoyed the conversation with you.
47:52
You know, we've never met before, but if I get a chance to
47:55
meet you in person, it would be amazing.
47:57
But I very much have appreciated this.
47:59
I appreciate your time doing this and, you know, sharing a
48:02
little bit of the insights because this is a world that I
48:05
think, like you said, it's misunderstood.
48:07
And if we don't get it right, it could either put us, it can.
48:11
If we get it right, it'll take us down a great path.
48:13
If we don't get it right, it's going to take you a lot longer
48:15
to get there and. Likewise, it's been a delight,
48:18
Carl, and I genuinely appreciate you giving voice to this stuff.
48:23
It's a misunderstood discipline and it needs voices out there,
48:27
so I appreciate you doing that. It's you're, you're too kind,
48:30
Sir. Thank you for doing this.
48:32
That's going to wrap up another episode of the Revenue Problem
48:35
Solvers podcast. Obviously, I want to say thank
48:37
you to Andrew for sharing the incredibly invaluable insights
48:40
today. There's some strategy you can
48:41
put into action. Remember, success leaves clues
48:44
and every revenue problem has a solution.
48:46
Sometimes you just need the right conversation to find it.
48:49
Until next time, it's Carl with the Revenue Problem Solvers
48:52
helping turn your obstacles into opportunities.
48:54
Thank you for investing your time with us today.
48:55
See you in the next episode.