Sales Management Podcast
Cory Bray, 8x author and co-founder of CoachCRM, digs into hot sales management topics.
Sales Management Podcast
92. Can You Succeed in Sales Enablement Without a Sales Background? with Mike Kavanagh
Does someone need to come from sales to be good at sales enablement? Buckle up for this debate and get ready to draw your own conclusions!
Welcome to the Sales Management Podcast, your source for actionable sales management strategies and tactics. I'm your host, coach, crm co-founder, corey Gray. No long intros, no long ads, let's go. We've got another debate style format podcast and there's going to be two of these episodes, so if you listen to one, you're going to listen to the other. We've got Mike Cavanaugh, who is the VP of SMB sales over at OneTrust, and we're going to first talk about should sales enablement? Folks come from a sales background. Mike, how are you?
Speaker 2:I'm great, I'm excited to be on and talk about this. I think you seem passionate about this topic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so give me so. Should sales nail on people come from sales, yes or no, and why?
Speaker 2:A hundred percent. A hundred percent You're. It's like I'm not. I'm trying to get better at golf. Right now. I want to take lessons from someone who plays golf, who knows how to play golf better than I do. Right, that's the goal. I'm not going to go take lessons from someone who doesn't play golf. I think the same applies for sales. Salespeople aren't going to take people who haven't been salespeople seriously as a coach or a mentor. You know a lot, you'll. They'll quickly say oh, what do they know? They've never done it Right, and I think in sales that is. That is a fact. No, unless you've sat in a seat, carried the bag, you know, don't, don't. Don't claim to know or tell people how to do it. You know, don't claim to know or tell people how to do it.
Speaker 1:Okay, so debate style, I'm going to take the counterpoint of that. I don't think that sales enablement folks have to come from a sales background. It doesn't hurt if they also fit all the criteria that I'm going to outline. But my first question for you is Bryson DeChambeau won the US Open this year. Who is his golf coach? And we might not know his name, but has his golf coach won a U S open?
Speaker 2:All right, fair, fair. But he probably has different coaches for different parts of his game and those coaches represent expert parts of that swing. So maybe they they don't have the collective skill that Bryson does, right, but he's able to pull those skills together from people who've done those skills better. He recognizes they're better. So I would say, yeah, they might not have won a U S open, but they probably have a better drive or some other skill that he recognized he didn't have.
Speaker 1:So in a coaching conversation, you play golf, so we can use this as an analogy. Yeah, okay. So if you're out there playing golf and you're bending your left arm or you're moving your head, let's say that you're bending your left arm. You're not supposed to bend your left arm. Some people bend their left.
Speaker 2:Some people there's so many things wrong with my golf swing. You could say anything and you'd be. You'd be accurate here.
Speaker 1:All right, so you're bending your left arm. Now let's let's imagine for a second that somebody that watches golf all day, every day Thursday, friday, saturday and Sunday throughout the year looks at you and says, hey, man, you're bending your left arm. Are you going to immediately recognize that, yeah, I'm slicing that thing? It would be three out of every four holes. Last coaching session I had, they told me I was bent on my left arm. Where are you going to ask the guy oh yeah, what's your handicap? And then I'll decide if I'm going to take you seriously or not?
Speaker 2:Ooh, I'm kind of a smart ass. So I might be like what's your handicap first? But no, I mean again, I think it's as a a somebody who's trying to get better at something I would recognize if they're calling out something I've heard from other people. Yeah, I would definitely take that feedback. I would definitely listen to that feedback. Um, and I'm assuming if they're seeing me swing, they're out on the golf course, they're probably a golfer, so I'm not that good.
Speaker 1:Anybody's better than me at this point so I'm okay with that I'd love to play you in golf and see who's more okay that could be be fun.
Speaker 2:I mean, I played with my friends to have fun and have a couple of cold beers. That's really it.
Speaker 1:I love it, get a couple of good shots, things that you remember Exactly, exactly, okay. So I think one of the challenges with this enablement conversation is that people often conflate experience for expertise, and you don't necessarily have to have experience. I'll tell you another. We're talking sports analogies today. The people that listen to this. They don't cancel people for sports analogies because they want to get better. They want to get professionally developed. I don't remember who it was, but it was a defensive player in the NFL and somebody asked him about watching game film. He said man, I don't watch game film, I just play Madden.
Speaker 2:I've somebody asked him about watching game film and he said man, I don't watch game film, I just play madden. Um, you know, I've never been a running back in the nfl. Um, I'm not sure it's the exact I I would have to defer to them. I have some friends who play college football. I'll ask them when I see him this weekend. I can't imagine that's the same. Like, yeah, you can run the route, it's not the same, it's a silly but it's.
Speaker 1:But it is a thing that a guy actually does Right, and so what his point was he's like I know who's fast, I know what, what defenses or what, what offenses they play, cause he was a defensive player. So I'm not I'm not hanging my whole argument on that. My point is that you can develop expertise in different ways. And then one thing I want to touch on, and then I'll give you a chance to hammer me with this that I think when you look at sales enablement, the two skill sets that are most critical are analytical skills, so they can diagnose and prioritize problems and opportunities, and project management skills, so they can take something, create something, implement something and make it continuously work over time and not have a flash in the pan that gets half-baked or that doesn't even get done. So I think the analytical skills and the project management skills, from an enablement perspective, are the most important things, and you can layer the subject matter expertise on top of that.
Speaker 2:I'm not going to hammer you. I agree on both of those. I think analytical skills are critical, right, like, if you're doing running enablement for a large organization or even a smaller organization, you got to start with the data. What's the core problem? We're not advancing from stage two to stage three. We're not. You know, we're having too many pushes. All those things factor in. So looking at the data, understanding the data, is critical. So that's how you identify. Okay, where do we need to put enablement sessions together? Project management Absolutely, because you've got to pull together a bunch of different. You're probably pulling in maybe product teams, bdr teams, leadership, so corralling that group of individuals is no easy task. What I'll say, though, are these are all skills that a good salesperson should also have.
Speaker 2:I sold into the enterprise for a long time, and I tell people all the time selling to enterprise often getting the business to buy into the idea is not the problem. It's hurting the cats, the IT, the procurement, the legal that takes the majority of the time. So a good salesperson is a good project manager. They help keep the project going forward. So I think there's a skill that overlaps very well.
Speaker 2:Depending on what you're selling, you may develop some of those analytical skills as a salesperson, depending on how data intensive the product is. But yeah, I think those are two core skills. But when you get in front of salespeople and regardless of what point they're in their career the veteran enterprise AE or the AE who's two months out of being a BDR they want to. They need to hear from people who've been in the trenches, who've done the job like they have. If they see an enable person who's never been in sales, tell them well, here's how you should run a discovery call. They've never been hung up on, they've never been like been laughed out of a room, and immediately that credibility is kind of lost.
Speaker 1:Okay, we're gonna dig into this, we're gonna dig in this. So two things. So what I heard from you is somebody who is a successful enterprise seller, especially over time, will develop those project management skills. I project management skills, I agree with that, and I also heard from you that will people develop analytical skills in a sales?
Speaker 2:career Maybe, maybe not.
Speaker 1:It's unclear. Yeah, some, some will, some won't, right, okay, so I'm not asking you this question as you personally. Just broadly in the world, how much money does a good, seasoned enterprise account executive make?
Speaker 2:I have friends three to 400,000 and a good year. You know there are still those. There are those A's that are still having million dollar years out there in enterprise.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so 300K to a million bucks, how much does a sales enable manager make?
Speaker 2:150 or 100. Okay, so why would someone?
Speaker 1:who's good at enterprise sales that can predictably.
Speaker 2:They would never leave. You're right. That's the problem. You're not going to do it.
Speaker 1:So then, who takes the job? Not the person who's crushing enterprise sales and is great at project management, like you said. Who takes a $125K job when they could be doing arguably less work, with less stress, with less involvement, less management, less headaches and making three times as much money.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're likely not going to get the folks at the top end of the enterprise to go into enablement unless they suddenly decide they no longer like money and all that.
Speaker 1:And some of them do so. There's some amazing people out there that I've worked with that are later in their careers and they say look, this is what I want to do and y'all know who you are and I love you yeah.
Speaker 2:It gets to a point. I think the people I'd love to see step more into enablement are the seasoned sales managers, the seasoned second line leaders who have helped coach and develop AEs, who've seen AEs get promoted, who've helped AEs from BER roles into promotions. Because they clearly have that A, they have the skill, they have the capabilities, they have the credibility and I think a sales manager they're gonna have those analytical skills they need right. If you're a first line manager, you're looking at your pipeline. How much pipeline am I creating? How much am I closing? Who's not making enough, right?
Speaker 2:So I think in my ideal world, if I was, if I was looking for an enablement person, I'd love to see somebody who went from an AE to an FLM and and now is looking for a little bit of a change. Maybe they want to, maybe they want to advance in their career. Yeah, that's the problem and I think that's where organizations need to change a little bit. They need to look at enablement not just as a cost center. A strong enablement team with the right 10%, they can move five of those people who are maybe your B players into A players. There is value there, right, there is tremendous value there and we should pay accordingly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I think that's. If you're talking about a person, I agree with you. The challenge then becomes okay, now I need four people, and we can argue over why they need four people. So then we start looking at models like how do management consulting firms work? They just go hire the smartest people they possibly can, and there's one person at the top that works on three or four projects, and then the people at the bottom are just really smart people that work a lot.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they don't have any subject matter expertise or credibility, but they're going to the CEO because a they're spending so much time in the business, they're learning it inside and out, they're experts at financial analysis and all these types of things, and so that's. That's where I'm coming from with my point, which is you have the analytical and project management skills. The person at the top that's overall in charge absolutely has to either yeah, so.
Speaker 2:So that's fair, and I think it depends on the model too, like who's you know, maybe you have people that facilitate and then you have people who do the the actual delivery. I personally believe the delivery needs to come from.
Speaker 1:We're talking sales training at this point, like in the in the room in the room up on the stage doing role plays.
Speaker 2:Getting people, you know, energized, that needs to needs to plays. Getting people, you know, energized, that needs to come from people who've been in the seat. Now, you know I recently was with Zendesk. We did a lot of enablement. We had, you know, I was managing SMB. I like to quote unquote call them the kids. They're young people looking to learn, looking to develop, and we worked very well with our enablement team and they would help, you know, put the content together, you know calendar scheduling, all that and then FLMs second line leaders, heads of sales would step in to deliver the content because we could answer the questions and there was immediate credibility with the AEs.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Well, and then one of the things that creates a lack of credibility with the AEs is if a company doesn't have a real sales methodology, and it's one of these we do a little bit of this and a little bit of that, a little bit of this then there's no consistency around what it is and people are working off of their opinions rather than a system that they agree on.
Speaker 2:Well, and here's the methodology thing. So I've done Sandler, I've done Challenger, I've done every one of them under the sun.
Speaker 1:You haven't come over to the light side of triangle selling yet. You're right.
Speaker 2:And you know what. We'll have to have a whole separate conversation about that. But what I think the challenge I have is if you try and apply Sandler or Challenger or some of these ones to, they work great in upmarket and enterprise, but if you try and do them in SMB, they don't work as well, and that's somewhat of the problem when you try and put these big models on these deals that operate very differently. So I think that's part of it. Companies need to be a little less rigid. Okay, well, in enterprise we're going to use this. Maybe in SMB we need something different and structure those deals differently and how we coach differently, because the sales cycles are completely different, the sales motions are different.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I didn't say no ads, I said no long ads. If anybody out there is struggling with the sales methodology average deal size 5,000 to 100,000, send me a note. Free stuff at coachcrmcom. Free stuff at coachcrmcom. We've got something to show you, so. So yeah, I mean that's. That's the issue. If if you're not speaking a common language, then no training makes sense. Imagine going to a class and the class was language, and the teacher sets up and speaks German on Monday and Japanese on Tuesday.
Speaker 2:Everybody's going to be frustrated. And then you know and I'll take it a step further Right, like what enablement does has to support not just what sales is doing but what product marketing is doing. And marketing is doing Like, it has to be universal. How the company goes and presents the solution, from the very top of the funnel to the end, has to be the same, has to be consistent. And you can tell when companies there's a disconnect because like one side's trying to solution one trying to do something else, it goes sideways really quickly.
Speaker 1:That's why your sales methodology has to be consistent, from sales to customer success and product marketing. All these things A hundred percent. And if product marketing says hey, I'm going to give you an eight-page feature brief and the sales development manager says I need you to find one of these five pain points, and the sales manager says I need you to finish this mutual action plan, then how does that API connection work with the humans?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think and again, enablement probably is that it needs to play a bigger role in. Okay, how does this translate into how we're coaching all of these different teams, right? How are we making sure that this is consistent? And that's to your point, and I'll concede this one they have to have the project management skills and not every salesperson has that, but they need the project management skills, because it will be like herding cats.
Speaker 1:Exactly, and the analytical skills to really diagnose and simplify. It's not just anybody can come up with a problem definition, but can you come up with the simplest effective problem?
Speaker 2:Can you make it consumable? And and then, and not just like, okay, here's the problem. But hey, here's the two, the two or three bullet points that we're going to, we're going to do and to address these issues. And then here's how we're going to measure success, and I think that's the. That's probably the piece I see missed the most is we do the enablement but we don't have a way to to measure the outcome or the success of that enablement, and that's tough.
Speaker 1:Well, that's, that's analytics again. So we did this thing. What is that going to impact? So we diagnosed the problem that in 30% of our calls we don't even ask for next steps and following 40% of our calls, we don't have next steps calendared and all these things are still in pipeline, they're not disqualified. So we might do training on disqualifying deals, time management, and so we can actually block that time off for asking for next steps, how to ask for next steps and what the next steps could be. Which believes in sales process? So there's four little mini trainings that might be involved in one session and then being smart enough to know. Well, if we do that, what's the impact going to be on deal velocity? What's the impact going to be on win rate, deal size, ability to engage other stakeholders, like that's the type of thing that I want the enablement person to be focused on, not telling uncle rico stories or one time at band camp.
Speaker 2:Here's how I sold it back in the day I I do think there is a part of like and then you and you know I've I've worked with a lot of the companies like sometimes they there's too much of the stories right.
Speaker 2:we got to get to the meat, like the actual okay, here's what we're. Okay, here's what we're here to do, here's what we're going to do, we're going to do it. And then you know, here's what we expect the outcome to be and we're going to measure you against it. Right, that's, that's the biggest thing and it's great. Call tools like gong and chorus and all these conversation tools are great. They help. I think they do help with that, but it still needs to be enforced at the AE, the FLM, the second line leader role and so forth.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I love it.
Speaker 1:Fun conversation man.
Speaker 2:No, I really enjoy this. I think a lot of lately there's been a lot of doom and gloom about sales. It got hard, it's been tougher. People aren't even quoted. I served my sales career in the financial crisis. It wasn't easy, it wasn't necessarily that much fun, but it made us better salespeople and I think we're in that kind of same phase, Like we gotta double down. We gotta get back to being consultative salespeople and understanding the business problem. Not the technical problems we'll get there but like what's going on in business that they're taking time out of their day to get on the phone and address these issues Exactly, man, one of the best diagnostic questions I like to ask.
Speaker 1:If I'm in front of a team, I say all right, put your hand up if you know one customer story, Two, three, four, five.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And they start falling so fast.
Speaker 2:It drops real quick, right? They all have one story that they know, and that's it right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and they try to fit that square peg in a round hole every time. I love it, I love asking them. I'm like does anybody know what mitochondria is? And they're like, yeah, it's a powerhouse to sell what's photosynthesis? I was like y'all know what? Mitochondria and photosynthesis are, but you know project management does who knows what, who does what? Yeah, do they know what they need to know? Do they do what they need to do and are they actively doing it? Do they have a supportive mindset that helps drive them towards getting better?
Speaker 2:well, and I think this one of my favorite questions asked when I get on deal reviews with a's right is like who signed the contract and? And I get three different answers or I don't know, but it's you know, we're getting there.
Speaker 1:Like you really don't know yet.
Speaker 2:So you know, this deal isn't anywhere close to the finish line, but they've got it in commit and it's closing this week. I'm like, nah, I'm going to say I don't think so yet. So yeah, it's.
Speaker 1:Because they think if they don't have anything in commit, then you're going to ask them that question. So they're stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't, they don't realize. I'll find some question that, like I'm going to keep. I'm just going to keep peeling it back until until we get to what's really going on in the business.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, ok, well, that was my. That was my point I was trying to make is that.
Speaker 2:I will concede there are more skills than just being a good salesperson to be a good sales enabler, but I still think you need to have a. You got to have a little credibility with the, with the folks you're teaching.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's dig into that a little bit more. Okay, I believe that you can build credibility with people through expertise, absent experience. So if I know something really well, okay, okay, we're doing silly examples. Remember that guy that used to be on ESPN I think his name was a Swami that just knew everything about sports yes, like he never played sports. But if you're going to ask somebody about sports, it's like that dude has so much credibility from a knowledge perspective and I think from a knowledge perspective. And that's yeah.
Speaker 2:And you can say the same of a sales officer, like if they know the data of the business. That's an invaluable skill. That's, you need to understand the data and what's going on in the business. It's the practical application of how to do it, I think, where someone who knows the business, has listened to calls and who has diagnosed and looked at the data and said, okay, here's the problem, we're not securing next steps to your example. Right, we're not getting next steps. And they say, well, why? And they say here's what you need to do to get next steps.
Speaker 2:They've never been on a. It's hard for them to say with conviction how to do it, or believable, because they haven't been on a. It's hard for them to say with you know with conviction how to do it. Or believable, because they haven't been on a sales call where you know the call starts late, the cameras aren't working, people need to jump to an X meeting and they need to leave five minutes early. They don't understand those nuances that go on in the real world. And right, what happens in the classroom and what happens in real life are two very different things. I'll give you this example.
Speaker 2:I started my career at AT&T and I I I made fun of it early in my career. Now I really appreciate what they did for me. They sent me, they took young people out of college. I was a few years out of college. They they hired us. They moved us to Atlanta for six months. They put us up in corporate housing. It was like summer camp for kids. It was a great time and they spent six months. They invested, they taught us the technology, the sales methodology, how to process orders all this great stuff. But my real learning, the real like the, the salesmanship came when I got into the field and I was buddied up with it. Some guy who'd been doing it for five, 10, 15, 20 years and he showed me okay, yeah, that's how they, you're supposed, they tell you to do it, but here's how we were, like how it actually gets done. And there's the difference, right, the stuff I learned was great and I used it, but there's still an element that I had to learn from people who had been out there in the trenches.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love it. So I agree with everything that you're saying. Two challenges Okay, debates are fun, right. So what if that individual human didn't have that specific experience? So that's one thing.
Speaker 2:Fair. Yeah, I mean, if they, I guess. So to that argument, that person was paired up with me because they had this. They had that experience that I didn't have yet, right as a young 24, 23, 24 year old a. This was a person who had been a successful salesperson for many years. He didn't know how to use the systems. I showed him that stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I got the knowledge of like hey, how do you, how do you do a customer on site? Right, how do you, how do you do a customer on site? Right, how do you, how do you? You know, how do you get a contracts? How do you ask for the contract? Right, which seems crazy. Like you just ask people to sign a contract but, as a new, a web behind the ears, ae, like you're like, I'm handing over a piece of paper and asking you to sign for $10 million, right, that's insane, right?
Speaker 1:So you have to like see it in action, right? I think that's well the cool. The cool thing with the car recording software is now is now you can take little snippets of all that stuff and bring it to action. And I know nobody can see this, I'm just going to share my screen.
Speaker 1:So one of the things that we really believe with sales methodology is like have the edge cases and scenarios.
Speaker 1:So if anybody wants to take a look at the triangle selling field guide free stuff at coach crmcom, free stuff at coachcrmcom, free stuff at coachcrmcom.
Speaker 1:So basically, three years after we created triangle selling, we said, okay, let's take every scenario and every edge case that we see, not one time, but like pop up from now and then and let's describe how do you apply the methodology. You know you mentioned surprise attendees, or they don't let you ask questions or they want to skip steps in the process. Let's take all of those things and just say here's how you apply the methodology to it and then take a step further. Hey, client, if you want to take these scenarios, let's build out your own scenarios that you see that are industry-specific, product-specific, whatever. That's sales enablement and that's wild that companies don't do it because the folks in the seat don't have the in-depth analytical and project management skills to the point where they would. So I would triple down on what I'm saying and get them doing something like this and support it with subject matter experts, recordings technology and the ability to pull information out of people's heads.
Speaker 2:That's, that's my well, I I mean the call recording software. You know I've introduced it, a couple of companies, I've had it taken away which I don't understand.
Speaker 2:You know boggles my mind but that's gross. Yeah, tail wagging dog. Yeah, uh, it wasn't even a whole other separate situation. But, um, you know the the analogy I give people. You know a lot of a's get nervous like, oh, it's big brother, they're watching me. Whatever, it's not big brother.
Speaker 2:I I don't listen to your calls to critique you. I'm listening to coach you and, honestly, if I were an ae, if I had that now, don't listen to your calls to critique you. I'm listening to coach you and, honestly, if I were an AE, if I had that now, I would listen to my calls to get better. Football players watch game tape right. That's how you get better. I used to watch tape of my baseball swing. I go to golf lessons and they got the whole video monitor and I begrudgingly watched my terrible follow through on swings Right. So these tools are there to help and I, I think, this next generation of salespeople. The more they embrace these things and look to and they have to have the learner's mindset they embrace these things the faster they will get better.
Speaker 1:Love it. All right, mike, we're going to do part two in a second, but all right, recording anything you want to plug. Mike, we're going to do part two in a second, but all right.
Speaker 2:Recording anything you want to plug Uh, not yet. I, I'm, I'm, I'm good for right now, but I am going to you and I are going to have a separate conversation about triangle selling. Now I'm kind of interested. I've never, I, we, I, I am. I am now genuinely curious because that sheet, like I've never seen one, put a comprehensive list of if this, do this.
Speaker 1:That's how sales methodology is. You know why. You know why Because I'm not going to name them, but you know who the companies are. They want a million dollars to go put a bunch of gray haired people on site and so they can charge a million dollars and get that money If this stuff's out of the box. Exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, they, they gotta, they gotta run up their hours and they add the hours by old war stories.
Speaker 1:So that's and we don't charge hourly. And if you look at my, if you look at any, I've written eight books on Amazon. If you look at the books, they're under open source publishing because we're not charging for the content, we're charging for the help applying the content. Thank you so much. We'll talk to you soon. And just for everybody else out there, I didn't invite my, I don't even think I invited you on here. I think you asked to be on here from my point of view.
Speaker 2:Oh no, you threw this topic out there and I raised my hand because I think this is really important.
Speaker 1:Just being clear. I'm not using this podcast for prospecting. But hey, if we can help each other, that's cool. All right, we'll see you next time on the Sales Management Podcast. Bye.