Sales Management Podcast
Cory Bray, 8x author and co-founder of CoachCRM, digs into hot sales management topics.
Sales Management Podcast
89. Making Enablement Actually Work with Mutual Accountability with Sheevaun Thatcher
An overlooked pre-requisite of a great sales enablement program is mutual accountability --- up and down the chain. Without it, the ability to hit goals is at risk, and the whole program might fall apart. Join us as Sheevaun and Cory to dig into this topic and provide actionable takeaways.
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. Another awesome enablement session today with one of my favorite people. Siobhan Thatcher and I have known each other for what? Seven years or so At least yeah.
Speaker 1:At least seven years, and we're going to talk about something pretty fun, pretty advanced, and it's going to be something you might be able to take away and go implement in your business today. It's not going to be easy, but it's absolutely critical. Siobhan, how are you doing?
Speaker 2:I'm doing great, corey, it's great to see you.
Speaker 1:Absolutely All right. So we're going to talk about, when it comes to sales, enablement inside of business, creating accountability up and down the chain and being able to hold those senior executives accountable to their commitments that they made to the enablement program. Why is that so important?
Speaker 2:It doesn't matter how much investment you get in enablement, if you have the best people, if you have the best programs. If they are not executed on, it doesn't matter. And so it is critical that when not only when these programs are being considered and I'll talk about those in a minute. Right, the five questions that get asked say whether or not we even do them. But once they're agreed upon, it has to be executed through that chain of command, through the sales chain of command, which starts with the CRO and even the CEO, the person above. And it is that chain of command that says I take accountability to ensure these programs are executed on, because it's going to impact what our sales look like, it's going to impact revenue and the enablement team are not the ones that go out and close the business.
Speaker 2:Doesn't mean we couldn't Believe me. There's enough talent with a lot of people. I know that they could actually do it. We chose to do what we're doing for whatever the reasons were, but the execution of those programs has to rely. And that accountability is critical because we've all agreed that for the strategy and to implement go-to-market strategy and how the company is going to go forward, and the accountability and the outcomes, these programs need to be run, and so that's-.
Speaker 1:Long-term. They need to be run consistently. It can't just be something we did in Q4 2024. And then we moved on to the next shiny object right.
Speaker 2:Exactly. It's not a one and done. Anytime I hear somebody go, I'm going to do it one time, it'd be great. It's like, no, that's not how the human brain works, right, you've got to do it over and over and over again. There's the forgetting curve, there's all I mean. There's millions and millions of pages of studies that show that, unless it is repeated and practiced and held accountable in some fashion, where you are accountable to someone else, when you're accountable to yourself, a lot of people have that level of motivation.
Speaker 2:I know, sometimes I don't, but being accountable to others is really, really important. And so being accountable to a business partner, which is what enablement should be, we are not a cost center, we are an investment for a company, we are the strategic partners. Enablement is the only group in the company that talks to everybody, and we do. We talk to everybody. We're like the hub of the wheel, right, we reach out with all those spokes, and so when there is so much misalignment in organizations, enablement are the ones that bring it together. So when we've worked with these sales leaders or whoever it is, it's customer facing. So I don't distinguish in conversations like this between acquisition and retention. We're all sellers, we're all selling the company we're helping our customers buy. So when those programs are put into place it is imperative that that accountability happens.
Speaker 2:It just is yeah and that's part of the role now. A lot of times it doesn't, because they're not compensated that way. And when people are doing work just based on compensation, that's where you come into a struggle, right? I replied to a Gartner thing the other day about what about if we make their compensation better? Will it increase their performance? I'm like no, Giving them a better compensation, 75% of zero is still zero. It's like what are you thinking about? Skills up? You got to get them to understand the process and be accountable to that and coach them. That's what's going to make a difference, not whether or not you add a couple more points on compensation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love it. Ok, so let's, let's look at this through a couple lenses. So I think that you let's just say, in terms of enablement, you're running out. You're rolling out a new program, you're rolling out something new. People are excited about it, oftentimes because they say, look, if I buy into this and if I go along with it, it's going to have a positive impact on me. Oftentimes, folks are excited Now, what changes is then? That the next thing comes up that may have something to do. It may be different. Maybe it's a product launch, maybe it's some kind of marketing initiative outside of what you just rolled out. And then the hard part starts happening, where people are promoted internally. So you might have new frontline managers, maybe people are brought in from the outside, you have a new sales VP.
Speaker 2:Just right, in those very few words.
Speaker 1:So talk to me a little bit about this, because we're not just looking at a snapshot in time, we're looking at a business that's going to change and evolve. How do we continuously drive that accountability upwards and downwards and make sure things stick?
Speaker 2:So a lot of it is what programs we all agree are the right things to do. So I mentioned the five questions. When someone comes to me whether it's one of my enablement people who wants to try something new, or it is my boss or it's somebody, doesn't matter when they come and say, hey, let's do this, I ask five questions, and they are how's it aligned with the go-to-market? Because if it's not aligned with go-to-market, I don't have anything to do with it. What is the priority of this among everything else? Right, so we're doing a lot of things already. What are you willing to either slow down or stop in order for this to get a higher priority? That usually sets them back on their heels a little bit.
Speaker 1:You got to leave their heels a question too. I love it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh yeah. It's a second question, right? Because it's like you know, are you willing to let your stuff get pushed to do this? And of course they're like well, no, we'll go push someone else's, I'm like no, and that's not how it works. And then the third one is how are we going to measure it, right, what is your hypothesis on outcome on this? And a lot of them haven't thought about that and they're like well, we want everybody to learn it. I said, that is not an outcome. That is not an outcome that matters to the go to market, that matters to me. I care about how many people go through the course and the average score, and you know all that other, you know all that other stuff. But sales leaders don't, right? What do they care about? Is productivity going up? Is attrition going down? Attrition both on customer side right for churn but attrition of sellers as well. And I would venture to say it costs more to replace sellers now than almost than it does for churn. For customer churn it is so expensive Anyway. So that's a third right, which is what are are you going to do and what is the outcome we're after? Right? How do you want to move the needle.
Speaker 2:Fourth one is what's the timing on this? So if they're like, well, it's going to have an impact in this quarter. Well, if it's a brand new, something that nobody's ever done, it's not going to have an impact in this quarter. Right, let's be realistic. So is it something we can do to manage deals that are already well along in the pipe? Yeah, let's look at it now. If it's going to affect next quarter, next year, put it on the board and determine where we can fit it in. But do I want to do it right now? No.
Speaker 2:And then the last one is what do you want the salespeople to do? And here's where I get a lot of people. I want them to learn it. I'm like that is not an answer. Of course you want them to learn it, but that doesn't help the company at all.
Speaker 2:What do you want them to physically do? Do you want to make them more calls? Do you want them to do multi-product sale? Do you want them to access more departments within an organization? What do you want them to do? Do you want them to talk to their customer's customer? I don't know, but what do you want them to do with this? And so it's those five questions. When those questions get answered appropriately then we determine where does this fit with everything else? And so by answering those five questions it sets up the accountability really nicely in a couple of ways. Number one enablement isn't just running around with their chickens, with their head cut off, doing whatever they're asked to do. It gives especially less experienced enablement folks the ability to say no politely and firmly. Right, gives them that because it's logical questions. And then the other thing it does is that if we all agree these are the programs to do, then it goes into the accountability bucket in a big way. These other programs to do then?
Speaker 2:it goes into the accountability bucket in a big way Right now to do. The second part of what you're talking about is how do we make sure that it gets executed? Well, that goes to the coaching of the sales managers, which is the second thing that you said. And, yeah, a lot of companies take their high performers, make them coaches and these and make them leader managers and they fail miserably. They never get trained. They'll get HR leadership coaching, which is important. Right, People sit, you have conversations. Well, how about how to have a conversation with your seller to assess their skill or maybe help them through the sales process? There's a concept right, Do this. And so once they get trained on how to be good coaches, then that again goes into the accountability bucket.
Speaker 2:Now here's an issue when a lot of people promote high performers, High performers are unconscious competence, right, there are things that you do, Corey, that I'll bet you don't even think about. They're just natural, they just happen. You and Hillman and other people, you just do them. There are things I do that I just do Not in all things by any stretch, but when you're an unconscious competent when it comes to high performance in sales and they make you a manager. How do you get that information out of your brain so that you can actually tell people what you do? You can't. That's why high performers have a tendency to fail, Because they do it so naturally, they don't know how to tell people what they do. So, instead, make the conscious confidence your managers. Keep the high performers out there doing their thing right. They are the ones that are going to keep the revenue coming in right. They're the ones that are going to keep everybody hopping. Make those conscious competence the ones who, yes, they're good managers and they know why they do what they do and they can tell people. And so that's the second piece of this. The third piece, of course, is that accountability piece. How do you make sure that they do it and that it's reinforced? A lot of that is making sure it's got the right priority, and everybody's agreed that this is the program. But it's also the measurement of the outcomes.
Speaker 2:If we are consistently looking at the data and it's something that enablement is now starting to do, but it's not something you see common it's looking at the real performance and attrition data whatever that is that makes sense to see what is happening with this program. Is it being applied? Are we seeing the needle move? Do we have enough data to see the needle move? Make a decision with the sales leader how many people or what revenue your expectations are Percentage increase or decrease in some cases. What are you looking for? Are we seeing it?
Speaker 2:If we're not seeing it, go back, evaluate what it is we're doing. Do we need reinforcement? Do we have a gap somewhere? I love going back after a program started and, 30 days in, ask people that are taking the training if you knew something now from 30, if you knew it 30 days ago, how would it have helped? Right, you can identify the gaps at that point and go, okay, that's probably not the same one from 30,. If you knew it 30 days ago, how would it have helped? Right, you can identify the gaps at that point and go, okay, that's probably not the same one. So a lot of it's just being curious, asking the questions is it working? Is it not working? Identify what is, proliferate it, identify what's not and stop it.
Speaker 1:The skillset and executive presence to execute on what you just outlined is pretty high. The requirements are pretty high.
Speaker 2:So it is. However, you only get it by doing it. I had somebody asked me well, how do I get gravitas? Well, you can't take the elevator.
Speaker 2:Not with questions like that because a lot of people in enablement are in service. We're used to saying yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, of course I'll do that. I want to do that. That is how I get my joy is by helping people. But you've got to help people on the right things. This is why the five critical, because it gives people who don't have the ability to say no outright A series of questions where they can not only practice this skill, but they're simple questions. Sometimes they have difficult answers, but they're simple questions they can come back with. That is how the skill is developed. The only reason I found the five questions and came up with them is because I had to do them and I discovered that. That's it. You know, this is why I am so free with giving out help and mentoring and, like you know, somebody comes to me and says, hey, I'm having this issue. You know I'm like, hey, try this Right.
Speaker 2:Because, I know what was coming up.
Speaker 1:It seems like there might be a culture shift needed in a lot of companies to work with the five questions, because often in sales organizations it's we need to hit the number, we need to hit the number, we need to hit the number. And, by the way, our fourth priority is we need to hit the number. And now we're sitting here saying, okay, well, let's be analytical about this. How's it line with go to market? What's the priority? How do we measure it? What's the timing and what do you want salespeople to do?
Speaker 1:That's a lot of stuff. That's not necessarily how do we hit the number? So how do we take somebody that's grown up in sales, that was doing prospecting and then sales and then frontline management and VP and other CRO and they've just known how do we hit the number and how do we get them? And I think it's a great career transformation for people at some point through that journey to start saying, okay, I'm not just a seller that's on a quarterly quota, I'm transforming into a business person, and it seems like that's what you're kind of guiding them to do.
Speaker 2:It's turning them into business people, right, and this is a major shift that we're seeing as well between you know, this is a product, that's sale, or it's a customer first lead sale. Right, that's a huge shift as well, and I know you and I are on the same page with that, and it is a change. It's a shift. Right. Most of sales leadership in their career have simply been taught. As you become a manager, your only question is show me every single account you're working on. Where is it and what's your pipeline look like? And what have you done for me lately, which is a horrible way to manage, right, this is why people leave companies. There was a study and I can't I can't attribute it back to where I saw it, but they asked for the top 25 motivators for salespeople, and do you know that money wasn't even the top 20? Do you know what? The number one coaching?
Speaker 1:Interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, coaching on skills. So how do you get them to do it? I'm fortunate in that I have experienced and case studies, use, cases that I can prove it. Maybe not at an organization, but the other thing, too, is that I'm very clear through the charter of what I say enablement will do and won't do that when programs are being, when you know, when companies bring me in, my whole thing is where are you right now? What are you doing? Are you doing any of these things? What's necessary in order to teach your people? And it starts at the top right conversation I had with an interview I had yesterday and was asking me well, what makes you different than anybody else I might be talking to? And I said I'm going to hold you accountable to make sure these.
Speaker 1:That's a fun thing to say in an interview. That's, that takes some gravitas.
Speaker 2:Well, it's because it's true, because if the CRO and that whole hierarchy do not support enablement, single person can bring it down. Single person can bring it down. One of the things I think you've seen I know you've seen this R2N4, responsible to not, for that's what that whole thing is about is just, we are partners. I'm not beholden to you. I'm not a peon that you sales leader say do this do that, do this, do that. The partnership that we have is, given my experience and given my understanding and given the fact that I hear everything in an organization that you do not, I can help go through these things with you and say this is what you think is happening. Here is what's really happening. How do I know this? I've talked to marketing, I've talked to PMM, I've talked to our customers. I've talked to our customers' customers. We've had these conversations and so we can come back with these leaders and say you think and you're being told and a lot of this is cultural, right, you're being told by your leaders that this is what's happening. That's not really what's happening.
Speaker 2:Like someone asked me once what kind of measures do you use? And I said well, I never trust quota attainment. They're like what do you mean you don't trust quota? I said you can change the quota by changing the model that I had a BDR leader years ago at the end of every quarter. If his BDRs weren't doing well, he changed the model and so when he presented his numbers they were all over quota when in fact they were not. I said I realized that number it's not fictitious but it's definitely modifiable on the fly and that's not what I'm right.
Speaker 1:Well, it's all. It's always market influence, because I think there's a lot of folks that are having a rude awakening here. In twenty twenty four, we're like I'm so good at sales because I got promoted to AE in twenty twenty and I hit my number for eight consecutive quarters. Cool bro, Good story you just got. You're taking money from Tiger Global through an entity and having it come to your entity because they blew $2 billion on silly investments.
Speaker 2:Like brace for impact kid, because it's coming.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, and so skills I think is ignored a lot when it comes to the sellers as well. We focus on where they are in the sales process and all of that. When I'm talking to leaders about how they do one-on-ones for example frontline managers I encourage the frontline managers to be very specific about what the one-on-one is about, right? Because here's how the typical one-on-one goes hey, corey, how you doing, how's family? What's going on, you and him and writing new books? Okay, great. So tell me about every single thing that's in your pipeline and why it's at the stage it's at. And you know what are you going to do to close it this quarter and where are you going to pull from places you hadn't expected to fill any gaps.
Speaker 1:So right, exactly. And, by the way, that comes one day after we had the team pipeline interview meeting where we just discussed the exact same thing.
Speaker 2:We discussed everything else. I love QBRs because the first person that gets to go gets four hours and everybody else gets one and a half minutes. Right, it's ridiculous, Like, don't do it that way. Anyway. So on one-on-ones, you focus on specific things. You have a pipeline one-on-one where that's what you focus on and the questions that you ask your seller are all around pipeline. You have a forecast one-on-one Questions you ask your seller are all around forecast. You have an account management. You have a territory planning right Now. They will vary during the year when you have them and how many you have, but the one that gets missed that, I would venture to say, is the most important is the skills one-on-one where that's all you talk about. What are the competencies? Where are their gaps? Where are they seeing their own gaps? And they can be pretty blind. Where are other people seeing their own gaps? Right, Nobody wants to see their own gaps. So helping them through that and getting the coaching and remember that's the number one motivation that keeps people at organizations.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and I think I love that Agree. And when we talk about people getting promoted into management, one of the skills that they miss and I talk about this a lot which is that analytical skill, to be able to diagnose what skill gaps exist, prioritize them and then also find root causes, because, just because, oh, your demos or whatever your demos are too focused on narrative and features, okay, well, that's not the root cause. The root cause is we didn't do good discovery, yeah don't get me wrong, demos.
Speaker 2:I did pre-sales for 25 years, so I have an opinion or two there as well. Corey, that might surprise you.
Speaker 1:I think you and I, our opinion buckets are pretty full these days. So, yeah, so I think the diagnosis and so this touches on a few things. It touches on skills, it touches on the ability to use data, because you give some reports to a sales manager that's never reviewed reports and a lot of these folks look people that have quantitative backgrounds. A lot of them go into engineering or sciences or legal or other professions. You don't see a ton of people with real quantitative training come into sales. Some do, but it's not the norm.
Speaker 2:What I did discover, though and I will hold to this if anybody asked me is that the best type of chart to show a sales manager or anybody on the sales leadership team is a heat map. I've tried everything. You show them a heat map on what's working and what's not, and nobody wants to be that red block, Believe me.
Speaker 1:Oh wow, that's green, that's green's good, red's bad. Okay, I'm not red, I'm green.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the heat map will change everything. And you have your heat map by leader, then you have it by their next level manager down next level and you drill and you get to the point where people get embarrassed about it. They don't want to be the red, they don't want to be the yellow, they want to be the green, and just that. Even you know Harvey balls and the, you know the stoplight reports don't have the same impact as a heat map because it's very condensed, it's right there in front of you and you cannot run away and it works like a charm.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's great, that's really smart and you can. You can see change over time too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and it's easy to represent, anyway. So I know we're going all over the map, but I like it.
Speaker 1:No, I think this is really good. So let's double click on the data piece again. If you just look at a bunch of numbers, it doesn't tell you a whole lot of things, and I think one of the keys I'd love your thoughts on this is you have to know what really good looks like, both in practice and quantitatively in terms of the numbers, if you're going to identify what the gaps are. So what does a great discovery conversation look like? What does a great demo look like? What does a great stage-by-stage conversion rate deal velocity win rate what does great look like for that role in that market at that time? Because 2024 is a little different than 2021, for example.
Speaker 1:So, really having it dialed in on where are we going One of my favorite quotes if you don't know where you're going, you might end up someplace else. Yogi Berra One of my favorite quotes if you don't know where you're going, you might end up someplace else. Yogi Berra, just having that dialed in and being fluid as markets, products, everything changes. I'm curious how you create that culture of being able to be good at data analysis and being able to coach peers, because we didn't all come from the same place. We don't all have the same skill set, and even people at very senior levels have gaps here.
Speaker 2:So part of it is determining what it is that you're trying to measure, as you say. How do you determine that? That's one of the five questions, right? If we've got programs running and we've got that, what is the hypothesis we're aiming for? Then you start with the baseline when are we now, where do we think we're going to get?
Speaker 2:And that starts building in the measures, because that data and everything that falls out of that data and there'll be a lot of different things that'll fall out of it you can be going for well, I want to increase revenue by this, but in with that you also have what was the average sales price? What was deal velocity? All of these things are part of that, and so it's figuring out what is the high level you're looking for, what are the pieces that are there, and some of it is teaching sales managers exactly what they should be looking for and why it matters. Part of that is also working with RevOps, and I will admit that the biggest challenge that I've had in my career is working with RevOps, because things I'm looking for are not necessarily the things that they are tracking, like I've had in the past where I've said I want to find out what ramp is and they're like well, we don't measure that. Of course, my initial thing was you know, your your border college.
Speaker 1:We don't measure that, oh, okay.
Speaker 2:Okay, so what do you think ramp is? And it's, it was so varied that that was one of the things just like all right, that's clearly something we have to determine, right? So what is it? How is ramp measured? What are they right, All of that kind of stuff, but it is. It's really making people see that data is a huge qualifier for how the business is going to move forward and it's a predictive for what we think is going to happen. Because if we just go on feel or we just go on fun or we just go on you know some of these nebulous responses, it's not going to do us any good.
Speaker 2:Enablement is another one where we have to drive it through data. That data is going to tell us what we do and what we don't do, and that's a muscle that gets built. As you said, it's a muscle that gets built. We have to learn how to use the data appropriately as well as enablement. Folks, we're used to looking at adult learning stuff. That's the data that we see, which is great, we need that. That's all the vanity metrics. But that does not create that partnership, that executive conversation that gravitas, the growth, the understanding of it doesn't. That doesn't help any of that right, you've got to approach it from a different perspective.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And it comes together right. There was, I know, when I started RingCentral. We didn't have any numbers. And so when I was three months in and my CRO was saying, well, how are we doing? And I said I don't have enough data yet. I just don't have enough data yet. I need at least six months of these programs before I can tell you. Now I told him at six months I'm expecting to see a lift and I'm going to be coming for more money. Right, and you're my investor. Right, I give you performance. I'm going to want something back. And I can remember sitting at the QBR in January after the close of the year, and he and I are at the same table and he's sitting across from me and I put my numbers up and he just kind of looked at me and went you're going to want more money. I was like, yeah, yeah, I'm going to want more money.
Speaker 1:Isn't that a good thing? Why wouldn't he be excited about that?
Speaker 2:Well, he was excited. It's just that, you know, he just wasn't used to giving it to a support thing, but he saw the result because I was data, I had proof, proof that enablement was working.
Speaker 1:I'm digging what you just said. How do you turn the perception of enablement from a support thing, which is how it's viewed in many companies, to this superpower cell that helps amplify the great things that we're doing to make us better?
Speaker 2:First thing is you talk about it like a business. You don't talk about it as a business unit. I talk about enablement as a business within a business. Right, I have investors, I have supply chain, I have customers. With my investors, I expect input of some type, I expect resources, whether that's money, that's time, that's headcount, that is software, that is ability to go to conferences, whatever it is right. I need those resources and they come from my investors, and those investors are anybody in the C-suite, could be the VP, could be anybody that wants me to do something. There's going to be a quid pro quo. So, on the investment side, you give me resources, I give you back results. So that's the first thing. Right, it's got to be talked about like a business, because that is how my and I don't like to work. Stakeholders, because my stakeholders are ultimately the our customers. They're not my C-suite, they are my partners. But anyway, that's semantics at this point. So that's the second part is, right supply chain.
Speaker 2:You talk about supply chain and and you can see marketing going. I mean, I'm, you know, sounds like manufacturing and I said you are my supply chain, you are manufacturing a lot of the comment, a lot of the content and the assets that we're going to use, and so I need you to understand that again. What is your and you figure out what their biggest challenges and, in marketing, pmn, the biggest challenge adoption. I mean, how many times you hear that we create all this stuff? Sale never uses it? Right? I heard numbers up to 92% of what was created by marketing was never seen by sales. What this was, a document management company. I was like, again, you know, I feel like a border collie Sometimes, as say, it's like whoop and it's, you know, figuring that out and it's helping them understand the biggest challenge between the two, because you hear, you know, marketing is like sales never uses our stuff, and sales is like they never give us stuff we can use, and so it's why Where's the breakdown?
Speaker 2:And the breakdown is just marketing has all of this product information, but what they are lacking a lot of times is why should a salesperson care about it at all? How's it going to help them? What's it going to do and how is it going to help the customer buy, because every marketing person wants to tell salespeople how to sell here, sell it this way. No, you're in marketing for a reason. What I need from you, though, is a list of open-ended questions I can ask of my customer on the theme that we're trying to get across this campaign. That allows me to have the discussion to find whether or not they even see value in this. If they don't see value, I'm going to create value, and if I can't create value, can I reset vision, and if none of those things will happen, then get the hell out. Right, it's having that, but for marketing I need that virtual cover sheet.
Speaker 1:Well, I love that, because what you just said is a handful of questions, so I don't need an eight slide deck. I need six questions that would be relevant to this topic that we're talking about, and so I think that's one of the things where we say words, phrases and sentences, micro content. We don't need go ask the best salespeople out there and how many of them owe their career to PowerPoints and PDFs.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I mean, I have. I have a thought or two around. That too is a lot of the corporate decks that we get or I'm not saying corporate decks, that's a whole bee in my bonnet but the product decks, these product decks, as you said, they want to get everything into this deck. Look how fabulous everything is, all the stuff, all the features, all that. It's like you know what. Okay, great, but what do we really need to know? If I'm a BDR or an SDR, what I really need to know is how is this going to frame the conversations that I'm having? Is there anything in here that I can use in a cold call that's going to trigger right? And, if it is, how do I frame it right? That's really what I care about and so likely.
Speaker 2:When you're showing them the product deck, you're probably going through the whole thing for the less experienced, but you're also including some kind of knowledge checks throughout to ensure that they're getting it. When we're talking about our high performers, our legacy folks, our enterprise level, our really experienced reps, that 42-slide PowerPoint is probably going to come down to one or two slides. Here's how it's going to affect your customer. Here's how it's going to affect your prospect. Here's where you go to find the rest of it. All they need is just that Now they have to be taught how to fish.
Speaker 2:In a lot of cases because here is the other thing. When I hear people say, you know, it's better to teach them how to fish than to do it for them, I get it. But they also know they have to fish repeatedly. Because, as with fishing, if you get yourself 20 fish today, all different types, and put them in a bucket and you don't open that bucket up for two months, you're going to lift that lid off and it's going to be disgusting, it's going to be rotten, it's not going to be what you need. So it's not just teaching them how to fish, it's teaching them how to always be fishing Right.
Speaker 2:And then the last part is the customers. Right, talking about a business, my customers are the sales leaders, the managers up the sellers are the end users of programs. My customers, my partners, are frontline managers all the way up through the chain. Because, again, if they do not execute we're coming back to this again if they don't execute on the programs and they are not accountable and responsible for the execution of the programs we've all agreed to, then it doesn't matter what the rest of it is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's awesome. I love how you framed that. I want to hit on something that you touched on towards the end, around the customers being the managers. So we previously discussed how there's challenges when you promote the unconscious competent folks into management. Well, when you do that, a lot of times what happens is the frontline manager becomes the super closer and they say I'll come in at stage three and stage four and help you push the thing over the line. So they're in meetings, they're doing all this stuff.
Speaker 2:So giving big discounts and you know, uh deals flipping.
Speaker 1:Yeah, anybody seen that Cause I discounted. Okay, so here's, and then here's what happens. Then that person, in all their infinite super power to them, gets promoted to second line manager, director, vp, whatever it is. Okay, so you can. You can be a pretty good frontline manager from a results perspective not from what you should be doing, but from a results perspective just by being that super closer completely breaks down when you get to that second line manager where you're managing managers. So talk to us a little bit about how we can enable an organization that might find themselves with super closer frontline managers and then it just breaks down because there's no management skills Once those folks get promoted to that second line. What do we do in cases like that?
Speaker 2:You have to do the management training. You've got to do the coaching training. You need to take time with these people. You need to show them, as frontline managers, how to be good coaches. Right, I know a lot of front-end like I don't want to be a coach. I want to, you know. No, you have to coach your people If you don't want to run into this hockey stick, if you don't want to have to be the super closer every time, which, frankly, is freaking exhausting. Right, I mean, these people never see their families. Good luck having a holiday? Right, christmas and Thanksgiving, never mind. You know you're on the phone, your way. You know, have a life.
Speaker 1:And who wants to have a boss that does their job for them? That sucks.
Speaker 2:Well, and that's the other thing, right. People leave companies because they're not getting, especially sellers, because they are not getting the coaching they need to advance their performance and make them better and give them the opportunity to become a manager, and so you've got to coach them how to do this stuff. Now, if you miss the frontline manager and they get promoted up the next level, they still need to get that coaching right. Everybody needs to be taught how to become a coach of some type. In the case of that second line, they now have to learn how to coach their managers, which means they need to know this how to coach people through the process but they also need to coach how to teach those folks. So I would venture to say that I would spend more time with that level than I would even with the frontline managers. Right? Give the frontline managers a playbook. Show them the you know like. We had a playbook where it's like oh, you're doing a pipeline review. Here are all the questions you should be asking. Ask these questions to get your information right. We gave it that much to the extent where we even put it on their calendars when they should be doing it right. Pipeline, maybe every week forecast, maybe every month, right. Territory planning, maybe twice a year. Account management, maybe once a quarter, right? I mean, we actually put them on their calendars Skills every two weeks.
Speaker 2:But it was making sure that they got that, that the coaches, the frontline managers, knew what they were responsible for getting answers for. And then the next level up was not only that they needed to make a number, but figure out how to make the number so you don't lose track of every single one of your frontline managers during the last month of every quarter, Because you're going to lose track of them, the numbers. All of a sudden, your data repository of account information and revenue goals is going to go from. Potentially here's what we're going to be to. You know, either really really good or really really bad in the last minute.
Speaker 2:And you can't run a business that way, right, you know that it's like I do. You can't run a business with the hockey stick at the end of every quarter because you have no idea what's coming in. And, frankly, if you get something where you've got a huge bluebird, let's say somebody, you know they say, well, you know, my prediction is best case 300,000. And then they come in with a three or four million dollar deal that's going to. You know, mix the numbers up not necessarily in a good way. You know, mix the numbers up not necessarily in a good way. It's great for them, the compensation is going to be great, but next time around and next year when they're looking at year over year or quarter over quarter or something, it can screw all that up totally. That doesn't happen if people are consistent and if they are taught how to do it and the frontline managers know how to coach and their managers know how to coach them to be able to do this beyond getting the revenue in. What is the best way to do it?
Speaker 1:And it's all along the lines of just turning into really good business people. These are all business people attributes.
Speaker 2:That's it. That's it Like when sellers go and talk to customers. A lot of times they just talk product. They don't talk about this person's business, this company's business. What are they struggling with? What are you know? What do they see as challenges? What do they see? You know? What would their ideal situation look like? Who do they want to be? What are their customers asking for? Right?
Speaker 2:If we don't ask those questions and we don't become business partners with our customers, then we're not talking the language they want to hear. Right, they don't. If all you're talking is product, then it's just like the old days of checklists and this and that and old RFPs, and I hated those. Right, where it didn't matter, it was who had the newest thing or could fabricate answers better than anybody else. I remember coming up against a big competitor years ago when I was doing database stuff and they sold $100 million of a product that never, ever worked. Wow, 100 million, fabulous, but it never worked. They kicked our ass for two quarters and we realized the customers eventually came around. But once you got $100 million, you're not giving up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's crazy $100 million and it never worked.
Speaker 2:Never worked. Product never ever worked. I won't say the company, but it was a database company.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's wild. Well, I think people have sold a bunch of stuff that nobody needs these days, especially with this AI stuff. I think AI is really interesting because people say we're an AI company. Well, there are AI companies. There's not many of them, and the ones that actually are don't necessarily say that they are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they might say that they are yeah.
Speaker 1:They might say that they're hardware companies or something else like that, but the ones that say they're AI companies and it's just a layer on top of somebody else's tech yeah, it's cool, it's fun.
Speaker 2:It's cool. I did. I have a prompt that I use when I'm comparing competitors, right, and I love my prompt. It's significant and it it gets me all sorts of data and it's great. I just press a button and I've got all this info. Now I realize as you do and many who understand where AI actually fits in all of this that the information I got back is everything that's outside the firewall, which means it's all marketing spin, so I have to take everything I get with a grain of salt. I know them, so I don't use it, as you know. Hey, this is what I got from AI. It's asked with gospel truth, so I'm going to use this right.
Speaker 2:This is the mistake a lot of people are making is that they're believing that what's coming back is true. Ai will give you a BS answer and an absolutely correct answer with the same level of confidence, and it's up to you to figure it out. And people are like, oh, that's not right. I was like, no, that's not right. You know, there's, there's, the technology is cool. It is an assistant. It's never going to replace anyone. It might replace tasks, certain types of tasks. I think it'll definitely do that Right. You've got three levels of AI, You've got robotics, you've got augmentation and you've got automation. Where is that your stuff going to fit? Well, there's all sorts of tasks that can benefit from all of those. I mean robotics, not just putting cars together. But you know, if you think of any of the bots that you're using, those are robotics, essentially Right.
Speaker 1:You talked about RevOps before. We don't have that data, we don't have those reports. Well, I think AI can play a massive role in RevOps.
Speaker 2:Huge. And the other thing it does is it connects the dots. It tells us these are things that you might not know are related, but hey, look what I found. That's what this is why ai became so prevalent when you're talking about, you know, the biological studies and medical studies, because it could come back and go. Hey, you probably didn't see this, but in the billions and billions of pieces of data that I looked at, here's something I found and it gives us things to consider. Rebops is the same way. Right, it's that data that comes back. It connects the dots for us where it may take us, doesn't say we couldn't do it. It may just take us a very long time. This is why I mentioned it earlier about corporate decks.
Speaker 2:I think the days of corporate decks are winding down a whole lot faster than people think, because, number one, most corporate decks are designed as me, me, me, I'm fabulous. Why wouldn't you buy this? It has nothing to do with the customer and we spend millions of dollars getting people to certify on it and it's never used Anyway. But I think the days of corporate decks are gone because I can sit down as a seller and, with some training on prompt engineering, I can put in a prompt to build a prompt up that will give me all that data that I need. That is typically in a corporate deck, but it's from the viewpoint of the customer and you can do that with the press of a button. Once you get the prompt right, you press of a button. So I think where enablement is going is becoming gurus in prompt engineering.
Speaker 2:Yeah Right, because a lot of this stuff that was we spent a lot of our time doing right. Let's create a course and certify everybody on it and push them through. And you know it's a, it's a one week course, and now that's not to say onboarding. Onboarding is different and I've that aside, but these ongoing things, I think are going to change really dramatically because of that. But again, you have to have the wherewithal, the skill, the intuition, you know the ethics to understand that what you're getting back needs to be vetted right. If it doesn't sound real, it's probably not. I remember seeing an old meme years ago that said don't trust everything you see on the internet, and it was signed Abraham Lincoln. I was like exactly.
Speaker 1:That's so funny. That's so funny. Well, yeah, and you said people could do it. I agree. I think the way I always look at why people are or are not doing it is two questions Do they have the bandwidth to do it and do they have the expertise to do it? And I think the third one is the desire to do it, because if people don't have the time, they don't know how to do it and they don't want to do, it's probably not going to get done, whatever it is whatever it is, is not going to get done, and I would also add fear in there, right?
Speaker 2:I'm seeing that a lot across the generational lines is people don't want to look like they don't know, and so, rather than they were trigger warned before every, everything and in their upbringing, and so they weren't just you're wrong like we were right, oh yeah, that happened, yeah, and also there wasn't facebook.
Speaker 2:But beside the point, right? I mean just it's. The world has changed and if it's not embraced and we can use it for everything, you use it for coaching too, right? Oh, my god, you're a sales manager and you do like a bloop and you get all the information that you need to know first behind the firewall, stuff that you need to know about how your team is doing, and are they actually aligning with the campaigns that are going out there? Or is what we're doing aligning with what we're seeing from, you know, harvard business review or wall street journal or mit or right, all of this stuff. Let's get it all together and figure it all out, and ai does that can do that for us, provided we have it.
Speaker 2:But what it can't do is what you and I are doing right now. Right, can't do that. It cannot be human, it cannot. You can fake it, but you can tell it can't be human. It doesn't have intuition, it doesn't have empathy, it doesn't have discernibility, it doesn't have the border collie, right, it just doesn't have that. But we do, and more than anything right now, this human connection, this ability to talk to people, is so important. It's not going away. It's never going away. Our jobs are not going to be replaced. Those who aren't using AI will use their jobs. Those who are using AI in a way it should be used will not.
Speaker 1:They will augment us. The bots, the robots, the AI will augment us. Well, Siobhan, thank you so much. It was great chatting with you. How can people reach out to you? Anything you want to plug today?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I'm currently looking for opportunities. I'm looking for consulting gigs. I'm looking for consulting gigs. I'm looking for all of that. If what I've said today resonates, please reach out to me. You can reach out through LinkedIn, it's just linkedincom. Slash in slash, shivan.
Speaker 1:One more thing real quick. I know you're not going to offer this up. I think you've talked about this publicly. You worked at RingCentral right. Where was RingCentral when you started? Where were they when you left?
Speaker 2:When they started they were 300 million. Stock was at 21. When I left it was 2 billion. Stock unfortunately took a big dive, but we got up to almost 500, and all of that within four years.
Speaker 1:Wow of that within four years, wow.
Speaker 2:You look at Yahoo Finance I started in February 2017, and look at Yahoo Finance from 2012 to 2022. And you will see. Now will I take credit for all of that? Oh, hell, yeah. No, I do all of that, but the things that I'm talking about in the programs I've discussed and how I approach them RingCentral just did this.
Speaker 1:There we go. I had to call that out because I think that's one of the best measurable case studies I've ever seen in the enablement world.
Speaker 2:So thank you so much. My team actually went from three people to 162 as well. When you give results, your investors give you resources.
Speaker 1:I love it. Well, thanks for joining us today. Everybody else thanks for tuning into the Sales Management Podcast. We'll see you next time.