Making sales enablement unsuck

61% said sales enablement was useless on Bravado (yikes). While the community is very direct, there's a couple of reasons sales enablement doesn't succeed.

We talk about the problems, how to overcome them - and share one or two counter-intuitive approaches you can take.

Key points

• The problems sales enablement can solve (04:08)
• Why sales enablement matters (06:59)
• It should be called revenue enablement, here's what they do (09:12)
• What folks should you hire? (13:00)
• Recruit your top rep to do coaching (15:41)
• Sales enablement to actively participate in sales calls (27:55)
• Wrapup (29:28)

If you want to see the show, check it out on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@growblocks/podcasts

Creators and Guests

Host

Mikkel Plaehn

Marketing leader & b2b saas nerd

Host

Toni Hohlbein

2x exited CRO | 1x Founder | Podcast Host

What is The Revenue Formula?

This podcast is about scaling tech startups.

Hosted by Toni Hohlbein & Raul Porojan, together they look at the full funnel.

With a combined 20 years of experience in B2B SaaS and 3 exits, they discuss growing pains, challenges and opportunities they’ve faced. Whether you're working in RevOps, sales, operations, finance or marketing - if you care about revenue, you'll care about this podcast.

If there’s one thing they hate, it’s talk. We know, it’s a bit of an oxymoron. But execution and focus is the key - that’s why each episode is designed to give 1-2 very concrete takeaways.

[00:00:00] Toni: Hi everyone, this is Toni Hohlbein. You are listening to the Revenue Formula.
[00:00:04] In today's episode, we are going to talk about sales enablement, how you probably should rename it into revenue enablement instead, how to structure it, where to hang it in the organization, and how to empower to deliver more impact.
[00:00:17] Enjoy.
[00:00:20] Ooh, it feels much
[00:00:21] Mikkel: we can start, you know, what's been lingering on my mind since the, uh, the offsite?
[00:00:25] Toni: me, tell me, tell
[00:00:26] Mikkel: me ping pong game playing for the serve.
[00:00:30] I know people won't get the reference, but it was still pretty fun. But
[00:00:33] Toni: also I think what needs to be on the. Um,
[00:00:36] Mikkel: oh, no,
[00:00:37] Toni: you and I are playing against, uh, Andrew and Stim
[00:00:40] Mikkel: Uh,
[00:00:41] Toni: and let's just say Mikkel and Toni are not the most athletic guys. Andrew and Stim are very much the
[00:00:47] Mikkel: very athletic,
[00:00:48] Toni: and I think we won, um, 22 0 and we are talking like 20 games.
[00:00:55] So this was essentially a best of 41. We've won the best of 41, not a single game. Lost.
[00:01:04] Mikkel: I think we can end the episode now. Let's Thank you Toni. Andrew.
[00:01:07] Toni: Andrew walked away and he is a co-founder. Andrew walked away and he was basically like, he was, he was ready to just jump off a roof somewhere. I mean, that was, that was over
[00:01:15] Mikkel: In a one story building.
[00:01:18] Toni: Couldn't even get that done. Sorry.
[00:01:21] Mikkel: So we are gonna talk about something around winning today. I guess that's what we always try and deal with, how we can win. We're gonna talk about sales enablement. The, you called it the unloved child. Child.
[00:01:34] It's
[00:01:35] Toni: the forgotten ugly child in the corner of a salesroom
[00:01:37] Mikkel: Yeah. And I thought, uh, so I discovered something last week. It was called bravado. And for those of you who don't know it, it's an anonymous sales community. So you can already imagine now that the conversation is. Blunt, very direct,
[00:01:55] Toni: is also, so you get the incentives, there's incentive scheme in place to engage and you can get points for engagement and then you can buy something in the bravado
[00:02:03] Mikkel: store.
[00:02:03] Yeah. So that's, that's pretty fun. I obviously, you know, there wasn't a choice to pick your role being marketing, so I took whatever I snuck my way in there. Please don't kick me out. Um, hey, the first thing I did was search for marketing and that was a mistake. I should not have done that. They did not like marketing at all.
[00:02:18] Uh, but then I looked at sales enablement and I found this. Thing that I just, I just wanted to give you some of the, the highlights here. Uh, there's profanities in here. I'm gonna try and just, you know, edit it a bit down, edit it a bit down. But the title is basically, sales Enablement Sucks and they a bunch of fake teachers. So that's already gold. And then it's, you know, first paragraph is something like, Hey, I feel like sales enablement doesn't know what they're talking about. 90, 95% of the time they either have never sold, have little to no experience in sales, or they sold for six months, five years ago. Yet they advise on all aspects of sales and are supposed to create an onboarding plan for us. And then it's goes on to a very specific thing. And then it's like, what annoys me is that on top of offering zero value, they're the ones annoyed when I am the one doing all the busy work, instead of focusing on what really matters. Lastly, they don't do anything but talk about adding decks and saying hi to new hires.
[00:03:13] They're even worse than marketing.
[00:03:15] Toni: Wow. Wow. Even worse than marketing.
[00:03:18] Mikkel: And then there's a poll is enable. Effing useless. And 61% that there's like 300 votes on this thing. 61% said yes,
[00:03:28] Toni: 22%
[00:03:29] Mikkel: no, and 17% other. So that's, that's the tee up for today's episode.
[00:03:37] Toni: I mean, I don't think, I don't think we need to kind of spend the rest here now.
[00:03:40] I mean, I think the, you know, the conclusions are done.
[00:03:43] Mikkel: Yeah.
[00:03:44] Toni: you know, sales enablement is f****** uses. That is correct. 61% of the time,
[00:03:48] Mikkel: Yeah. Uh, yes. So, no, what we were gonna talk about, how do you make it Use use, I was gonna say useless, useful, uh, and actually provide,
[00:04:01] what I thought we should do first is just talk a bit about, hey, you know, what is it, you know, what's actually the big deal here?
[00:04:08] What's the problem? What should it look like? Uh, how do we set this team up for success, uh, because it is a thing that can have a material impact.
[00:04:17] Toni: Yeah. Um, so generally speaking, you start thinking about sales enablement, once you listen to your sales reps and are like, why is she pitching that?
[00:04:28] Mikkel: Yeah,
[00:04:30] Toni: What is going on in my sales team?
[00:04:33] and the, the larger story obviously is like, it's about sales efficiency, right? So you wanna basically make sure that, uh, people are trained on, uh, the best,
[00:04:46] Mikkel: uh,
[00:04:47] Toni: practices for your comp, uh, for your company in terms of how to pitch. Obviously, which deck to use is also in there.
[00:04:53] Uh, which questions to ask, which objections to be prepared for. And you know, what, uh, competitors to have in mind and so forth. There's a lot of stuff that needs to happen and needs to kind of land in someone's brain. uh, and the problem is when you, um, have 10 AEs in a, in a sales manager, Um, you're basically gonna, uh, run into this issue of the sales manager being really busy, closing all the deals, uh, versus, onboarding and teaching and doing all of that stuff with your sales reps.
[00:05:23] and you know, if you don't do that, then you end up in this.
[00:05:26] Mikkel: everyone
[00:05:27] Toni: Everyone is doing their own thing and you're wondering why conversion rates are so low and why they're dropping and that's this new rep. It's probably because he's new, let's fire him again. Right. You kind of, you run into this very, uh, surface level root cause analysis and trying to understand what's wrong in your sales team.
[00:05:42] Yeah. Um, and, uh, sales enablement is one way to deal with that. Now, could the, uh, VP of sales or director of sales or someone else also help out with it yet? Uh, yes. Let's get into some of those different nuances in, uh, maybe a little bit. Uh, but that, generally speaking, that's it. And you could say that, you know, some of the metrics you want to attach, sales enablement to or.
[00:06:05] You know, where they should be helping with, you know, ramp time for reps, um, successful completion of ramp of reps. Right. So not just getting out faster, but more getting actually through it. then you have something that's around, uh, retaining reps. and obviously, uh, an ongoing training slash coaching.
[00:06:26] Those are two different things, you know, we need to be careful with, but an ongoing training slash coaching, impact for your, uh, reps in order to either increase or improve, uh, your conversion rates, your ACVs, your average sales, uh, your n sales cycles, right? That's basically, so basically every, every metric around your usually account executives actually, when you like break it all the way down, it's usually around the account
[00:06:49] executives having sales enablement for SDRs always is almost a luxury. but let's dive into this just in a little bit, right? So this is usually the remit of sales enablement.
[00:06:59] Mikkel: We should hop into the, the meat here. Yes. And I, I think one of the, the core things we should address is why even care about sales enablement. There was a lot of contention in this bravado piece. I just, you know, read aloud. But I think getting to the heart of why does it even exist?
[00:07:17] Why does it matter is the first step.
[00:07:20] Toni: Yeah. So, and I think it's a topical also right now, which really is efficient growth, right? We are kind of talking about this a lot.
[00:07:27] Um,
[00:07:27] Mikkel: spend on money and then No. Yes.
[00:07:29] Toni: Spend all the money that you have. Uh, no. But, uh, the, the ideas obviously, and we've seen this in the stats, so, um, basically every single opportunity generating channel is down. Yeah. Or having challenges. Yeah. Um, you only get so many opportunities from that. You've probably scaled down on some of the very expensive channels to begin with.
[00:07:48] Right. So you, you're basically left with few opportunities. Period. Um, and now one question you could be discussing in your management team is, okay, do we want to take some of that money that we are saving on the opportunity generation, and maybe fund a, um, fund a sales enablement person from that?
[00:08:07] Because basically now the, the, uh, growth level is not just more opportunities. Now the growth level could be higher acv, higher conversion rate, or faster cycle times, right? Uh, so at the end of the day, that is why that should be a conversation right now. There's also lots of, uh, topics on LinkedIn popping up around sales enablement, how important it's and so forth, and I, I think that's the backdrop of that thing. Yeah. Right. Um, I know myself have been on surprisingly many calls, people asking about sales enablement. Yeah. Um, and uh, and, and I think what, what is really important first is defining it clearly. Uh, there's lots of confusion out there because it is kind.
[00:08:49] Weird.
[00:08:49] Mikkel: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually
[00:08:51] Toni: it hangs between different chairs and you know, it's a bit unclear. Um, and, and kind of jumping into that maybe to
[00:08:57] Mikkel: Yeah, no, but it's like you're releasing a new product feature, whatever product marketing does some work, introduces a new deck, trains the sales team on the deck, but then there's also sales enablement doing the same and you know, so it kind of can be a bit weird for sure.
[00:09:12] Toni: So let's start out. So number one, responsibility is around, uh, onboarding of new reps. Yeah. Um, and this is almost where it goes into the first, uh, issue here. It actually shouldn't just be reps, sales reps, uh, in terms of AEs. It should be SDRs, but. Why isn't it CSMs as well. Yeah. Right. Instead of just making the sales enablement piece, it should be a revenue piece, right?
[00:09:36] Revenue enablement should be kind of the, the main point. Um, and you have the classic, uh, onboarding in terms of training and teaching element here. and, uh, this is where you connect this to AE, uh, ramp length and success of getting out of ramp, right? Um, then you have an ongoing. Flavor to it, uh, around the training, uh, ongoing, product training, ongoing, whatever, competitor training, which is, uh, simply necessary due to the fact that your product is evolving, the market is evolving.
[00:10:10] People need to stay, uh, close to what's going on. Right. And then there, there's something like that is necessary. Those are even pieces where, um, uh, I've heard a lot of reps basically say like, Hey, this, this makes me a little bit happier in my role. Yeah. Because it's, um, uh, there is a bit of an, uh, ongoing development happening.
[00:10:30] Right. And sure it's not. Anything that you might be interested is still kind of very professional, very much on your job, but kind of that, that helps to get better. And, and, and mastery is a, is a, is a clear skill that people, that people are, uh, deriving joy from. Yeah. and then you can mix it also. And it's kind of the same bucket for me, methodology.
[00:10:49] Right. So let's just say either you are rolling out. MEDDIC or MEDPICK or you know, some of those concepts or you have done it. So to reinforce that that is being lift and breathed and so forth. Right. So, and this is actually where we're starting to get into like, but wait a minute, isn't that like a sales manager, sales, uh, sales director kind of responsibility And it is.
[00:11:10] It is. Um, but you know, those, this is one of the areas that I would say it's shared,
[00:11:15] Mikkel: Mm-hmm.
[00:11:16] Toni: Then going to the next area, which. Coaching. and that is, That is a tricky one. Um, this is also where some of the bravado from bravado comes from. Yeah. Because this is really about, um, you know, someone that needs to be very, very knowledgeable in this trade for that company, for that product.
[00:11:36] Yeah. To then go in and give direct coaching to a person we're gonna talk about in which specific setup that can work out. Yeah. Um, generally speaking for my organizations, I've already said coaching is for the sales managers. Um, they're just not exempt from that, right? Because suddenly it's like, well, you know, sales enablement produces shit reps.
[00:11:56] I'm not responsible. Lower
[00:11:57] Mikkel: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:11:58] Toni: No, this is still something that the sales manager, um, is, is responsible for and should do, um, in some really cool setups. You can give that to someone sitting in sales enablement. We're gonna talk about this in a second, and then the last piece is, tooling, process and where to click on what to do and how to understand the whole thing.
[00:12:16] Yeah. Um, usually it's forgotten. And then you end up with, you know, bad data, um, that
[00:12:22] Mikkel: Or tool that's not been used. Yeah,
[00:12:23] Toni: exactly. And, um, and basically kind of having proper onboarding and Sure. If someone has been in Salesforce once and then in Salesforce again, sure. That's, that's, you know, doable. But think about, you know, uh, sales of outreach for the SDRs that's very complicated and lots of new folks joining, having.
[00:12:39] Dealt with those tools before, think about all of those data tools that you might have, zoom, cognism and so forth. Right. There's a lot of that stuff that needs to be taught and understood. Yeah. Um, where, um, where, where something like this comes in.
[00:12:51] Mikkel: Yeah. Yeah. And I think you can probably find a ton of, you know, great articles, videos, talking about specifically the responsibilities, how to structure them and all that stuff.
[00:13:00] But for that to be successful, I think it also would be very interesting to talk about who are the folks Yeah. That should drive those initiatives and responsibilities.
[00:13:10] Toni: Yeah. so.
[00:13:12] Mikkel: I
[00:13:13] Toni: I think that, um, if you have the luxury to specialize your sales enablement team, right, because this is not a one person anymore, this is starting to be a team.
[00:13:24] then, then the way to go about it is for the, uh, onboarding and ongoing training on, uh, product and on the sales methodology. And, and, and maybe on the competitive set. I think this could be a, um, this could be a former. Sales manager or something like that, or someone that you hire into this role that has that specific skill set.
[00:13:47] Right. And this is like a, a bit of a teaching piece, like adult learning piece.
[00:13:54] Mikkel: Yeah.
[00:13:55] Toni: Is that not how you
[00:13:55] Mikkel: you say? Yeah, just sound. Yeah, no, go. Go. Okay. I'm a teenager.
[00:13:59] Toni: No, I, I, I saw that. I saw that. Um, and, uh, and, and then that person will probably also be expected to, uh, create a framework around it. Yeah. Right. Not just this, oh, we came up with this onboarding.
[00:14:14] Schedule. Yeah. Uh, two years ago I was like, no, actually no. Let's, let's figure out what that should be. How can we iterate that? You know, do some, uh, you know, six, nine months later, uh, hey, you know, do you still know these things? You know, what was good, what was bad? Do we need to do a refresher? Right? There should be some ongoing optimization around this.
[00:14:34] Um, and I think that that very much, uh, nicely sits with.
[00:14:39] Mikkel: Someone
[00:14:39] Toni: with a commercial, classical commercial background. Yeah. Uh, that, um, decides not to move into a manager role, uh, or wants to go deeper in that specialty, but basically kind of transitions to, uh, to that teaching side. Yeah. Then you have the tooling stuff.
[00:14:56] this usually ends up being a part-time job of revenue operations. Um, that can also be. Put into the team that does the onboarding and the ongoing training, usually the material for that and the, um, so not necessarily delivery, but the material of it, uh, will need to be owned and produced by revenue operations.
[00:15:16] Right. And, and this is then also where either Rev Ops does it themselves or they have someone specialized in their team to do it. Um, et cetera, et cetera. Right. Kind of, there're kind of different ways to go about it, but that's usually one piece. The, the item that obviously always hangs, uh, stands out is, no, I'm the, I'm the, uh, toddler.
[00:15:36] Um, the, the item that usually stands out is coaching.
[00:15:40] Mikkel: Yeah.
[00:15:41] Toni: Yeah. because who should be, who, who, who earned the right to do the coaching? Yeah, yeah. Right. It's also respecting and so forth. Um, and um, and this is, this is where I heard a really cool story about Gartner, the, the analyst firm. Yeah. It's really also just big sales organization, by the way.
[00:16:00] They have few, few. They have a lot of sales people, um, and, um, what, uh, what they're actually doing, and I'm not sure if they're still doing it like this, but you sometimes have this, um, this really good sales rep. Really good on CVR. All of these, all of those different metrics. Fantastic person, really good performer.
[00:16:24] Then you usually have a conversation. Okay. Do you want to make this person a manager? Yeah. Um, or want to keep him or her in this role. Um, and again, right, the best sales rep usually is not the best manager. Kind of that's proven by now. Yeah. Um, but here is basically, and, and the reason for that is, you know, being good at sales doesn't mean you're good at management or leadership period.
[00:16:46] Um, and here now is a potential alternative career path for that person to go into sales enablement. So what happens next is, um, well in my budget for a sales manager, I have that comp package because that's market. That's what we need to do,
[00:17:02] Mikkel: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:17:03] Toni: Um, and if you wanna go from AE to manager, I even multiple times had to have a conversation about, I'm going earn less.
[00:17:11] Why would I do that? Yeah. Right. And then need to be like, well, you know, it's. You get a bit higher base, you have less chances of, you know, hitting 200% of your target because of the team and so forth. Yeah. Um, but you know, this is a career path, blah. Right? And, and people usually buy it and then they go for, it also carries this prestige with it.
[00:17:30] Um, but on this sales enablement side, uh, first of all, you don't have a competitive package at all
[00:17:35] Mikkel: No, I was gonna say, it's gonna be,
[00:17:37] Toni: usually a terrible package. Yeah. Um, usually it doesn't carry any prestige as the 61% of the bravado folks are saying. Yeah. Um, and which then leads to something that I call negative selection.
[00:17:49] So who goes for that role? Yeah. It's reps that aren't successful in the first place, you know, and then they are in there and guess what? They're failing because they're saying something and everyone's like, you're a f****** loser. Why should I listen
[00:18:02] Mikkel: But it's also a trust thing. Like why would you trust someone who is doing a, you know, worse job than yourself to then train you?
[00:18:09] Yes. It's, you know.
[00:18:10] Toni: Yes. So what is Gartner doing? I kind of left this hanging here. Um, what Gartner's actually doing, they are, um, offering their best sales reps to become, uh, a coach for a year. And they're basically paying them, the OTE that they hit, last year.
[00:18:28] Mikkel: year. Wow. So as Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. So as a, like, that's just the base now. So property,
[00:18:37] Toni: some, there are probably some like, you know, bells and whistles attached to that comp plan. Yeah, yeah. But they're basically creating a very clear path, uh, for you to have the same outcome financially in your sales enablement role. As you had, you know, uh, uh, as, as a sales rep.
[00:18:52] And obviously if you hit like 200% to target, then you know, maybe they're not gonna match that. Yeah, yeah. But they're gonna make it. Um, so it's, uh, financially interesting. Yeah, there's probably less risk. There's also less upside. You know, this, this typical spiel, right? Um, and uh, again, not everyone can just, you know, oh, you know, now this year I'm gonna do coaching.
[00:19:12] There, there's obviously a little bit of a filtering and are you interested in this sales coaching area actually, or is it, is it just, uh, you know, what is it about and so forth. Right? But basically now, um, you are increasing the pool of people that are interested in this by a lot because of the compensation.
[00:19:27] Um, and, um, the people that are then jumping into.
[00:19:31] Mikkel: uh,
[00:19:32] Toni: Probably had a higher compensation and you know, now this is, you know, works out for them and you have some immediate trust there from the other side, right. In terms of, okay, this guy knows what, what, she knows what she is doing. So let me, let me, you know, listen to that advice.
[00:19:46] Right?
[00:19:47] Mikkel: But it's also kind of cool because it will open up the opportunity. Other AEs to actually reach out to that person. I, I, I know that AEs will work a lot together, but they're still, you know, I have my deals that I need to close, so now I need to do that.
[00:19:58] I don't have time for you. And if you're in sales enablement, I, I bet that more people will reach out knowing that this was a stellar performer last year and I need to close this deal and have these challenges. Maybe it's a good idea to get some input,
[00:20:13] Toni: but but think about it like this, right? This, for an AE to get help.
[00:20:18] Mikkel: Yeah.
[00:20:18] Toni: Uh, because of the competitive setup of those plans, because of this CLE deal ownership thing, uh, because of, and by the way, this is, you know, we made up this word and now heard a couple of other times because of the concept of no double bubble in, uh, in, in, I know I heard it from somewhere else as well, uh, and compensation.
[00:20:37] So where there's like, there can only be. $1 paid for $1 earned, so to speak. Yeah, not, not multiple times. It's like, well, if someone wants to help you on your deal, you usually need to, depending on the help, you need to kind of give some percentage up, right? Yeah. Yeah. So what happens? It doesn't happen and the only person helping you is your manager.
[00:20:57] And that manager probably is busy with all the other stuff going on. So now you introduce that sales algorithm person suddenly becomes like a awesome free resource. Do I need to do my, my, uh, do I need to share my deal with that person? Yeah. No,
[00:21:11] Mikkel: I'll take it
[00:21:12] Toni: No, it's like he's just helping me out. Um, so you get a lot of more pull Yeah.
[00:21:17] Uh, from the team with this. Right. Um, and uh, uh, and, and obviously kind of this, this role will end up like being, the likelihood of that will, being more successful in that case is just so much higher, right? Yeah. So I think that makes total sense. Um, again, I believe that, uh, a manager should. Own part of the coaching shouldn't just be like, Hey, you know, that's not part of what I do.
[00:21:40] Yeah. Especially when it comes around forecasting and pipeline management and some of these things. It's, um, uh, the manager owns the responsibility for this. Yeah. Um, but in this case, you're basically kind of having a, um, You know, a a, a sales enablement function on steroids, right? Yeah. Yeah. But again, you will have someone running around doing that stuff that's being paid $250,000 a year.
[00:22:03] Right. So you need to be, and, and that will suddenly sit in your sales enablement, you know, budget line item. And you need to be prepared for that number. Yeah. Not, I don't think many are. Yeah.
[00:22:12] Mikkel: No, no, but I think it also then depends on the size of the organization.
[00:22:16] Yeah. There's, there's a couple of factors to consider, but I just, I can see very clearly how powerful it becomes that it's not this pseudo role of someone saying, yeah, you need to train them on tools, and then you also have this coaching thing on the side. Good luck with that. You know, it, it's gonna be really difficult, I think to be successful if you can't establish the trust, and I think immediately you're gonna be faced with while you had, you have zero skin in the game, you have zero track.
[00:22:42] Why should I listen to you? Yeah. You know, good luck closing that deal.
[00:22:45] Toni: No, I know, but it's, I mean,
[00:22:47] Mikkel: um,
[00:22:48] Toni: That goes for every single support role around sales, right? Oh, you don't skin in the game. Um, and, um, and it's obviously sometimes a little bit of a, of a balance around that, but, uh, I mean, o obviously the, for example, this onboarding process, there's a lot of just admin work that needs to happen around it, right?
[00:23:05] And by the way, we didn't even touch on creating sales material, um, you know, the pricing deck, the pitch deck, and all of these different things that, um, uh, where does that sit, by the way? Right? So just kind of tap on that real quick.
[00:23:20] Mikkel: Um,
[00:23:21] Toni: So I believe things like bottom funnel content, Um, like, um, you know, white paper or a customer case study or something like that.
[00:23:32] I think that believe should be staying in pro marketing, um, or wherever. In marketing, I'm not quite sure what your opinion on this is. Um, some of the pieces like a sales deck, um, and, uh, maybe the pricing deck and so forth. I think, uh, you can have a very aggressive pro marketing team that also, you know, says the need to own it.
[00:23:52] Yeah. Um, if you have a sales enablement function that doesn't sit under marketing, but sits under, you know, somewhere else, yeah. I think those pieces could and should be owned by them. Actually. They will not do it in a vacuum. They will do it in collaboration with the reps and with marketing obviously to make sure the, the message fits and stuff.
[00:24:10] Um, but, uh, but I would actually kind of keep it there. And the reason why is there's, uh, lots of maintenance around it that you wouldn't believe. Yeah, yeah. Uh, that needs to happen around this thing that, uh, you know, pro marketing real quick is gonna be like, okay, can someone else maybe own uh, I mean, I had conversations around 20 different versions of the pricing.
[00:24:32] Mikkel: Yeah. Yeah. We had, yeah. Oh no, now it's all coming back to me.
[00:24:36] Toni: Yes. Um, and, and then this is just the, the, you know, the, the, the, the tip of the iceberg, uh, so to speak.
[00:24:42] Mikkel: I mean, this is almost an entirely different episode. It depends on a million things. Do you have a strong cmo? If you have a strong cmo, then I can see a case where you give up some of the sales, enable material, because they can power, they can make sure that the story that should be.
[00:24:59] Is actually landing in those decks. Right.
[00:25:01] Toni: What, what I'm learning from doing it myself here right now is the purpose of a website and the messaging there and the purpose of a sales deck. They, they are, they need to be connected, but they're different purposes,
[00:25:12] Mikkel: Yeah. Totally.
[00:25:13] Toni: So, and that's why the angle sometimes also is a little bit different around it, but let's not go too much into that.
[00:25:19] Um,
[00:25:19] Mikkel: so we, we talked a bit about now, you know, why is your care, what is the responsibility and who are the right folks to basically run it? I think there was, um, you know, a pretty interesting piece on using, uh, top sales rep, but where should this function sit?
[00:25:33] That's kind of what we're sliding into now. And you kind of said, Hey, sometimes it might be in marketing, sometimes it might be elsewhere. Um, I mean, can we give a silver bullet? Is that even possible?
[00:25:43] Toni: Everything, what we say is a silver bullet. All of this works, all of that solves all of your problem all the time. So there is an increasing, uh, voice out there that is saying it could be revenue operations.
[00:25:56] Mikkel: Yeah.
[00:25:57] Toni: Yeah. I'm gonna pause there. Now, the, the, the reasons almost, where else are you gonna hang it? Yeah. Um, and it's a little bit like having, uh, revenue ops roll into the VP of sales is like, that's a big no-no. Yeah, yeah. You shouldn't be doing that. Um, and here's the same kind of thing. It's like, well, once you kind of strike the sales out of.
[00:26:19] Equation. And you call it revenue enablement. Yeah. Then there's only so many people this can end up with. Yeah. Right. Um, and, and revenue operations is probably one of those. Um, I think, um, I wouldn't, I wouldn't recommend this to roll directly to a cro. I think it could hang under, uh, product marketing, which more and more. Tries to label themselves also as, um, kind of a GTM hub, right? Thinking about the whole GTM, both with what is the messaging on the top end? What can the product actually deliver? How are we selling this? How we kind of making sure that this, um, value sticks with our customers. So you could hang it there.
[00:27:00] Depends very heavily on, you know, the person leading that piece. Yeah. Commercially enabled and or not. Um, but, uh, but revenue operations, especially from. I, especially on the topics of onboarding, ongoing training, um, and then on tools, that's kind of a no-brainer to hang it under revenue operations. Yeah, I think where it seems breaking ish is around the coaching side.
[00:27:25] And I think if you do this, uh, Gartner approach, um, maybe you want have those really. Highly expensive coaches, maybe one of them roll up to the VP of sales, actually. Yeah. Uh, be a resource for that person instead of being, you know, somewhere else. Yeah. Um, there could be something around that structure.
[00:27:44] Right. So I don't wanna, don't wanna, kind of lock this in too much, but the more traditional pieces, uh, they make a lot of sense to hang under, under revenue operations, I believe. I think one. One other little, uh, nugget that I just wanted to kind of throw in here. If you have a sales enablement team, uh, if they're not the highly paid AE turned coach.
[00:28:06] Mikkel: Yeah.
[00:28:06] Toni: Yeah Um, if, and, and if their main medium of, of receiving information is gong or, you know, other versions of that listening to listen to calls, try and make one little tweak, try and make them, uh, jump on actual sales calls, live. You know, introduce them. Yeah. Um, and, and, uh, have them participate in that pitch and not necessarily leading it, um, but be part of it and very quickly, uh, because the situation is just different.
[00:28:40] Yeah. You just, you're just complete, you're looking at this just
[00:28:44] Mikkel: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:28:44] Toni: Uh, when you're in it versus you're just, you know, listening to the radio. Um,
[00:28:49] A lot of more things will pop up in their brain like, oh, oh, this is broken, this is broken, this is broken, this is broken. We kind of, you know, all of that stuff.
[00:28:56] Um, so this is a little bit of a tweak on how you can, uh, empower the, the sales enablement team to get a bit more real on what's going on, and as a result, this might also be one of the reasons why the sales enablement team is being trusted more about the sales rep, because there's some, you know, let's call it skin in the game.
[00:29:16] Yeah. But there's some, okay. No, no. They got the same reality check I got. Yeah. Um, and, uh, now I can trust your output a little bit more because I, I know now we are a little bit closer aligned than you sitting in theory land
[00:29:28] Mikkel: Yeah. I think this is the powerful stuff. So with this podcast, I could easily just have written up the show notes and said, here, here you go.
[00:29:35] Right? But if I wasn't here recording with you and number one, it would actually be a terrible show. So,
[00:29:40] Toni: I don't think so. I think it would be
[00:29:41] Mikkel: Terrible show. But also then, you know, those small tweaks we have to our work rhythm. They wouldn't be there. Right. And, and so, so I think you will just notice things you wouldn't have otherwise noticed that is actually helpful.
[00:29:55] Yeah.
[00:29:55] Toni: I think one last thing I would actually say is,
[00:29:58] It's kind of common practice that after some underperformance of a rep, you put them on a pip, you know, performance improvement plan. And in many cases, this is just the heads up, we're gonna fire you in two month
[00:30:11] Mikkel: No.
[00:30:11] Toni: of legal reason number one, two, and three.
[00:30:14] And because our HR book kind of says it like that. Uh, so here's a pip, performance improvement plan. But you know, we all know we're not gonna really, you know, prove your performance. Um, so I think with good sales enablement, you can actually create a bit of a stronger case for improvement. You know, you put someone on a PIP and then you're paired with resources.
[00:30:36] Yeah. Right. Then there is now, uh, it's, you know, there's now hours that you need to spend or that sales enablement is available for you Yeah. Uh, that you can draw on in order to help you get better, uh, whatever that means that might be different from your setup and so forth. Um, but I think what's, what makes a PIP much more fair is instead.
[00:30:56] Okay. You're telling me you're gonna, you know, fire me. Uh, the only thing I can try and, you know, uh, improve is try and work harder, you know, if that was the problem. Sure. That's an easy one. But many times that's actually not the root cause. The root cause is that they don't know how to do it better.
[00:31:10] Mikkel: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:31:11] Toni: And if you don't give them any help, uh, neither from the manager, because the manager in many cases, like, yeah, this kind of, you know, wasted time. Now I'm gonna spend my time with my high performing reps instead. Yeah. Um, Um, is then you're creating the self-fulfilling prophecy here, right? Having sales enablement and say like, Hey, yes, I as a manager will sit down, but I have some other folks that also can sit down with you and get you better.
[00:31:33] That is now an actual proposition to try and improve someone instead of, uh, you know, this other approach that we are having here. Okay, so just wrapping up, we talked today about, um, how everyone hates sales enablement apparently.
[00:31:48] Mikkel: Yeah, and marketing
[00:31:49] Toni: how, and even, even more than marketing, um, Uh, and we, we went through a couple of different steps on how to see it differently, how to structure it, maybe how to also apply it for the full organization, so of just sales operation.
[00:32:04] And I think then we had a couple of like mini tweaks of, you know, how you could, uh, enable sales enablement Wow. Uh, in a, in a way, uh, where they're automatically getting more impact on the organization and they're more trusted as, as an outcome.
[00:32:17] Mikkel: all. And then I was just rename it revenue enablement.
[00:32:20] Toni: Yeah, call it. But actually, you know what?
[00:32:22] Scratch everything else. Just rename it. And you probably have sold it. Yes. It's like, uh oh. Sales enablement. We need something for the whole organization. Let's just call it revenue enablement. Done.
[00:32:30] Mikkel: But you know what? It's a fun, uh, maybe a fun outro story. I can tell the degree I took in, uh, in school, in university, it had one name before 90% men, they changed the name.
[00:32:44] Nothing else. 50 50.
[00:32:47] Toni: Yeah, it's like, um, diet Coke. Diet Coke didn't sell well with guys and then they called it Coke Zero. Did
[00:32:53] Mikkel: oh, let me have it, let me have it.
[00:32:55] Toni: Zero. I can now, I can now find, you know, audit in a clap without people looking me, Hey,
[00:33:01] Mikkel: no, that's true. That's true. Boom.
[00:33:03] Great stuff. So, Yeah. If you're, uh, listening to the audio version, why not check out YouTube, by the way? Yeah, you can actually watch us and watch how I forgot to record the first five minutes of the video. Yeah.
[00:33:16] Toni: and when, when you see it go on, you know, we have a green logo right now on a pink one, so that might confuse you, but that was totally on purpose by Mikkel today.
[00:33:24] Mikkel: Yes,
[00:33:25] Everything is on purpose. Even excuses and mistakes. All, all of it.
[00:33:29] Toni: There we go.
[00:33:30] Mikkel: go. Thank you
[00:33:31] Toni: a bunch, Mikkel. Thank you everyone. Bye-Bye.
[00:33:33] Mikkel: Bye.