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What else can I be doing to drive revenue? How do I optimize our go-to-market strategies to ensure effectiveness and ROI? If questions like these keep you up at night and occupy your thoughts by day, have we got a podcast for you.
Welcome to Market Mastery presented by The Bridge Group, the podcast where sales professionals learn to advance their careers. Join host and revenue expert Kyle Smith as he talks to elite B2B sales and revenue experts about the strategies they're using to win in the market.
From cultivating a killer company culture to navigating compensation questions, we'll provide you with the insights, education, and strategies you need to thrive.
For more from The Bridge Group, visit www.bridgegroupinc.com.
Alex Yeaton [00:00:00]:
It's inevitable that you can create an A+ program. January 1st. It is solid, it is awesome, it is solving our problems. Everybody is doing amazing. Fast forward a year. That same program could utterly fail. I think a lesson for me was recognizing that most programs do inevitably fail, for lack of a better word, if you don't continuously iterate them and make sure that you're measuring the right things at the start.
Kyle Smith [00:00:29]:
Welcome to Market Mastery, the podcast dedicated to uncovering revenue-driving strategies for sales leaders in B2B tech. On today's episode, I sat down with a powerhouse in the sales enablement space who spent seven years at Klaviyo, five within a sales enablement capacity, designing and developing a lot of the programs that helped to onboard and effectively develop the skill sets of the SDR, AE and CSMs of that Klaviyo team. As they went from a seven-person AE team up to over 200 reps globally, so had the pleasure of speaking to Alex Yeaton.
Alex Yeaton [00:01:09]:
So I got into the world of tech through being an Account Executive. I was deep in the trenches figuring out from day one what even is a CRM and how do I use this thing to sell. And I quickly realized that it was something that I really enjoyed and spent a number of years selling a couple different softwares before recognizing that there was another path that I think would be better that I would want to take. And so I spent some time exploring and I kept coming back to sales. Like I'd go talk to marketing and then I'd be back with sales and I'd go talk to product and I'm back with sales and I'm like, okay, so it's obviously sales, but it's not necessarily the same selling itself, so what is it? And I had an opportunity presented to do enablement at Klaviyo and I jumped at it. It, in hindsight was this amazing combination of all of these things I've done in the past, all of these training and coaching and different types of jobs I had outside of tech, then married with everything I had learned and accomplished being an ae. And when I started I was really focused on sales, BDRs, AEs, leadership, and figuring out not only how do I help other people sell in the way that I was selling, but then how do I start to grow a team and actually help them in turn also help our sellers?
Kyle Smith [00:02:37]:
So you mean how do you grow? That next stage was how do you grow an enablement team? Yeah, so you said an opportunity was presented to you and you had this windy road that kept pulling you back to sales. How was the opportunity actually presented for you, you to take that leap and transition over into an enablement role? Were they looking and you were just like, alex is smart. We like the way that you present. We think that you can actually help upscale people, or how did that actually happen?
Alex Yeaton [00:03:01]:
At first, I felt like I was in the right place at the right time. Klaviyo had reached to this point where it was this natural evolution of needing to bring support in for our leadership team to help onboard coach and train our salesforce. And then I was lucky to also have leaders there that really got to know me well and said, you know what? Hey, I know you're exploring these other avenues within the business. What about this one? Right. You've been coaching, you've been training. You kind of do that. You help each other, especially on a small team, get better. And a light bulb went off, and I thought, yeah, actually, that sounds pretty cool. Let's do this.
Kyle Smith [00:03:41]:
Yeah, so a little internal recruiting. Basically, somebody says, we know we have this need over here. We have this person who would be perfect for it. Let's just gently nudge them along into this role. Yeah, yeah. So when you started at Klaviyo, you started as an AE or a BDR?
Alex Yeaton [00:03:58]:
I started as an AE.
Kyle Smith [00:04:00]:
How many reps were there at that time?
Alex Yeaton [00:04:02]:
Ooh, there couldn't have been more than seven or eight of us.
Kyle Smith [00:04:05]:
Okay, and then when you took the enablement role, how many reps were there?
Alex Yeaton [00:04:10]:
Probably at that time, thinking back somewhere between maybe 20 and 30.
Kyle Smith [00:04:17]:
Okay, and then how long were you in the actual enablement role?
Alex Yeaton [00:04:21]:
When I first started in the enablement role, I did not want to give up my book of business. And so the year ended as a true AE. And so I actually spent the final quarter of 2019 doing both, so holding on to my accounts and trying to get the business in for the end of the year and then also starting to actually think about programming and how to support new and existing AEs. And I held enablement role at Klaviyo from that point up until leaving just earlier this year.
Kyle Smith [00:04:54]:
So in 2024 and so five years after, so you start in their seven or eight AEs, you start in an enablement role, and there's 20, 30. And then how many when you left Klaviyo, were there total?
Alex Yeaton [00:05:07]:
Oh, gosh. By the time I left Klaviyo, I was also supporting other areas of the go to market organization as well, but when we thought about the sales team, the leaders, the AEs, and then the BDRs upwards of 250 plus across all of the roles. And that was also then global. So as the years went on, little things continued to happen as they do as the business evolved, as we grew. And so I ended up being able to experience so much more even outside of sales as the years went by.
Kyle Smith [00:05:37]:
Yeah, I would imagine. And so through all that growth you mentioned, like, onboarding becomes this massive requirement. And so did that suck up a lot of your time as they're adding and growing the teams where you're just essentially constantly new class, new class, new class. Or were you able to dedicate time to working with the existing, more tenured team members?
Alex Yeaton [00:05:58]:
Definitely. As the business grew, we really turned the dial on hiring. So one thing that I would constantly ask myself is, of course, any business wants to drive revenue, right? That's always the ultimate goal for just looking at it plainly, but in what way? So are we looking to double down on the people that currently support our customers, or are we looking to add new people or right side, Some kind of combination of both or kind of. What's the percentage on each side? And at the beginning of my tenure in enablement, we were very slow growing in a very consistent and intentional way. And so at the start, I actually found myself having a lot of time to dedicate towards existing teams building programs, which nothing existed. So that was good. When we fast forward and we even look at the last couple of years, it was tons of hiring, so absolutely. Like my team was supporting dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of people. We had cohorts every couple of weeks of new folks starting. So it was a constant process that you're also trying to evolve as you go.
Kyle Smith [00:07:03]:
On the fly.
Alex Yeaton [00:07:04]:
Yes.
Kyle Smith [00:07:05]:
Okay, we have a new class starting in three days. What are we going to tweak?
Alex Yeaton [00:07:09]:
Yeah, exactly. How are we going to find the time to onboard these people and then also iterate on the program and continue to make it better?
Kyle Smith [00:07:16]:
Yeah, you mentioned I wanted to circle back to onboarding, but you mentioned before the growth got crazy. Crazy. And you were doing onboarding all the time. You had the opportunity to design some programs for the existing team members. What are some of the ones that you found to be really impactful in terms of upskilling of the reps?
Alex Yeaton [00:07:32]:
At the start, we focused a lot on product, and in part it was for two reasons. One, we have this incredible sales culture where our AEs really owned the product and demoing. So yes, we had support of folks that sat in like a solution architect or sales engineer role, but we were really the experts. And that continues today, which I love. So a lot of upfront work was both to support kind of that culture or those expectations. And then also our product is so incredible and it's constantly evolving, so there's always something new. And inevitably those two things came together.
Alex Yeaton [00:08:11]:
And one of the biggest things I did at the start was product training, which was really fun and probably the project or the program that I look back on and feel the most proud of.
Kyle Smith [00:08:23]:
And do you find that AEs are more. AEs in particular, that's why I call them out, are more likely to lean in and get really excited about product training rather than sales training, because one is like, you're delivering information to me. That is not what I would consider to be my area of expertise. You're training me on products, so I'll listen and I'll lean in. Versus, if you train me on sales skills, I have my own personal bias about how it should be done and what I'm good at and what works. So I'm more resistant to outside input as to how I should sell. Did you find that to be the case?
Alex Yeaton [00:08:54]:
Yeah, 100%. I mean, for the tenured folks, those AEs that have been selling for a number of years, always super hungry for product knowledge, industry knowledge, competitive intelligence, right. Those are the things that tend to pique their interest. And if you have some newer AEs right there, maybe BDRs that were just promoted, they tend to be the group that of course, is naturally more hungry and more open to more of the sales training and kind of that sort of development.
Kyle Smith [00:09:22]:
Yeah, that makes sense. I'm sure it varied, but on the onboarding side, if we think about BDRs, how long do you think it should be before BDR actually just starts picking up the phone and making calls? Not like they're done onboarding, but they have to start, like, trying to put into practice what they've learned through the onboarding process.
Alex Yeaton [00:09:39]:
I think assuming that you don't have this super small addressable market where if you mess something up, you've just burned, you know, one of 2,000 customers, you could go after two weeks at the most. I think with sales in general, you're not learning anything until you do it. So there's always so much emphasis and talk about building courses, you know, building documentation to support account executives and to support BDRs. That's important, but it's only good if they can then take that information and actually practically apply it on the phones. The sooner the better. I'm kind of just choosing two weeks as some sort of average, but that's where they're going to learn the most and that's where they're going to fail fast.
Kyle Smith [00:10:20]:
And I think you just have to open, so when I think about the onboarding process, so much of it in a more well established or developed org is going to be owned by the enablement function. And so that's going to be largely classroom style learning. And there's just only so much openness or accepting of new information. Until you let me go out and prove to myself how much more information I need. Let me go get kicked in the teeth on five cold calls. It doesn't need to be a hundred. I go make five cold calls and I get one connect and I say, ah, okay, now I know why I need to pay more attention.
Kyle Smith [00:10:54]:
I have different questions for the next classroom-style session. I'm going to be more open to actually listening because I was sitting there at the end of day four, like, give me a phone, I got this. And then you realize very quickly you get humbled by your prospects very quickly and next thing you know, you're leaned further into the actual onboarding session, so I like adding those.
Alex Yeaton [00:11:14]:
Yeah. And I try to think about my own experiences learning as an adult. Like my husband and I took Spanish lessons for a while over a year. And you remember like, you know, I was in a session, it was over Zoom, and the teacher would be teaching us something and talking about something and he's like, do you understand? Do you get it? And I'm like, yes, a hundred percent. Yeah, see? And then he says, okay, let's have a conversation using it. And all of a sudden you're like, okay, I don't get it. I actually have no idea what I'm doing. And I think that that also happens a lot with anything with sales when you're learning something new. You can sit in the classroom and you can read something, you can take a quick multiple choice and be like, oh yeah, I got this. Go to get on the phone and actually articulate it. Actually have to deal with personalities, difficult questions. It's a whole other story.
Kyle Smith [00:12:02]:
Yeah, but I mean it's a important piece of the onboarding process I build out. Not always, but in general, I like the week one Friday afternoon. Week one Friday afternoon, you're gonna go make like 10, 12, 15 calls, something like that. Not you're not on the phones officially, but, but you're gonna go test out some stuff and we're gonna see where you're at. And so that Monday morning of week two of onboarding, where normally you have people who are like a little sluggish, not quite as enthused as they were the week before, and next thing you know they're all excited and eager to jump into onboarding. Yeah, I like that. Okay, what are some of the other. So that's a ton of evolution, lot of growth.
Kyle Smith [00:12:40]:
What are some of the biggest takeaways or learnings that you had over those five years in an enablement role at a rocket ship?
Alex Yeaton [00:12:47]:
Oh, only five. Having the ability to sell or be customer facing in some capacity really helps you be effective when you're trying to deploy enablement. And I'm not the type of enablement leader to say everyone on my team must have this like no exception, but I do often encourage folks that come to me and say, hey, I'm interested in enablement, what should I do? What can I do? And one of the first things I'll say is if you can spend some time in a customer facing role, even if it's a year, and get that experience to try to have that empathy. Because things moved so quickly at Klaviyo and they tend to in tech, just that's the culture at a lot of these companies that you have to have the ability to really easily critically think about what has to get done, identify the right problems and then deploy solutions that are actually going to be received well by the field. And that oftentimes is a lot easier said than done.
Kyle Smith [00:13:49]:
Yeah, I think it's two things that come from that experience and I don't know if it's a requirement and obviously I have massive bias because I like you started in those roles, so I think it's a positive thing, but I think one is you say things that pass a sniff test or you don't leave yourself open to somebody's like, well, you've never done it. You don't know what you're talking about because you've literally never made a cold call, you've never closed the deal. And if you've never done those things, sometimes there's a lack of reception from the audience because they don't believe what you're saying. Now that's fair or unfair, but the other piece that you were talking about is dead on, which is you being able to effectively communicate your ideas in a way that gets somebody to be fully bought in on what it is that you're trying to get them to do is a skill set that's super helpful. And so, yeah, I agree. I think that that's a really thing that's nice to have.
Kyle Smith [00:14:40]:
The one example that I think about that counters that is just like X players don't necessarily make the best coaches. So like they exist. Like you could have Bill Belichick who never played at a high level, who could be the greatest coach of all time, but it's probably more rare that you would find somebody who's never been in a customer-facing role who's going to be, you know, your rock star of enablement.
Alex Yeaton [00:15:02]:
Yeah. And I'm noticing a lot of evolution within enablement where years ago even when I started in enablement there was a big focus on enablement. Just being the experts of learning and instructional design and kind of being these master coordinators and people who can kind of draw on subject matter experts. All of those things are still true, but there is so much more of a need for enablement to have subject matter expertise in the areas that they are enabling themselves. So that's where that experience in the field, I think comes in and is the most valuable. If you're going to be supporting AEs, you're going to be asked now to have strategic opinions on what's going wrong or what could be improved and then apply the enablement solution to get there. So I'm starting to notice in conversations with different folks throughout the enablement space that everyone's starting to bump up against this, including folks that are interviewing for jobs.
Alex Yeaton [00:16:11]:
It's no longer good enough to kind of be the person who just coordinates, facilitates, maybe builds a little bit of content here or there. There's such a bigger need now for this element of almost go to market strategy and an understanding of how to drive the business forward that's being asked of enablement professionals.
Kyle Smith [00:16:28]:
Yeah. Which is excellent for enablement people. And then also I see enablement getting pulled into this is my concern with that is enablement starts to do more strategy, which is a positive. More people who can take a step back from hitting the number to actually think about what should we be doing. Because sometimes it's hard if all you're thinking about is just I gotta get my number, but then also enablement getting pulled into coaching. And so we start chipping away and they already do onboarding and RevOps, does reporting and now so all of a sudden you start chipping away, chipping away, chipping away.
Kyle Smith [00:17:02]:
And I'm looking at a manager and I'm saying what do you do here? If all of a sudden all these supporting functions start to whittle away? Now I know they have a really hard job. They do a million things, but it's a genuine question, like, you got to be careful about how much you're offloading onto all those supporting functions around you before somebody looks at your 230k package and just says to manage a team of seven and not coach them, not onboard them, not do any reporting up or down. It starts to be tough to answer the question, why should we continue to pay you at that rate?
Alex Yeaton [00:17:37]:
Yeah, it's a valid point. And I actually think that one of the biggest areas of opportunity, and it's one that I think collectively in the enablement space can struggle with for one reason or another, is being able to coach leaders to be an extension of us. So, right. Oftentimes we're thinking, okay, enablement is an extension of the sales manager. For example. I'm like, okay, what if we flip it and the sales manager is an extension of us? And what I mean by that is always prioritize all of the coaching and the training and the support that you're giving as an enablement team or an enablement individual, a team of one. Start with the leaders.
Alex Yeaton [00:18:19]:
Because to your point, we can't do it. All right. As soon as the team gets to 30, 40 AEs, and now you're asking enablement to coach those people that are existing in the seat onboard the new people, work with product marketing, find some competitive intelligence. The list goes on and on, right? It. Yeah. It becomes difficult to be great at any of those things. You're kind of just scraping by.
Alex Yeaton [00:18:39]:
But I do think that there is a way, and some people in the field are starting to crack this, to kind of have the best of both worlds. And I think a lot of it begins with prioritizing leadership development and prioritizing actually making sure that the managers have the skills to do the coaching right. And to have those sorts of interactions with their AEs. Because sometimes there's a gap there.
Kyle Smith [00:19:01]:
Yeah. And then if enablement owns, let's call it deployment, enablement owns deployment, management owns reinforcement and iteration. That that is a flow that works because enablement can deploy at scale across all the different teams, all the different reps, all the different regions, divisions, whatever the org complexity requires, but then the managers have to make sure that that actually sticks and that holds true and get them through to the next enablement session. So they're the ones who are bridging the gap between these massive knowledge dumps to make sure that it actually makes its way into how they're going about executing their job. And so if that motion has been established, then you're golden, but to your point, you can't just expect that they're gonna do that. And that doesn't mean the managers just show up to the training session you have scheduled for reps and just innately know what to do following that, like, yep, got it.
Kyle Smith [00:19:53]:
Saw what you presented to them and I know exactly how I'm gonna reinforce it. So I like your idea about starting with or at least making the managers a high priority to ensure that that does indeed happen. Did you build any leadership development-specific programs or anything like that?
Alex Yeaton [00:20:09]:
No, I didn't build any specific programs for leaders, but we especially the last couple of years, really had an emphasis on beginning with the leaders, so we would have separate sessions if we were rolling out. It could have been a change to pricing, it could be sales methodology. There's a number of things, really, anything we would try to start with them. And to your earlier point, it's making sure. Did they actually get it right? Are they in the Spanish lesson just nodding and saying, yes, I get it. And then they're going to get into those one and ones they're going to get into those deal reviews and they're going to either mess it up, which honestly that's the preferred to the other thing which can happen is they don't do it at all, right.
Alex Yeaton [00:20:54]:
They just are like, I'm not even going to try, so there are so many great things though, that can be done, leadership programs that I've seen folks in the enablement space do. So that's something that I'm excited to do in the future.
Kyle Smith [00:21:06]:
Okay, and so what else? Other big takeaways or lessons learned?
Alex Yeaton [00:21:14]:
The biggest thing I'd probably go back in time and do differently is very basic, but foundational in a way that I think that it would have made my life easier down the line is I would have gone at the start to the leaders to say we need to be clear on process and expectations. It doesn't mean that the process needs to be that way for the rest of time. It doesn't mean that the expectations have to be a hundred percent crystal clear. We all feel amazing, but we need to start somewhere. Because what ends up happening down the line is things fail, right? The machine breaks. And it's everybody's natural instinct to say they don't have the information they need to do their job or they don't have the skills they need to do their job. Sometimes that's true, but there's a lot of other gaps that can exist that are not always Just tied to knowledge and skills. It's really tied to someone not having clear expectations, not having clear process.
Alex Yeaton [00:22:22]:
Sometimes it's even things like motivators or just the environment in general. And I think I would have saved myself a lot of failed attempts to solve a skill or knowledge gap that wasn't actually a skill or knowledge gap if I had tried to get some alignment on more of the process and expectations at the jump.
Kyle Smith [00:22:41]:
It's funny, as we talk about like skill development, essentially people management and everything, it always just closely correlates to me to just any relationship with anyone you have professional or personal uncommunicated expectations. Not typically great for any relationship. So yeah, that makes a lot of sense to gain alignment on that. So that is a lesson learned. Other lesson learned. Like, what's something that you, you tried or started that you will never do again?
Alex Yeaton [00:23:09]:
My gosh, we tried so many things and I wouldn't say that there's anything where I'm like, oh, wow, I would definitely never do that again. I think that it's almost that I wished I had recognized early on that that's part of the journey. You're going to try a lot of things. When you're working at a business that's evolving so quickly, problems are cropping up day after day. It's just the natural way to grow. Expectations are changing whether we know it or not, right. There's a lot of different things that are happening.
Alex Yeaton [00:23:42]:
It's inevitable that you can create an A plus program. Let's take onboarding, for example. January 1st. It is solid. It is awesome. It is solving our problems. Everybody is doing amazing. Fast forward a year, that same program could utterly fail.
Alex Yeaton [00:23:59]:
And so you're thinking, well, wait a second, a year, eight, nine months, that's not that long, but in a company that is moving so quickly, the product is evolving so quickly, the process is, you know, the market is shifting, there's new competitors. There's just so much happening. You have to keep those programs updated even if they were, quote, unquote, the perfect solution when they were first released. And so I think this is a long way of saying that. I think a lesson for me was recognizing that most programs do inevitably fail, for lack of a better word, if you don't continuously iterate them and make sure that you're measuring the right things at the start.
Kyle Smith [00:24:43]:
Yeah, it's like data. It degrades over time. It needs a refresh. Like, your list is perfect today. A year from now, 20% of those people don't work at those companies. Anymore. It doesn't mean that the remaining 80% is bad. It doesn't mean the whole list is bad.
Kyle Smith [00:24:58]:
Like you have 80% that's still good. It just means it needs a refresh. Content for training is the same exact thing. It was perfect and then it became less relevant as time went on. For all the things that you just mentioned, there's just constant changes the way that it goes and so you just got to give it a refresh. What does it make sense to be doing right now? And one of the elements that you mentioned I feel like is one of the not ignored but at a minimum deprioritized elements of what enablement could be bringing to the table, which is the market, market overview, market trends, market challenges. So like we use Klaviyo as the example constantly delivering. This is the best of what's working for marketing for e commerce companies as an example.
Kyle Smith [00:25:40]:
And just like broad best practice delivery, I am educating the team not on even like messaging, pricing, packaging, product, nothing. It's just here is what good looks like and the trends within marketing for e-commerce companies. Here's what the cool kids are doing, here's what some of like the bigger like legacy companies even shifts that they're making. Just like here's what's going on within this market that we sell into. And now sometimes we could force feed them what to do with that, but sometimes it's just like let that settle into your brain and focus enablement and reinforcement on how to take information that I give you and figure out places to put that, but I feel like not a lot of people do that.
Alex Yeaton [00:26:20]:
It can be tough. You have to make such an effort to prioritize. I've never had a job of any kind that has forced me to be so intentional and consistent with thinking about prioritization as enablement. And I think it is because there are so many things you can be doing with like market industry. I always find that the best thing is see if you can get customers and partners to come in and speak with the team that allows you to have them communicate kind of what they're seeing and what they're feeling in the space. And it gives you a little bit of a breather in enablement to focus on the hundred other things. So there are some areas where like I said earlier, enablement is really now being expected to be the subject matter expert, but that doesn't mean that there aren't places where you can and should bring in people to be in front of the team to share their experiences and I think this market industry knowledge is one of those areas because your customers voices and your partner's voices, those are going to be the ones that really pique everyone's interest and then give everybody that information that they need to bring to the phones.
Kyle Smith [00:27:34]:
Well, yeah, and then it's not you regurgitating somebody else's words, it's them sharing their own experience. And change of voice is super helpful. I win a lot of business that way. I could say a very similar thing that VPS Sales has been saying for three years, but you're the same person saying it the same way to the same group. And so sometimes you just need somebody else to come and communicate something extremely similar in a slightly different way, but I'm new, they haven't heard me say it 50 times over and maybe their ears are opened a little bit wider during that session. And so we talk about that a lot. Like change of voice actually is a super helpful tactic to lean on when trying to get a team on board with certain pieces of information.
Kyle Smith [00:28:18]:
So customer stories, market trends, great example and idea for that. Okay, job search. So you left Klaviyo and started thinking about what you were going to do. So how, when you're thinking about the next company that you're going to join and the type of enablement role you want to enter into, just like what are, what's some of the key criteria? What are you looking for in a company to think about what's going to be a good spot to continue your career?
Alex Yeaton [00:28:44]:
Yeah, I think for me I started by thinking about kind of the two opposite ends of the spectrum, so one end is the startup life, right. You're the first enablement person, it's a builder role. And then all the way on the other side, right, you might join a really established company. You're probably going to be expected to be more of a specialist and you're going to be thinking a lot more about fine tuning, right. Optimizing than Net new building. And then there's a lot that can fall in the middle depending upon the company and the type of team that you're joining.
Alex Yeaton [00:29:21]:
For me, I spent a lot of time thinking about this because at Klaviyo I was lucky to see the evolution of the business. And actually, you know, I would joke that every 12 to 16 months it felt like I was at a new company because we were growing so quickly and everything was evolving. So I was able to kind of see and feel what it was like to be in different environments for enablement. And for me personally, I really started to miss the builder role like the early days. We have more problems than we know what to do with. We also have no idea what we're doing as a business, right. We need help and enablement.
Alex Yeaton [00:29:57]:
We need to figure out how to make people more efficient. We need to onboard people into the business more efficiently and more quickly. We have this amazing product, but there's so much to learn about it. We need someone to make sure that we can get that information to the reps in the best way, so on and so forth. And so through having conversations with people that were at companies in enablement roles of varying sizes, little by little it became clear that for me I was ready to get back into more of that kind of generalist build mode versus go to the other side and try to get really specialized and be more of the person who's like pulling at the little pieces that need to be optimized.
Kyle Smith [00:30:38]:
Yeah, I lean into chaos. That's not what you said, but that's what it makes me think of. I love a little chaos. Let me try to make order of this chaos. That's a fun project. And then what about, did you care about? What other stuff do you look at? So size totally makes sense. Like literally, what are you going to do and what will your impact on the organization be based on their growth stage or size? Did you care about the actual product or technology or anything? Well, yeah. What other stuff did you look at?
Alex Yeaton [00:31:07]:
I did. So I was so lucky working at Klaviyo. It was just like the coolest product from day one. And I think the thing that I really loved about it was how relatable it was. So it was something where I'm like, okay, yeah, I understand online shopping, right. I've done that once or twice. You know, I get these emails, I get these text messages and I really felt like I could get into the shoes of not only our customers, but their customers.
Alex Yeaton [00:31:34]:
Right, and an e-comm shopper. And so when I was thinking about where to go next, the product was definitely important to me, but I wasn't so specific on the type of product or who the end user is. I was more so again looking for that kind of relatability. Like, I want a product that excites me. I want a product that I'd be like, I would use that. And so ultimately, that became kind of the number one requirement from a product perspective.
Kyle Smith [00:32:05]:
And then what is the team? So the team that you'll be joining, what roles do they have? And is there anything new or different that you're thinking about in terms of programs to support them.
Alex Yeaton [00:32:15]:
Yeah, they have an awesome SDR team, they have AEs, they have AM CSMs and they really don't have any enablement programming in place today, which honestly really excites me. So they've been onboarding folks who kind of in the way that's typical for a smaller business. Everybody's kind of helping each other, stepping in. People are listening to call recordings or shadowing and trying to piece it together as they go. It's exactly right. I remember when I was first in ae, I was handed my laptop and I was told, good luck.
Kyle Smith [00:32:45]:
You're like, that person's good. Do what they do. Got it.
Alex Yeaton [00:32:48]:
Yeah, right, exactly. Like, okay. And so yeah, there's not much. I mean they've been able to really create some awesome ways to share knowledge and information with each other, which I really admire, but I am so excited to get in there and just make sense of it. Like you said, I also a chaos chaser. Call me crazy, but I'm really ready to say, all right, let's take some of this stuff and let's get efficient with it.
Alex Yeaton [00:33:15]:
Let's get a well-oiled machine going.
Kyle Smith [00:33:17]:
Cool. Yeah, very exciting. All right, well, so if people want to pick your brain about more things enablement related, bounce ideas off of you, how can they reach out?
Alex Yeaton [00:33:27]:
LinkedIn is always best. So you can find me on LinkedIn. Alexandra Yeaton, just shoot me a message. I'm always happy to chat, whether it's just over DM or jumping on a zoom call. Some of my favorite things to do in those spare minutes of every day is chatting with other folks are either in enablement or are looking to get into enablement.
Kyle Smith [00:33:46]:
Great. Thank you so much.
Alex Yeaton [00:33:48]:
Thanks, Kyle.
Kyle Smith [00:33:50]:
Thanks for listening to this episode of Market Mastery brought to you by The Bridge Group. If you're a revenue leader in the B2B sales space or know someone who is, connect with me on LinkedIn. Don't forget to subscribe to stay updated on future episodes.