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In this episode of The Future of Selling podcast, host Rick Smith sits down with Andrew "AD" D’Agostino, a sales enablement leader with deep expertise in aligning teams, simplifying processes, and driving revenue growth. With over 14 years of experience, AD has navigated the startup journey, scaled revenue to $50M, led through 10+ acquisitions, and now plays a critical role in sales enablement at Conquer.
💡 Key Topics Covered:
✅ What sales enablement really means and why it’s more than just training
✅ The top three components of a high-impact sales enablement strategy
✅ How to align sales, marketing, and customer success with a common language
✅ The role of ruthless qualification in boosting deal velocity 🚀
✅ The game-changing impact of AI on coaching and sales enablement
✅ Tools and strategies to cut friction and increase flow in the selling process
✅ What sales enablement really means and why it’s more than just training
✅ The top three components of a high-impact sales enablement strategy
✅ How to align sales, marketing, and customer success with a common language
✅ The role of ruthless qualification in boosting deal velocity 🚀
✅ The game-changing impact of AI on coaching and sales enablement
✅ Tools and strategies to cut friction and increase flow in the selling process
AD shares real-world insights, practical frameworks like MEDDIC and force management, and actionable takeaways for sales enablement professionals looking to simplify, align, and drive results.
🔔 Don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more insights from top sales and enablement leaders!
Creators and Guests
What is The Future of Selling?
The Future of Selling is the go-to podcast for sales professionals looking to sharpen their skills and stay ahead in the competitive world of B2B sales. Each episode features expert interviews, real-world case studies, and actionable tips to help you navigate the complex B2B buyer's journey. Whether you're dealing with long sales cycles, multiple decision-makers, or rapidly changing technologies, we’ve got you covered. Tune in to discover the latest trends, best practices, and proven strategies for closing more deals and building lasting relationships in the B2B space. Perfect for sales leaders, account managers, and anyone aiming to master the art of B2B selling.
Future Of Selling (00:01.38)
Hey everybody, welcome to the Future of Selling podcast. We are here to dive into trends, challenges, innovations that are shaping the sales landscape. I'm your host Rick Smith, I'm the Chief Customer Officer at Concur. Concur is a sales enablement platform that lives directly inside of Salesforce. So with Concur, there's no data syncs, there's no integrations, there's no anything to get in the way of performance for your sales team. So everything we do,
is based on reducing the friction in the selling motion, increasing the flow and impacting results. So that's what we're about. We also work with some of largest enterprise companies in the world. We're really proud of that. And I've been in and around sales for most of my career, client success, a and chief revenue officer as well, and now a chief customer officer at Concur. So...
Andrew D'Agostino (00:49.614)
Thank
Future Of Selling (00:58.928)
So that's kind of a little bit about our podcast and what about me, but let's talk about our guest. Our guest today is Andrew D'Agostino. Andrew has been in, or I'm sorry, he began working at an HR tech company when he was in college. And for 14 years, he was part of that journey. And I'm familiar with this company. I've kind of worked alongside of it, right? But for 14 years, he was with this company. He went from startup
to over $50 million in revenue. So the guy has got tons of experience. He's going to have a ton of things to share with us today. He actually held nine different job titles and went through 10 or over 10 acquisitions. I can't imagine that. That's a lot of acquisition to go through, but I'm sure that's going to come up at some point or another. And he spent his last four years as a leader in sales enablement. So Andrew has been with, and you know what? I'm going to stop calling him Andrew now.
His name that we call him AD internally, and I think that's what everybody else calls him. So, uh, AD has been with us for, for about three weeks here at Conqueror, but he's just that kind of guy that he feels like he's been here for three years. He just kind of immediately jumped into the team and is already having an impact on our organization, on our clients and everything that we're doing. So, uh, um, AD welcome. Glad you're here on the podcast today.
Andrew D'Agostino (02:20.478)
Happy to be here, Rick. I'm really excited for this and thank you for having me.
Future Of Selling (02:24.048)
Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I always like to start with a few fun facts, right? Because it's one thing to have a guest on and talk about all the cool things we just said, the 14 years and, know, and all the things. But I want people to know you're like a real person, you're really, you know, like they can kind of connect with you. So I've got a few fun facts here that we put together and just run them by. can comment on them if you want. But fun fact number one, you own a farm.
I had no idea you had a farm and on top of that, you're a budding real estate mogul. So that's kind of cool, right? I mean, you know.
Andrew D'Agostino (03:02.016)
Yeah, it's been an adventure. I never thought my life would take me here. It just kind of happened in one of those magical ways. Yeah, we have about seven acres in upstate New York. And right now we just have a couple of horses and barn cats and otherwise. But we used to have a whole farm. So we had goats and we had sheep, we had alpacas. We had two exotic animals. So this African ram is called an owdad.
thing was wild, huge curling horns. And we had an exotic small deer, they're called munchak deers, were about like this big off the ground. So it's been it's been a really cool thing to be a part of this.
Future Of Selling (03:39.951)
Yeah.
Future Of Selling (03:43.856)
wow. My wife would love that. She wants to have a farm and I'm like, all right, maybe one these days. anyway, that's front fact number one. That's interesting. You also have a master's degree in industrial and organizational psychology, which immediately connected with me because I've spent like a number of years, almost 12, 15 years working for organizations that really that was their...
their principal offering was science based on industrial organizational psychology. So that's really cool. And then also you're in college, were a coxswain. tell me, so I've looked it up, right? But for anybody else who's listening, they're like, what the heck is that? Give us 15 seconds on what that means and what you were doing.
Andrew D'Agostino (04:25.454)
You
Andrew D'Agostino (04:33.582)
Yes, yes, so funny. So yeah, I was a lot skinnier and lighter in college. So it's about 135 pounds, but I wanted to do sports. And you know, what do you do when you're that small? I came across a rowing team on campus. And they're like, you're perfect for this. Yeah, and I spent the next four years in the back of the boat, we were staring ahead and all the rowers are facing you. And I learned how to steer the boats.
Future Of Selling (04:52.432)
Right.
Andrew D'Agostino (05:03.89)
Really good leadership skills. I would highly recommend this for younger kids. You have to command, you have to correct, you have to plot a course. Amazing. So I spent four years, 4.20 a.m. waking up and we'd be on the river and then until 7.30 a.m. and then I coached a little bit afterwards for about a year and a half. So it was an amazing experience.
Future Of Selling (05:17.05)
Hope to
Future Of Selling (05:28.334)
Yeah, that's really cool. Are you still getting up at 420 a.m.? Is that the story? Sleep later? All right.
Andrew D'Agostino (05:32.832)
No, no, I had to give it up. I tried to make it work with a career and I give so much credit to those who are able to but I was, you know, waking up 430 and getting back around at like 1030pm. It just it's hard thing to sustain.
Future Of Selling (05:39.215)
Yeah.
Future Of Selling (05:46.532)
Yeah. Yeah. Got it. Got it. Well, that's cool, man. So, so a lot of really neat things in your background, right, from being a part of that startup and that whole journey that you're on. And I think that will kind of help lead us into some of the conversation today. So, you know, today we're going to talk about and we're going to focus on sales enablement, right, which is really where Conquer lives anyway. We live in that space. So
Andrew D'Agostino (06:10.702)
Mm-hmm.
Future Of Selling (06:14.48)
But with your expertise, I think it'll be a really good conversation. let me ask you first, how do you define sales enablement? And why is that? Why do you believe that's so critical for a modern sales organization?
Andrew D'Agostino (06:29.804)
it's a good question, a big question. And I think my, yes, and I think my answer would have been different if you asked me this 10 years ago, because a lot has changed in this whole space, really, really evolving over the past years. The way I view sales enablement and how it's evolved is it's increasingly becoming this connective tissue in an organization to help
Future Of Selling (06:31.812)
There's a big list right there
Andrew D'Agostino (06:57.9)
what I like to think is go to market activation. And so really, you know, as we're making strategic changes in the org, we need to operationalize those changes. We need to work together and connect the different parts of the company, very much like working hand in hand with product marketing and product management to say, how do we take this and then sell it and operationalize that? That's how I kind of view it. And I think I would also add that like
Future Of Selling (07:22.862)
Right. Okay.
Andrew D'Agostino (07:27.2)
It's almost, this happened in my past life where it evolved, starting with sales enablements, it morphed into a broader go to market enablements to bring in the account management teams and help activate them to work with marketing. And so there's a lot of like pieces that are coming together.
Future Of Selling (07:40.634)
Yeah.
Future Of Selling (07:44.57)
Yeah, yeah. No, that's good because I remember back rewind 15 years ago, sales enablement was really all about training, right? Or that's how we defined it at one of the companies I was at. You looked at somebody in sales enablement, they were basically training the sales team how to sell, how to talk about their products. But from your perspective, it's gotten much bigger than that. really are kind of to some degree playing the point guard of the team, right? Pulling everybody together and making sure that the plays are running.
Andrew D'Agostino (07:51.949)
Yes.
Andrew D'Agostino (08:10.222)
That's right.
Future Of Selling (08:14.244)
That's cool. What do you think the key components of a high impact sales enablement strategy looks like? I'm a big list guy. I'm always thinking about what's the top three? What's the top five? So what do you think? What are the key elements?
Andrew D'Agostino (08:28.78)
Yeah.
Andrew D'Agostino (08:32.558)
Yeah, that's a good question. think number one is a very close connection to leadership and making sure that you're prioritizing the initiatives that are top of mind in the organization. So really you're helping them to activate the strategies and to use your language to the plays that you're about to run. it's staying very close to kind of what is the focus? What's the KPIs that we're looking for? What is the
Q1, Q2, Q3, annual goals. And that becomes like a foundation. The second thing I would say is, like your job in enablement, I think is really about translating. It's about taking things and then turning that into language that other functions in the organization will understand. And so they know their place relative to the...
to number one, which is the strategy that you're trying to execute. Yep. And then I think the third one is making sure that what we're doing is for revenue, I should say. It's like moving revenue forward. think this is something that enablement teams have to watch out for is you're going to get bombarded with lots of requests around the organization.
But our jobs are, at the end of the day, are to advance revenue. And everything needs to be in that line. Yeah, those are kind of the top ones, I think.
Future Of Selling (10:05.508)
Okay. Got it. close connection with leadership and make sure you're in prioritization, which is so important because in a company like ours or in any, you know, in your startup, that you're in, there's so many things, right, to take your attention away from, you know, what matters. And truly, it all matters, right? But at some point you got to prioritize and you got to decide, okay, what's first, what's second, what's third? So prioritization.
Andrew D'Agostino (10:13.186)
Mm-hmm.
Future Of Selling (10:34.576)
translating and turning that into the language that everybody can speak and getting everybody on the same page and making sure that you're moving the revenue forward as a target. Okay.
Andrew D'Agostino (10:48.204)
Yeah, and I have one more to add. Sorry. This is like as enablement, you can be the secret weapon of an executive team of the CRO, CSO, because our job is also to be a feedback loop to leadership on how things are progressing in the organization, what's really going on under the hood, and then being able to say, great, we want to this strategy. Here are the blocks that I found in the organization that we should talk about.
Future Of Selling (10:50.372)
Yeah, I it now. Good.
Andrew D'Agostino (11:17.934)
moving forward and they may not know at the top, right? And so your job is to help like be this feedback loop for them as well.
Future Of Selling (11:24.996)
Right. Got it. Got it. Okay. That's, that's perfect. What, do you think are some of the biggest challenges that, that, that face sales teams today or probably sales enablement teams today? What do you, what do you see?
Andrew D'Agostino (11:38.038)
Yeah, and I was thinking about this earlier because it's so funny, know, joining Conquer and you're a big proponent of the friction versus flow concept. And I think that really resonates with me because I see that in enablement. Our job is to simplify. we cannot, our sellers are trying to manage so many different components at the same time. And our job is to help them make that easier.
And so whatever we do, we need to put this through a lens of simplicity. Whether that's people, process, operations, data, it all has to be put through a lens of simplicity.
Future Of Selling (12:19.844)
Right, right, okay, gotcha. And so to turn that into simplicity, I think part of that probably is making sure that, and I think that may go back to one of your other points, but just making sure that everybody can easily consume the information and also speaking the same language, right? Because there's nothing more distracting than having the sales team talk about what you do one way, having the customer success team talk about what you do another way, and then you got other people that are somewhere in between.
Andrew D'Agostino (12:38.882)
Yes.
Andrew D'Agostino (12:48.462)
Yep.
Future Of Selling (12:49.456)
How do you do that? How do you get people, how do you align that, right? Because there's, know, everybody sees the elephant from a different perspective, but you're trying to get everybody in one, kind of from one point of view. So what's the magic between pulling those teams together to speak to the same language?
Andrew D'Agostino (12:51.309)
Mm.
Andrew D'Agostino (13:04.364)
Yeah, I think this is like also this is probably some enablement teams biggest challenges. I have found success and what I would recommend is creating a common like framework to work off of that you can then align teams to. So I've had a lot of success with different, you know, sales methodologies or go to market methodologies in the past. I'm big proponent of MEDDIC because it's kind of like
Future Of Selling (13:19.342)
Okay. Okay.
Andrew D'Agostino (13:32.652)
this is just the how it is and everyone can wrap themselves around like, these are the metrics we know, here's the decision process. And so using MEDDIC as a framework, also I have found a good common language. We've implemented force management in my past life, but a way that really just gives people the way to look at something and speak about it. So that we know, for example, that
we call PBOs, positive business outcomes, we can say, what's the PBO of the account that you have, customer service manager, or to the rep, the sales rep, what's the positive business outcomes of the prospect that you're talking to? And so now you've given them a way to speak to each other. And so finding that framework is really important.
Future Of Selling (14:22.48)
Yeah, and it sounds like installing kind of a common language, right? I know in one of the startups I was in, that was a big piece of it, right? Just, again, getting everybody talking from the same, not the same script, but a common language that brought everyone together, right? So if for anybody that doesn't have never heard the term force management, give us a little bit more around that if you don't mind.
Andrew D'Agostino (14:26.509)
Yes.
Andrew D'Agostino (14:39.661)
Yes.
Andrew D'Agostino (14:48.214)
Yeah, it's just there another methodology that I found very successful. I've implemented multiple in the past, multiple methodologies that we had successful challenger sales. If you're not familiar with them, it's another like methodology and force management is really great methodology that has some buying components up vertically in the organization and horizontally. And they just give us a way to talk to each other and to analyze something.
Future Of Selling (14:53.018)
Okay.
Andrew D'Agostino (15:16.984)
The way that I view what I said earlier with MEDDIC, I love MEDDIC because it is your x-ray device into an opportunity, into a account, into an upsell, and basically it's a way that you can view that opportunity at a specific point in time, just as a doctor would do an x-ray. And then a methodology is really helpful because it's the treatment plan.
Future Of Selling (15:35.78)
Right. Yeah.
Andrew D'Agostino (15:42.19)
It's the way said, okay, here's the x-ray. Here's what I'm seeing and then here's how we get them to the next step and the treatment of whatever the methodology is and how to move the deal forward
Future Of Selling (15:52.976)
Okay, gotcha. When you think about sales enablement, what are some of the key metrics for you? I I'm a big proponent of you got to know what your targets are. For me, chief customer officer, right? What's our gross retention? What's our net retention? What's our CSAT? What's our NPS? What about you? From a sales enablement standpoint, what are the big metrics that say, we're killing it or we got some work to do here?
Andrew D'Agostino (16:19.116)
Yes, and this is, think all enablement people are trying to define this. In some organizations, it's better to find than others. One of the things is where, how big your organization is will impact this and where you report into. So if you're more traditional like sales enablement and you're really focused on the sellers, then it's going to, if you're doing a good job at enablement, your, your sales process, your sales cycle should be faster.
So smaller sales cycles. So you should be able to move through the process faster and ultimately get to deal close faster. I think also like time between stages, however you're defining that in your process, right? You can have a real big impact at certain stages. Maybe not so much in the legal phase, we might be able to impact that, but like moving from prospect into opportunity, you can really have an
and ultimately, I think if you're doing a good job at sales enablement, then you should ultimately tracking the size of your opportunities, right? Size of the deals close because if you're able to better influence a rep, and be able to offer more, make a better compelling points, make the pain a little bit deeper for that prospect. You should be able to see higher deals because of that. I would say.
Future Of Selling (17:45.306)
Got it, got it. Okay, so shorter sale cycle, improve velocity by state as well. And then also just size and size of the opportunities and deals that are closing should be, you should see those increasing. have you measured that before in your past, I mean, is there a good way to measure that from your perspective in some of your past roles?
Andrew D'Agostino (17:46.68)
Those are good focus to start.
Andrew D'Agostino (17:54.135)
Yes.
Andrew D'Agostino (18:10.732)
Yes, and this is another little tip that if in enablements, you should become best friends with your rev ops individuals and colleagues because this is important and you can make a lot of influence together rather than separate, but they're also your best friend at getting this information and being able to say, okay, here's where we're at right now and here's where we want to be. Let's start making moving the needle. So I found
There's a lot of things that influence deal size and that's a little bit harder and lagging indicator. But deal velocity and speed, you can track a little bit faster. And so I usually like to start there. Let's try and improve that. Sorry, there's one more that, which I think we're going to talk about a bit, but ramp time of new reps is also somewhere you can have a direct impact pretty quickly.
Future Of Selling (19:07.792)
Okay, I get the ramp time. That's an easy one for me to follow, right? You're better trained. understand, they don't have to make tons and tons of mistakes to get there, right? You're showing them, here's the path. How does it increase, or how does a strong sales enablement approach and team and strategy lower, or I'm sorry, increase velocity?
Andrew D'Agostino (19:33.238)
Yeah, I think there's a couple ways that this, you know, operationalizes. So one is your, if you're training, coaching, giving reps a better way to talk to their prospects, they should be able to qualify in or out much more quickly. And we, I used to talk about this, like, and I know we we're going to bring this into conquer, but ruthless qualification. It is so important to be
Future Of Selling (19:58.426)
haha
Andrew D'Agostino (20:02.286)
Ruthless about it. You know, I'd say that very cheekily, like this, this is a way I've seen so many reps spend time on the wrong opportunities that were never going to go anywhere or that were a pie in the sky. And it's just, you have to train them to be able to move quicker in or out, get the deal moved faster or don't spend your time on it. It's just not worth it. And so that's where I've seen like a lot of impact. I think too, if you're, if you're giving the reps the right materials and assets,
Future Of Selling (20:11.322)
Yeah. Yeah.
Future Of Selling (20:23.781)
Right.
Andrew D'Agostino (20:32.246)
and the right training, they should be able to say things and deliver assets to their prospects that help make the case more quickly and move them through the process faster.
Future Of Selling (20:41.68)
That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. That makes perfect sense. Okay. Roofless qualification. I remember that. I like that phrase. So how do you, from a sales enablement standpoint, how do you make sure that your sales reps are actually implementing what they're learning, basically what you're teaching them? I mean, how do you keep up with that?
Andrew D'Agostino (20:48.61)
Yes. Yeah.
Andrew D'Agostino (21:07.222)
Yeah, this is the ultimate, like, I think, you know, this is the hardest part of the job. And especially as the organization, if you're a smaller organization and you're moving so quickly, it's hard to actually measure transfer of training. And at the end of the day, I train, like, either my enablement team or if it's just me, really staying close to the reps after you've deployed a change.
Future Of Selling (21:14.884)
Okay.
Andrew D'Agostino (21:37.038)
watching their Gong calls to see if they're using this, if you're using Gong, whatever recording service you're using, if you're able to measure their data and be a part of the sales leaders' conversations, so whoever the sales manager is, enablement should be on those meetings with that sales manager to be able to see if effects are taking hold. And if they're not, that's data for us. That's why. Why did this intervention not improve?
Future Of Selling (22:05.156)
Yeah, right.
Andrew D'Agostino (22:05.762)
So it's a lot of looking at that rev ops data too, to understand, hey, are these leading or lagging indicators that I'm deploying? should I see something immediately or maybe it's gonna take some time. And as long as we all are aware of that and we're tracking it to see if that's improvement is occurring.
Future Of Selling (22:24.836)
Yeah. Okay. If I were a new sales enablement leader or person that came into a company, let's say they've got a wheels off approach to their sales. How important is it in creating like a, I mean, should I think about creating a certification process? Is that one of the ways that I make sure that the sales team is actually taking what we're providing them, the training we're providing them and using that in the field or?
Or is that a bad idea?
Andrew D'Agostino (22:55.328)
No, it's not a bad idea at all. I think it could definitely help. A lot of this, I would say, all the trainings that enablement does or interventions are really also impacted by the managers of the field. So whether this is a sales VP, sales manager, account manager, VP, whatever it is, it's making sure you're close to that.
layer as well because they're going to support you in this. And they're also going to give you the feedback. Sometimes it's hard to get feedback as an enablement team. you really, by getting the rev ops, being close with rev ops and this layer of management, you can get that information quicker. And they'll tell you, they'll tell you if like, this is not working or, hey, only a piece of this worked, we need more help here. You won't know that if you're not talking to these groups.
Future Of Selling (23:49.712)
Okay, got it. So feedback has come up a couple of times now, just making sure that you're connected with the leadership team, certainly connected with the individual sellers as well, right? I mean, that's important, but making sure that you're connected with the leadership team, gathering that feedback from them, then kind of using a cycle, get the feedback and then re-engage that into what you're doing is an important key.
Andrew D'Agostino (24:15.126)
Yeah. And I think too, there's ways now with technology, this is much easier than it was for me like 10, 15 years ago. I always, enablement teams should have also like a really easy, I think it's so easy to do and not enough teams do this, just create like a form and whatever project management tool you're using and deploy it to the field. Make sure that it's in their faces so that they are, that people in the field can easily say this work, this did it, or, I'm missing this asset.
Future Of Selling (24:20.58)
Yeah.
Andrew D'Agostino (24:44.962)
And you'll be surprised once you give the field a tool like that, you're going to start getting so much inputs, almost like too much, but in a good way, right? Now you can make decisions. Yeah.
Future Of Selling (24:55.066)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point though. Cause you know, one of my, one of my, my belief says for things like this, you've got to have a clear point of entry. You know, where am I going to put that feedback? Right. Because otherwise I end up, I'm, I find the seller, I'm in a, I'm in an engagement with a customer or a prospect and I don't have something like, well, what do I, okay, I don't have something. What do I do with this need? Who do I tell what, you know, I ended up writing on a piece of paper and it never goes anywhere.
But if you've got something like you're talking about that you've put in place that says, okay, here's your point of entry. You have feedback, put it here. I could see that being really, really effective for the field and for sales enablement as well. So awesome. How do you balance? So being around kind of the industry for a while, I know that, you know, more experienced sales reps may struggle more than newer reps with
a new enablement initiative, right? Or, you know, here's how we need to say things. Here's how we need to present things. Have you come up against that? And if so, how did you navigate that and get through it?
Andrew D'Agostino (26:06.062)
Yeah, it's a real thing that happens. It is, absolutely. No, you did not. Depending on what sales framework you're using, they have different terms for this, like a lone wolf, for example, in a challenger world. Or the person who's just really focused on how they've done sales. sometimes...
Future Of Selling (26:10.192)
Alright, that's good.
Andrew D'Agostino (26:33.77)
Here's the reality. Sometimes they're never going to get there. And that's a management challenge and something that why enablement needs to stay close with this management layer to be able to give feedback. But it's also something where I've found success, like being professionally persistent and direct with these individuals tends to help. So for example, in the past, when I've had this,
I'll book like a 30 minute check in with them or 15 minute and I will say, hey, be direct like, I'm trying to do this thing. I know this, so you're not using it. I do want to talk about it because I want to make sure that we're both on the same page and we can move forward together. And I feel that a lot of reps respond well to those conversations because that's how they operate, right? They're a seller. They're trying to move prospects and buyers.
forward and they're very direct. So sometimes you need to change your intervention style in a tactful way.
Future Of Selling (27:37.555)
Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that makes perfect sense. Yeah, people want to be. I agree with you. think people want to be engaged, right. And because in doing and taking that approach, what you're really doing is saying, hey, I value you. I don't expect you just to listen to what I what I'm saying and follow the rules. Right. Because, you know, a of people don't like follow the rules. Right. But they do want to be valued and they want their point of view valued. So I think I think that's a great
I don't know if that's a strategy or a tactic, but whichever it is, I think that's a great way to approach that. AI is everywhere. It's on the scene everywhere. We've been talking about, think, on every podcast that we've had so far. How is AI impacting sales enablement?
Andrew D'Agostino (28:26.23)
the yes, it is impacting it. It's amazing. I'm going through this right now, Rick, like because the explosion is happening like the of AI and it's so cool. I, you know, it took me a little while, but now I'm so on board, even just joining Conquer here and I'm trying to get my bearings and deploy different strategies. I'm able to create like a presentation of like
Future Of Selling (28:27.883)
Yes, alright, good deal.
Andrew D'Agostino (28:55.948)
things that we've done in the past in a past life and bring it here. I'm able to do that in 30 minutes to an hour, which would usually have taken me multiple days. I'm able to even my first week here, trying to wrap my head around like industry snapshots, market analysis, I'm able to produce that without having to do all of the legwork of research much faster, get it into 90 % of the way there and then check it on the experts internally.
Future Of Selling (29:18.319)
Yeah.
Andrew D'Agostino (29:25.006)
to make sure it's correct. I would say like getting your bearings and doing your research is much easier, I think with AI. Presenting concepts, there's so many presentations that enable that people have to create and it's so helpful to have a tool that gets you 75, 80, 90 % of the way there. I would say also just like strategies. I remember not too long ago, like, I put into,
into an AI program like how should I approach this is what I want to do. I want to like build this asset and this program. How should I approach this? And I get that back now. And so it's so much faster. It really is.
Future Of Selling (30:04.324)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. I have some of the same experiences, same things that normally would have taken me. You you start with an empty whiteboard and you go, okay, well, let me put my storyboard together and then let me start creating the content or blah, blah, And it takes, you know, like hours and hours of deep work. Now you just put it in and go, here's what I'm thinking. Here's what I need. And you've got an 80 % solution in place and then go from there. So yeah, it's great.
So other than shortening the creativity curve and making things more efficient, are there any other ways that we should be thinking about integrating AI into sales enablement? I mean, you mentioned Gong a minute ago, know Corker has, we have some of our own AI features and products to help in coaching. So what else?
Andrew D'Agostino (30:47.416)
Yeah. Yeah.
Andrew D'Agostino (30:59.382)
Yeah, I love I want to hit on the conquer recordings because I love the way that we're using it and I'm so excited to get the information that we produce here. But really getting I'd say enablement has had trouble in the past, like following up and watching calls, listening to calls, getting the summary points and like with conquer's tech, I can now do that. I can see how the reps in the field are processing their conversations.
And then I can understand, hey, it sounds like they don't have a good grasp of this concept. I think that these words that they're using can be improved. Maybe we should have a workshop around that. Or maybe they're missing something and they just don't know something exists. That is a critical piece of enablement is centralizing all of this. So this feedback loop of recordings that Conquer is able to produce and getting that information into like a summary.
that I can consume between meetings. That's huge. So I'm loving that aspect of AI as well.
Future Of Selling (31:57.68)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, I think the other cool thing about this particular feature, you we call AI insights, obviously, right, is you get the recordings, you get the summary, but we also provide that call score, right? Because I think about it like this, right? If I've got a team of five or 10 sellers that are working for me and I've got recordings of all their
their conversations. Well, that's great because I didn't have to be, I didn't have to sit on that call. I can just get the conversation. can put it in 1.5 speed, right? So that's a real time saver. The problem is if I got 10 people and I've got five conversations apiece, now I've got 50 conversations to listen So it comes down to, okay, well, how do I decide what I'm going to listen to? But having the score there is such a game changer, right? So now I can look at, okay, well, I want to listen to their best calls or I want to listen to the ones that didn't score very well.
And then also understanding the variables that created that score. So I think AI around coaching and overall enablement is gonna be huge. Sounds like you're kind of in the same camp.
Andrew D'Agostino (33:05.931)
Yeah, I love that and it's something I'm so excited to dig deeper with here at Concur because in my industrial organizational life, we talk about critical incidents. You want to understand the very good and the very bad. If you have 50 things to look at, you can boil it down to five and really get the ends of the spectrum. We can do that now with these call scores because I can easily see, hey,
These are the best conversations and these are the ones that have the most opportunity for improvement. It's pretty awesome to see this technology coming more into the front.
Future Of Selling (33:44.858)
Yeah, I agree. And just, I'll make one more comment and I'll let it go. The other really cool thing I think there is just bias, right? I mean, if we, wouldn't, because I mean, I've been, you know, coaching and leading in that stuff for a long time. And you just know that there are days where you're not on top of your game, you know, it's you're not as good as you were yesterday, whatever happened, you're tired, you didn't sleep well, something came up, whatever. But the ability for that AI component to
It didn't need a good night's sleep. It's not in a bad mood. So it kind of takes all the bias out of it. And as a leader or as a sales enablement leader or as a coach, that helps center me on what really happens. So it's less bias and more objective. And I love that aspect of it. So anyway, so besides AI and maybe besides AI insights,
Andrew D'Agostino (34:16.728)
Mm-hmm.
Future Of Selling (34:41.944)
What other tools are just really important to make sure if I'm a sales enablement leader that I've got in my tool belt?
Andrew D'Agostino (34:50.06)
think you need to be have a minimum level proficiency in into your CRM that you're using internally because you're going to be constantly pulling reports and working with your rev ops team to kind of generate results. So I think that's really important. I think a project management tool is huge. I mean, I cannot overstate that enable enablement teams need to have.
priorities and ways to build their projects out. Because another name for enablement is change management. That is what we're doing here. We're making change, and you need to be able to track that. You need to have some presentation and design capabilities. if it's not on the enablement, design, can work with whatever design resources. Your marketing team or whoever else internally can help spruce things up.
Future Of Selling (35:33.37)
Yeah.
Andrew D'Agostino (35:49.454)
I think that's important, especially also assets. A lot of assets need to get created and put into the world. And then the last thing I would say is on tools is, and I know we're here at Conqueror, I'm thinking, starting to think about this as well as how do we create whatever tool you're using, a central warehouse that is easily accessed by the field.
and they can get assets, can get their learnings, they can do everything all in one place. Now, depending on your company, this might be like a SharePoint, this might be another tool, it could be Google Sites. There's so many tools out here, but get things into a way that the field can consume. I mean, that is half the battle in enablement.
Future Of Selling (36:35.428)
Yeah. Yeah. So, so just, was actually thinking about this the other day, how important just having a home base is, right? Of whatever your, whatever your documentation is, whether it's processes, it's an enablement content, whatever it is, because now, you know, it could be posted in Slack, it could be posted on a, you know, on on some sort of support site, you know, tons of places for it be posted, but it's got to live somewhere, you know? So you got to have that, that home base where people know they can go.
for the latest and the greatest version that may exist.
Andrew D'Agostino (37:06.232)
Yeah, and it goes back to what we talked about in the beginning, the friction versus flow. more friction that, I'll be blunt, salespeople do not like friction and if they run up into it, they're just gonna stop. They're just not gonna proceed. So you have to take the friction out of everything you're doing and simplify access and get them into flow.
Future Of Selling (37:16.634)
Yeah.
Future Of Selling (37:24.922)
Yeah. Yeah. Got it. Got it. Okay. Another question for you. What do you think, you know, as we kind of look into the future, if I were someone who is thinking about going into sales enablement, what are some of the most important skills I need to have in place? You talked about, you know, proficiency in CRM, project management tools, things like that. What are some of the most important skills I need to have to be successful in this line of work?
Andrew D'Agostino (37:55.488)
Yeah, and I don't know, like you need to have a core in this function of like a good soft skills. I think a lot of this could start with there. So being curious is huge for this. We have to be able to be able to say, how does that work? Why are we doing it like that? What are they using right now? Being curious about everything is a huge component. I think being
confident enough to have conversations with a variety of levels in the organization and different functions. You do not need to be experts, but you need to be able to connect to people. Because as that connective tissue, you're going to be talking to all these different functions, all these people, people in the field. That's really important. I think you need some level of organization, organizational skills, planning and organizing. Again, when you're
when an able-to-maint team goes live, you're going to start getting all of these different functions asking for assets and trainings and everything. But you need to make sure that that's organized and prioritized and you're not forgetting the number one that we opened up with, which is connection to the revenue goals of the organization. That's our job at the end of the day. Everything else is in service of that.
Future Of Selling (39:19.504)
Yeah, okay, got it, got it. So I know you got, I need to let you go. We're getting close to that, to our time and I understand that. Let's do this though. If someone's listening to this podcast, right? And they've listed the whole thing and hopefully, you know, it's been a great conversation, but they wanna walk away with three key takeaways. What would the three key takeaways be from your point of view? I mean, I'll kind of jump in here too, but I always like to,
if needed, but I always like to find, what would, if I were someone having coffee with you and I said, man, I'm walking into a new sales enablement situation, right? What should I be thinking about? What are the three things you'd leave them?
Andrew D'Agostino (40:03.628)
I think I'd start with, I think it would depend if they're new to the function or not, I think regardless, understand how your company, the organization you're going into or you're currently in makes money. That is so important. Yes.
Future Of Selling (40:19.824)
that's why you're there don't finally don't forget that you know okay
Andrew D'Agostino (40:25.973)
Yes, and it sounds so silly when you say it, but I feel like that is a step that often gets glossed over because again, your job is to help them make more money, more customers, lose less money. So I think understanding how your organization makes money, would say doing a needs analysis.
Future Of Selling (40:43.407)
Right.
Andrew D'Agostino (40:49.998)
at either like at when you're joining the organization or just regularly throughout a given calendar year or fiscal year, understand like, okay, what are the priorities right now for this quarter? Where are we maybe even rate yourself your parts of your organization on their like assets and processes? I think doing this needs analysis are important. And then I would say
The third thing is, we touched on this, is see yourself as that connective tissue. And don't wait for someone to tell you what to do this, to do that. Your job is to operate, is to cut through the noise and connect pieces of the organization together in service of the goals. So just start, have conversations.
Make sure you're plugged into everywhere. Understand how functions are using them, where they're not doing a great job right now, and can you help?
Future Of Selling (41:53.264)
Yeah, I love those, So, I'm just going to kind of run back through them, right? So, I love the first one because sometimes you can get so dialed in on the minutiae of the day, you forget the big picture, right? And so, understand how your company makes money and stay connected to the revenue, right? I mean, that's why you came in, right? That's why you're there.
Second one is the needs analysis. I love that one as well, right? Understanding what the priorities are and then being able to kind of take those chunk by chunk. I really like the idea of kind of companies grow quarter at a time, right? So, you know, what are the, we call them rocks, but you what are the three to five rocks that we got to get done this quarter, right? What are those highest priorities? So needs analysis.
Andrew D'Agostino (42:42.606)
Mm-hmm.
Future Of Selling (42:44.9)
probably looks like interviews, probably looks like maybe a SWOT analysis, things of that nature, right? And then the last one is just, and this is powerful, see yourself as a connective tissue, right? And I think there's some power in that mental imagery of knowing, hey, this is my job. My job is to come in and connect that team with that team and that team and that team. And you kind of made a part of that
Andrew D'Agostino (42:51.31)
That's right.
Future Of Selling (43:13.344)
is this is my phrase, be a driver versus being a doer. Because, you know, drivers can always do. Doers sometimes have a hard time driving, right? So I love the phrase, be a driver versus just a doer. And both are necessary. Both are needed, right? But in a position like this, you're having to cut through the, you know, through the, you know, getting the relationships, get the conversations going and connect those tissues. So I think those are incredible.
Very good, man. Anything else that we missed today or are we good?
Andrew D'Agostino (43:47.47)
I think I think most of it the only thing I would say, you enablement looks different in different organizations depending on sophisticated the organization is so, know Wherever you are in the organization whether you're plugged into marketing Whether you're in sales, you're still there to help revenue so it doesn't matter where you report into and You know what your level is just have that view of connective tissue. It's the only thing I've had
Future Of Selling (44:16.336)
Okay, got it. Love it. All right. Hey, AD, thank you so much for the time today. Appreciate you being on the podcast or the show. And I know you and I have got some time later today to catch up. So we'll see you a bit later.
Andrew D'Agostino (44:31.522)
Yeah, thanks so much, Rick. This has been great. Yeah, thanks.
Future Of Selling (44:33.52)
All right, thank you, sir. Have a good day. All right, bye-bye.