Seismic Shift ’23: Day Two Highlights

After a rooftop party with panoramic views of San Diego that was full of camaraderie, we returned for a new day at Seismic Shift ‘23. And while many of us feel like we just kicked off our week together, it was the last full day of keynote and breakout sessions. 

Today’s main stage content, impressive breakout speakers, and energizing community were the perfect way to wrap up this year’s event. Here’s a look at some of the highlights from the day.

The power of transformational enablement

Did you know that the fastest pit stop time is 1.82 seconds? I definitely didn’t. But our attendees who did know this or follow Formula 1 Racing were in for a real treat with President and Chief Revenue Officer Hayden Stafford’s presentation. He opened his session with a pit crew analogy that perfectly summed up the enablement space.

Enablement is each organization’s race track. It requires consistency, alignment, and visibility to get across the finish line. However, only focusing on sales enablement is like only focusing on the back tires of a race car. Instead, organizations need to focus on enablement across the entire organization to better attain revenue goals. 

And just as a fast-moving pit crew needs total team alignment, so do today’s GTM organizations. Revenue enablement includes every customer-facing team that contributes to those bottom line numbers. In these organizations, enablement leaders are the ones who make this possible by bringing everyone together for 360 degrees of alignment.

Hayden then handed the mic over two customers — René Hefner, Head of Sales Enablement at Grab, and Chris Prudente, Global Head of Sales Enablement at Revolut, who reinforced Hayden’s F1 analogy. “Sales is the driver, but enablement is the race strategist,” explained René. “Only the race strategist is able to directly talk to the driver to ensure strategy execution. Similarly, the enablement team is responsible for consolidating and clarifying what needs to be done so sellers have a clear path forward.”

Seismic President and CRO Hayden Stafford

The fastest pit crew ever

CMO Paige O’Neill introduces the next keynote speaker

Finding your organization’s Rosetta Stone

When it comes to breaking down silos and ensuring alignment, it’s important for organizations to unify the language they use — at Seismic, we call this our Rosetta Stone. All too often, each department has their own language and goals they’re measuring against, but in order to be successful they need to use one consistent language. 

To get a better understanding of how this can be done, Senior Director of Field Enablement Meganne Brezina led a panel with fellow Seismic teammates from across our GTM organization – representing sales, marketing, enablement, and pre-sales. Here’s what some of them suggested:

• “Stop for a second and ask yourself if you can afford to not do this. You owe it to yourself, your teammates, and your customers to determine if you can really afford the cost of inaction.” — Patrick Jewett, Senior Value Consulting Director
• “Be that first person to step up and raise your hand. Change starts with you. It’s like a flute player outside of an orchestra. But, when they play in a symphony, it’s music to our ears. Be the person to say, ‘I’ll do it’ and help break those silos.” — Tamara Richards, Sales Engineer

The future of work is human with Shivvy Jervis

After hearing from Hayden and some of our Seismic teammates, we shifted gears to talk about the future of work with Shivvy Jervis. Shivvy is an award-winning innovation forecaster at Forecasting Labs, and she opened today’s presentation by sharing that Shift was her 600th keynote address this decade (Congrats, Shivvy!). 

And while Hayden talked about the speed of Formula 1 pit crews, Shivvy shared a staggering statistic on the speed of the neurons in our brains. The average healthy human brain has 80-90 billion neurons that move faster than the max speed of an F1 to function! So, what can we as business leaders do to appeal to each buyer’s very busy brain, build trust, and motivate them to take action?

Shivvy went on to explain that augmented intelligence is key. It’s important to keep people in the core of business functions and critical roles, but combine their brains with AI to work more effectively. Here are a few examples of how this can be done:

1. Create customer personas based on detailed, contextual information to raise conversion rates
2. Use AI to find hyper-specific buyer patterns so you can spend more time on high-value leads
3. Create and deliver personalized pitches to keep sales approaches fresh and unique for each buyer

And at a time when so many organizations worry about AI replacing human jobs, Shivvy had some words of encouragement and an important reminder. “We still crave human-to-human connections. Synthetic intelligence should only augment what we do, not replace it.”

Expert-led breakouts full of actionable tactics and tips 

One of my favorite things about the week is hearing from our customers directly. Whether it’s explaining how to show the ROI of enablement efforts or planning an enablement roadmap, they shared their knowledge, tactics, and tips across a number of different areas.

It’s no secret that AI was the hot topic of the week, so I attended a panel discussion featuring Seismic’s VP of Engineering Tom Strader and Senior Director of Product Marketing Anthony Russo. They were joined by customers from OneStream and Salesloft who shared how to evaluate AI opportunities and risks, build company guidelines around usage, and how to shift strategies to integrate AI.

I also had the chance to sit in on a few sessions that focused on learning and coaching. Panelists included leaders from T-Mobile, Alteryx, Jostens, and more. It was interesting to hear about emerging trends in adult learning theory and what it takes to create engaging readiness programs for workforces that are made up of four different generations — all of which have very different learning preferences!

And while we got to hear and learn from so many of our customers, we also had the opportunity to celebrate with them. Over the course of the week, we handed out awards to advocates and customers who transformed their businesses, achieved impressive outcomes, and inspired their teams to win as one. Congrats to this year’s winners!

That’s a wrap on Seismic Shift ‘23

That’s a wrap on our coverage of Seismic Shift ‘23. It’s been another amazing week for our customers, partners, and team members. And on behalf of the entire Seismic team, I want to extend a special shout-out to our Events team, executive leadership team, keynote speakers, sponsors, and community advocates who helped make this week such a success. 

If you couldn’t join us in person, you didn’t miss out on all of the fun! You can still sign up for Shift Wrapped to get access to all of the keynote and breakout session recordings. Sign up here! You can also take a look at some of the week’s events on social media — give us a follow on LinkedIn, X, and Instagram!