Interviews with sales enablement industry leaders, sharing best practices, strategies, and words of wisdom.
In case you missed it, here are part 1 and part 2 of the Sales Enablement Chronicles interview series. For this edition of The Sales Enablement Chronicles: Insights from the Inside, I interviewed Lindsay Lemieux, Senior Manager, Sales Training at Seismic. Check out what she had to say below!
Q. Tell Me A Little About Yourself and How You Got Into Sales Enablement…
A. My name is Lindsay Lemieux, Senior Manager, Sales Training with Seismic. Prior to my training role I was apart of the talent acquisition team here at Seismic focusing on sales recruitment. I soon became a little obsessed with understanding all things sales – the sales process, methodology, messaging, tools etc.
When the opportunity presented itself a year and half ago to take on the first official sales training role at Seismic, I couldn’t pass it up. Today I manage two trainers. My team owns sales onboarding, ongoing training of our 150 + person sales team, managing sales effectiveness tools and we also assist our go-to-market teams with product and messaging launches to our sellers.
Q. How do you define sales enablement at Seismic?
A. We break out Sales Enablement into three buckets here at Seismic.
- Tools – Arming our sales team with the tools and tech stack they need to succeed and close deals more efficiently. For example – Gong, Discover Org, Salesforce, and most importantly Seismic!
- Process – At Seismic, our sales enablement team focuses on a constant cadence of process improvement to ensure efficiency throughout our sales process.
- Training – Both onboarding and continuing education whether it be for new internal processes or sales skills.
Our goal is to enable all Seismic sellers by providing them with the education, communication, processes and tools to be successful. Training, enablement and operations all roll up into our VP, Revenue Operations Toby Carrington.
Q. What are your top sales enablement priorities for the year?
A. My top three priorities are:
- Increase sales rep productivity
- Decrease ramp time
- Scale our sales training efforts and programs
Q. What advice would you give companies that are building their sales enablement strategy?
Network. Network with other sales enablement professioanls. No need to reinvent the wheel. The challenges you are facing have been solved before. Ask questions, take notes, and use others experiences to help shape your strategy.
Focus. Have your goals and stick to them. When starting out and there’s no process, system or tool there is a lot of white space. You are not alone. I recommend identifying your top five initiatives and rank them. The initiative that can have the biggest impact on your customers, revenue, and sellers start with that one. FOCUS is key.
Technology. I recently left a conference in San Francisco and heard from Patty McCord, former Chief Talent Officer at Netflix. She said “Complex problems at scale are different than difficult problems.” Technology helps in a big way when you are dealing with complex business challenges. You can outwork difficult problems, not always complex ones.
Q. Do you have any best practices for aligning internal go-to-market teams?
- Clearly defined roles and goals
- A sales enablement solution that can help with communication and alignment
- Measure progress, and analyze the data to better understand what’s working and what’s not
Q. What books are you reading, and podcasts are you listening to?
Book: Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On Itby Chris Voss and Tahl Raz
Podcast: Skimm’d from The Couch- TheSkimm’s co-founders and co-CEOs, Carly Zakin and Danielle Weisberg invite powerful female leaders to sit down and chat about everything from celebrating career wins to the worst advice they’ve ever received.
For more information on setting your organization up for success with sales enablement, download The Ultimate Guide to Sales Enablement.
