Strategies for Influence, Alignment, and Future Success from Shift 2024

Steve Watt: I’m Steve Watt. I am the host of the Enablement Edge. My co host and friend and colleague, Heather Cole is here. Heather, why don’t you tell the folks what today’s episode and today’s session is going to be all about? 

Heather Cole: Absolutely. So, As you probably read in the title and the abstract, we are talking today about getting a seat at the table, but not only getting a seat, but a voice. 

Heather Cole: When we talked about transformational enablement yesterday in Doug’s keynote, and it kind of bled through some of the other ones as well, [00:01:00] it’s one of the things that we’ve seen and heard from our customers, and um, previous to this I was actually a Forrester analyst, and I’ve been here for four years at Seismic, and And a lot of the talk is around how do you not only get, earn the right and the credibility to have that, those strategic discussions, have that seat at the table, but what we’re seeing is that what makes enablers successful in this, and to really drive transformational enablement as we think of going from the whiteboard. 

Heather Cole: In the boardroom, to the keyboards of the reps. When we think about that, it’s really about having not just the, the ability and the right to sit there and listen at the table, it’s about the ability to have the voice as well. So we’ve been having a series of these conversations on the podcast, and we thought it would be really interesting to bring up three diverse perspectives on this and how you actually go about this from a larger company, smaller company, Mid sized company, different industries. 

Heather Cole: So we invited our three guests to be with us here today. Steve, why don’t you Come 

Steve Watt: on up. [00:02:00] Victoria, Micah, Eric. Come on up. Say hello and introduce yourselves. 

Steve Watt: All right. Thanks so much for joining us. Could you guys each, I understand you’re going to be doing a little bit of microphone sharing here, whatever order you’d like. Would you each just take a moment to introduce yourselves to the, the audience here? Let them know a little bit about your company and about your role. 

Micah Jacobson: Sure, my name is Micah Jacobson, I lead Revenue Enablement at Informatica. We are a data storage platform that uses some of the biggest companies, some of the biggest companies in the world use our software to manage their data moving in and out of all the other systems that many of you represent. 

Victoria Sanchez: Right, Victoria Sanchez. 

Victoria Sanchez: I am from Pure Storage. It’s a data storage platform as well. And I’ve been at Pure for almost four years, which is such an innovative company. And, uh, we serve Sales and partners. So I hope that our discussion today will allows you [00:03:00] to, you know, extend your reach out of there. 

Eric Mingorance: I’m Eric Mingarance. I’m a senior director of Revenue enablement, go to market enablement. 

Eric Mingorance: We actually call it sales and field enablement over there at Zixi. Zixi is also a software company. We are the Leading software defined video platform for live broadcast quality streaming. So if you watched the Super Bowl on Paramount our software was involved there. We have a lot of huge partners all over the world from major league sports teams, To the broadcasters themselves, but we have a very small, uh, global, uh, sales team. 

Eric Mingorance: I’ve been there for just over about a year, used Seismic, uh, the majority of the time. I helped bring it on board, and I used it a little bit at another company. 

Heather Cole: So, we’re gonna start out with the, kind of the big level question. When we were preparing and having [00:04:00] conversations for, uh, For this session, we started getting a little bit into the table analogy too much, so some people referenced a picnic table, maybe a formal table at a wedding. 

Heather Cole: There’s a lot of different kinds of tables, but one of the things that, you know, we really want to understand is how do you earn that kind of credibility so, to go from not just a seat to a voice at the highest level. Victoria, let’s start with you. What are your thoughts on that? 

Victoria Sanchez: I, I think that it’s more than building your own table. 

Victoria Sanchez: It’s really more about finding the table and then make your voice be heard. Um, I can share a little bit of, um, the experiences that we had at Pure. Enablement has really transformed the way we are perceiving the organization. And that’s not an easy place to be, but I think we have earned that right. With a lot of, uh, The effectiveness that we have put into some programs, we have really created a difference at that point. 

Victoria Sanchez: In my mind, really having a seat at the table is because you are really a decision maker. You are considered, you’re part of the big [00:05:00] company initiatives, but it’s also a big responsibility on our end. It’s a lot about planning, how do you need to prepare your enablement teams, how do you get, uh, in front of your sales leaders, and they respect where you are driving. 

Victoria Sanchez: And very importantly, we have seen a lot of traction with cross functional parties. We work very closely with marketing, product marketing, uh, not only sales, right, but HR, sales operations, we’re big brothers and sisters all the time. And the fact that as of today, we have really earned the right to be heard, Because what we say matters. 

Victoria Sanchez: I think that’s a big part. What we say matters. 

Heather Cole: Credibility is a huge piece of that, isn’t it? It’s, uh, it’s, it’s how do you, um, earn the right to have the conversations and earn the right to be able to, um, actually, you know, have something to say that’s meaningful to them and they believe that what you’re saying is true, um, coming out of the technology. 

Heather Cole: So, any other thoughts on that one? 

Micah Jacobson: Uh, I would say [00:06:00] patience. Uh, we live in a vast world. Most of you are being pressured all the time. I’m constantly being pressured. And I have to constantly remind me and my team, it takes time. You don’t just get to walk in and own your seat. You have to prove your value and you have to do it over and over. 

Micah Jacobson: I try to remember for myself, I’m constantly whispering in my own ear, three Ps. Patience, persistence, presence. Be there, be patient, be persistent. Don’t go away. I love it. 

Eric Mingorance: The only other thing I might add there is, uh, actions are going to speak louder than words. So, uh, you should just do what you say you’re going to do and, uh, and follow up with action. 

Victoria Sanchez: You know, you reminded me of a thought. Um, I, I love the, the word follow. Because one of the things that I can think when you are really looking for a seat at the table is get out of that being informed seat. We have to inform enablement. We have to talk to them. You have to transform that, in my mind, into a [00:07:00] follower. 

Victoria Sanchez: Right? Become that influencer in the company because what you say matters because we have helped other cross functional teams and that is not only the work that we put with our teams, it’s really gained the right because you understand what the company is looking for and you connect and align across multiple organizations. 

Heather Cole: Yeah, that’s a really good point. Oh, 

Eric Mingorance: go ahead, go right ahead. 

Heather Cole: We’ll never have to ask another one. 

Eric Mingorance: Um, and now I’m going to forget what I had to say on that. Um, oh, the other thing you can really do is it just doesn’t have to be what you’re saying, but you could earn a seat at the table if you help promote and amplify what the leaders want said anyway. 

Eric Mingorance: So, if you’re a good listener at that table, if you understand and align with the objectives, and then you’re saying, I can help you promote that into places it might not be heard or have it be reinforced, if you can be a good promoter, that also can earn you a seat at the table. 

Heather Cole: It’s like the wireless repeater in my house, it just keeps pushing it [00:08:00] out. 

Heather Cole: That’s 

Eric Mingorance: what my wife calls me, the wireless repeater. Oh, 

Heather Cole: I’m not sure that’s a good thing. 

Steve Watt: Let me build on the word you just said, Eric, uh, alignment. Right? Um, yeah, I think you’re all, you’re all addressing that topic. Micah, let me go to you. How do you really build that alignment, in particular, with senior leadership, to, to really demonstrate the impact that enablement is having in the firm? 

Micah Jacobson: Yeah, it’s such a delicate balance, because you’ve got to do two things simultaneously. You’ve got to listen really closely to what it is that they want you to align to, because you can’t go off on your own, and you have to come with a point of view. I really think in enablement, we are sellers. We are selling enablement. 

Micah Jacobson: We’re selling it to our field sales teams, and we’re also selling our voice and our perspective to our senior leadership. So I want to know where they want me to go, but then I also want to be able to give them new information that maybe they’re not seeing. That allows them to see something different. 

Micah Jacobson: Maybe there’s a challenge or sale inside of each [00:09:00] enabler. Trying to say we see things just a little different and we can we can provide it a different perspective that might be of some Additional value 

Steve Watt: it so it really is a balance so you can’t just be an order taker and a follower But you also as you said you can’t just go Charging off on your own path and expect senior leadership to follow you 

Micah Jacobson: I don’t know about you this room, but I hate the word order taker drives me crazy That is not what I signed up for I wasn’t in kindergarten being like I want to be an order taker one day And so many of us in enablement we fall into that trap because Uh, we don’t come with, with new information. 

Micah Jacobson: If you come with new information, you shift from an order taker to a strategic partner. That’s certainly the direction that I and, and my team where we wanna go. Eric, you’re in a much 

Steve Watt: smaller firm than our other guests. Is the answer essentially the same, or is, do you have a different lens on it given the different size of the firm? 

Eric Mingorance: I mean, the, the output or the outcome might be slightly different, but as Renee said on the main stage today, if you think of your. Your [00:10:00] enablement team or your enablement self, as a business inside the business, then to have the perspective and to listen is treating your stakeholders like customers. And so you really need to come from their perspective of what are the problems they’re trying to solve. 

Eric Mingorance: What are their business goals? How does my program or initiative align with their business goals? What’s in it for them? Like you would for a customer. You have to be speaking their language and talking about things that they care about. It’s kind of obvious, but even the sellers that we’re trying to teach us, they don’t do it. 

Eric Mingorance: And we speak, I mean, LMS should not even be said to, to, you know, an executive. They don’t care what that three letter acronym is, right? That you need to be talking to them about ROI. Yeah. So let’s, oh, go ahead. And 

Victoria Sanchez: what about, um, for example, when you create alignment and what you really need to think about is becoming this observer. 

Victoria Sanchez: That is a magical position to be as enablers. [00:11:00] And hopefully the audience have had this experience as well. When in enablement, you are the one that is helping everybody communicate. Because it turns out that function one is asking me for something, function two is asking me for something totally different in the same direction, and function three is the gains. 

Victoria Sanchez: Even the policies that I need to follow. So then, we have to get, you know, get them and really create this alignment. Sometimes it has happened to us. We really have to put them on the table and say, Have you guys talked to each other? Because, I mean, it seems like it’s not working. So, we have really become, um, a third party observer that has no take into a specific requirements or a specific business. 

Victoria Sanchez: And we, you know, we are consulted at that point. And that becomes very valuable because it’s faster. You make better decisions at that point. 

Heather Cole: Yeah. I love that because, you know, it’s, it’s very, the question is out there, like, how do you become a consultant within the organization as an enablement leader? 

Heather Cole: That is a really [00:12:00] big way because you see everybody’s perspective on it and you become kind of the flower to the oil and the water. 

Eric Mingorance: One just somewhat easy way to unify people is say, Let’s take it from our customer’s perspective. What does our customer want? Because they don’t see you in the silos. 

Eric Mingorance: They’re trying to buy one unified thing and it’s not different. The marketing they’re seeing, how they got sold, how they got onboarded, how they get treated in customer success or whatever you call that. They see it as one company X. And so a way to unify all those different functions that are coming to you with different things and say, what is the priority for our customer? 

Eric Mingorance: Because that’s what we probably want to address. 

Heather Cole: Yeah, that’s a really good point. I think the other one is, and we talked about this a little bit in the prep, is the empathy for the roles that are delivering it. And how do you develop that? So I think one of the things that I wanted to switch gears, oh, you want to say something? 

Eric Mingorance: No, I just didn’t want to talk about empathy. 

Heather Cole: Oh, God forbid. I want to talk about empathy. [00:13:00] You’ve been around sales too long. 

Victoria Sanchez: I do have a lot of things to say about empathy, Eric. You reminded me of something very important. Empathy for us in enablement, at least in the experiences that we have had, is really to make sure that you are part of that development. 

Victoria Sanchez: Something that has happened traditionally, you know, always working with product marketing teams, asking the subject matter expert to create the content. You cannot just go there and say, hey, can you do this? And it needs to be done in a certain amount of time because sales kickoff is in six months and we need to get ready, six months when you do it with proper time, we never do it by the way. 

Victoria Sanchez: But, um, at that point, I’ve seen so many differences. When instead of asking them, hey, can you do this, hey, let’s do this together and let me show you what I’m thinking, show me what you’re thinking, and let’s build a recipe. That has been transformational. And in our case, I always tell my team, this is, we need to be empathic, we need to be good. 

Victoria Sanchez: These listener and sometimes you just have to [00:14:00] go through that wave. 

Heather Cole: Yeah, you know, it reminds me and I can’t remember which one said it was collaboration, credibility, and communication, the three C’s. I’m guessing it was you because you’re into alliteration, but maybe not. 

Micah Jacobson: I’ve been known to alliterate. 

Heather Cole: Yeah. 

Micah Jacobson: Uh, it, it, when we, we’re thinking about that, that level, it, it’s really at two levels. You’re thinking about communicating at your senior level, and we’re talking about having a seat at the table. We’re building at Informatica what we think of as the enablement council, once a quarter trying to get our senior leaders who are critical stakeholders to come together. 

Micah Jacobson: I’m a massive fan of ranked choice voting. Not trying to make a political statement, but it works in the, in our business world as well. Well, I want to get them together and say, here is what we’re hearing as the priorities. Give me a sense of what your stack rank, blind from each other. And immediately all of them start to see, Oh, this product launch has to go up against our new methodology, which is also competing against our release schedule, which is also competing against all of the other kind of administrative things, the tool training that we’re going to do. 

Micah Jacobson: And suddenly we [00:15:00] get a conversation going around which one is actually most important to the table. Conversely, I want to show programs and learning to my field. And there’s amazing resistance to this, and I’m not quite sure why, but if we build something, I want to put it in front of a seller and say, I want to watch you learn. 

Micah Jacobson: And they’re always a little weird about that. You’re going to watch me learn? In a distributed world, it’s not that hard. I can watch them take one of our courses, and I can interrupt them. What are you thinking right now? What’s going on? Where’s the impact? I notice you just skip right through that one. 

Micah Jacobson: Why? That then, when I go to the Enablement Council, gives me the ability to say, I’ve watched our sellers learn. I know what they’re experiencing. Let me give you some data that can then inform this conversation. And when I have both of those angles, I feel like I have a lot more opportunity to have influence. 

Heather Cole: I’m hearing you say, don’t underestimate the creeper factor. 

Micah Jacobson: Just appropriate creepiness, I suppose. I’m not sure if I want to be on record for that, but yes. 

Heather Cole: We’ll cut it out when we’re done. 

Eric Mingorance: I would also say I love the Enablement Council. I’ve done that at several different companies that I’ve been at, um, [00:16:00] that is building your own table. 

Eric Mingorance: So if you don’t understand what that means, if you’re not invited to the table, then you say, Hey, I want all the VPs or the leaders from all the orgs to come to my enablement council. And you tell them what’s what, whether you’re going to their table or they’re coming to your table. One other thing to keep in mind with that. 

Eric Mingorance: And then the last thing that I want to talk about is lobbying. You need to lobby for these things. You don’t want them to hear it for the first time at the council or at the table. Kind of like a bill, you need to go and lobby the individual folks. See if there are objections. Make sure you can kind of get preliminary buy in beforehand. 

Eric Mingorance: Work with each individual org separately so that by the time you come to the table, they’ve already heard it. You basically have buy in and then you’re doing what you say. We’re getting the priorities. We’re all coming on the same page for the priorities, we’re in agreement, there are no major showstoppers or blockers because you’ve basically done, um, some preceding. 

Heather Cole: Yeah, and what I’m also hearing here too is This is [00:17:00] taking what big topic in enablement, the charter, to do or not to do. Are they a waste of time? Do they get thrown, you know, on the back of the desk and we never look at them again? What you just described is really a living charter. So you’re revalidating your scope and your prioritization as you’re having these conversations so that everybody’s on the same page. 

Heather Cole: So when you get to the end of the year and say, Wait a minute, this is what we focused on because you told us 12 months ago to focus on, like, 8 months ago. That changed. Yeah. 

Micah Jacobson: And let’s quickly plug the enablement edge because I’m pretty sure there’s a great episode On building an enablement charter, if I’m not mistaken. 

Heather Cole: Yeah, there is. 

Victoria Sanchez: There always is. And um, one of the things that, that you have been high highlighting, Heather, is um, getting that documented. It’s extremely important and we normally don’t have the time to do that because we’re running super fast at the end of the edge. It’s already three months in and we didn’t document the things. 

Victoria Sanchez: And I’ve seen the effect of not doing it is super impactful. So we really, as enablers, I think we need to. So, um, the train and really understand what are the priorities that we need to document [00:18:00] so that we can really converse in that, right? We also have some councils at the, um, at Pure Storage, and one of the things that I noticed is we have to make sure that we don’t fall into, oh, this council again. 

Victoria Sanchez: Right, because we’re not doing anything valuable, but how to document valuable action items to what you said, Eric, I think that’s very clever, is, you know, get commitments from each individual function, and then align those commitments to the council, you know, objective, and then document that into a plan that can be tested. 

Victoria Sanchez: I think getting that time is, is, is going to be very important. 

Steve Watt: I love that we’re getting into some specific tactics here, like your stack ranking, and the, the lobbying, and the watching people learn, and, and, um, you know, sometimes sessions like this are, are guilty of staying way up in the clouds about what we hope to achieve, and not really getting into exactly how we’re going to do it. 

Steve Watt: So I, I would like to pull on that thread a little bit more, uh, tactics, but maybe in a slightly different lens. [00:19:00] Um, What sort of tactics are you each using to make sure that the accomplishments and the impact of your enablement organization are really being seen and felt and understood throughout the organization? 

Steve Watt: So not just, not just alignment at the senior leader level, but, but how are you getting the word out on the street so that people really understand what you’re bringing to the business? Go ahead, Victoria. 

Victoria Sanchez: Um, one for us, it’s um, we call it DNA Membranding. We went into a whole journey of, nobody knows what we do, really. 

Victoria Sanchez: They assume things that we are doing here. So we started doing a lot of specific campaigns. So there’s a lot of different ways around communication through multiple groups inside the organization. Those campaigns were directed, were targeted. For example, we had um, enablement um, for sales leaders as champions. 

Victoria Sanchez: And that word champions became some sort of a route where we, we had a [00:20:00] selected group of people in sales leaders, where we always invite them to a specific important, uh, releases or enablement programs. And they become like, sort of, kind of pilot. Testers, and then you get those champions, and then they speak to other leaders, and they speak to their teams, so that has been very important for us. 

Victoria Sanchez: Bringing the brand, highlighting the brand. The other thing that we did for the brand is ask the executive team what were their perspective, um, or was or is about enablement, and we realized that the narrative around enablement is absolutely different across the executive teams, so we took the time to align. 

Victoria Sanchez: It has to be one enablement function, one enablement direction, so that everybody will route to the same boat, right? One was going to Japan, the other one was going to South America, so it didn’t work that way. So we kind of give them some examples. So those two things, at the side of the communication process, have been very helpful for us. 

Eric Mingorance: Back in the 90s, I lived a little bit up the [00:21:00] road, uh, in Portland, Oregon, and, uh, I, I managed an independent rock and roll band, as one does during the grunge era, um, and, uh, and it’s, that guerrilla marketing is kind of the same, uh, You know, it is seven ways, seven times, and seven different channels. I would basically, if we had telephone poles inside of our office, I would staple up posters in there. 

Eric Mingorance: You need to kind of get that information out in a Slack channel. I’ll do a road show. Here’s a slide with a QR code to drive you. If you Drive people to where I want on the platform or to the information or the landing page. Could you just sh have that inside of your, um, your meeting? Can I come to your meeting? 

Eric Mingorance: I’d be happy to be there. Can I, we talked last night about, hey, can we get a couple of minutes in before the all hands to highlight a wind story and kind of say, Hey, we’ll help you do the fireside chat or the interview. So you wanna be to, [00:22:00] to kind of promote, not only do you want to help amplify and promote. 

Eric Mingorance: They’re a message, but you have to do your own brand, and you have to do it in this, like, every way you can possibly think of. I’ve done internal podcasts, I mean, you name it, if you want to talk to me over drinks, I can tell you how, you know, how, when I get older. I’ll write a book called Everything I Need to Know I Learned by Managing a Rock and Roll Band. 

Steve Watt: I just gotta say, that is great. We all need to think like band managers. We all need to think like guerrilla marketers. That’s fantastic. 

Victoria Sanchez: I just have a question for you. Have you created a rock band inside the company yet? 

Eric Mingorance: Uh, not this company, but several other companies. I mean, yeah. Of 

Steve Watt: course. Micah, what about you? 

Steve Watt: You got, uh, some additional tactics that you use? We’re getting 

Micah Jacobson: better, yeah. We’re getting better. And this is an endless, an endless journey. You constantly are looking for new ways. Uh, we are getting better at using our seismic notification. I don’t know how many of you are using that, [00:23:00] that moment you have when a seller logs in. 

Micah Jacobson: It’s gold. And we should all be maximizing that opportunity. The second thing is if I, if I want to add value, I also want to acknowledge value. If I’m getting sellers to let me watch them learn, if we’re getting their input on, uh, products or programs that we’re rolling out, then I want to acknowledge that. 

Micah Jacobson: And so this year, for the first time, we’re going to have at our sales kickoff, A, uh, a Heroes of Enablement session where we’re gonna bring them in and say, Hey, thanks for the effort and support that, that we gave them at a previous company. We called this the League of Extraordinary Sellers. We want them to say, Hey, we love supporting enablement. 

Micah Jacobson: We love being a part of enablement and we want to continue doing that. Then maybe, just maybe, they become champions for us out in the field saying, Hey, you guys, this, this, this enablement that we just rolled out, it’s, it’s, it’s making a real difference in my, in my performance. 

Victoria Sanchez: We have, uh, we have gone regional, that has also been very helpful for us. 

Victoria Sanchez: Regional means that we have decided to invest in enablement resources that will connect with specific regions, especially [00:24:00] EMEA, APJ, um, Americas, because they’re so different that we got tired of this notion of everything is like in the U. S. and everybody thinks that nobody else understands the rest of the world. 

Victoria Sanchez: And we started doing a lot of specific, um, programs. That will connect with specific audiences across the globe. That, um, gave us a lot of credibility. That was really, really helpful. 

Steve Watt: I’m sure that it did. That, that is really important, because that, yeah, that, that US centricity can, uh, really be detrimental in a lot of other areas, can it? 

Eric Mingorance: Just one quick pro tip to back up Micah on to use the announcements that pop up. You can, you might not know this, but you can actually use a couple of HTML tags in there for the bold and you can put a link so it’s a little bit, a little bit manual. Be nice to also be able to put an image in there if anyone’s listening. 

Eric Mingorance: But yeah, that way not only does it pop up but you can have them take action and click right to the landing page or [00:25:00] asset that you wanted to highlight. 

Heather Cole: Good to know. So, one of the things I wanted to make sure that we hit on because it’s always And the last one is a hot topic, and it has been for a while, which is measurement. 

Heather Cole: And there’s some perspectives out there that says the most powerful thing to give you a voice is to have those actual insights and measurement to bring back to senior leadership to give them things that they might not have seen, um, to show results of course and to show value, but also to give them greater insight. 

Heather Cole: There’s also been a lot of, um, dissent and disagreeing opinions on whether or not You should be saying, we are tying enablement to those lagging indicators. Because when you launch a product, and the product launch doesn’t go well, everybody’s pointing fingers about pricing, it doesn’t work, you know, it was a competition. 

Heather Cole: Whatever it was, but it wasn’t our fault. Um, the reality is when it goes right, everybody takes credit. But when you’re looking at leading and kind of those micro [00:26:00] leading indicators, how are you thinking about what is important to The executive leadership, obviously what’s important to them, but how do you realistically in a credible way tie it back to the programs that you’re actually doing? 

Micah Jacobson: I mean, uh, I feel like you can’t be in enablement these days and not talk about measurement. It’s, it’s in all of our lives. I’m, I’m a little bit of a theorist in this. I, I believe in the Kirkpatrick model. I think there’s only six things that we’re all measuring. We’re all measuring production, consumption, reaction, learning, behavior. 

Micah Jacobson: Impact. There’s only six things, there’s not other, there’s no other things to measure. There’s just sub bullets between each of those. What I realize is that in each one of those levels, you lose a little control, and you introduce some confounding variables. It gets harder to establish causation. I have total control, or my team has, we have total control over our production. 

Micah Jacobson: We know what we’re putting out there. We don’t have total control over the consumption. We have less control over the reaction. We have even less control over the learning. Now we’re competing with their childhood, [00:27:00] you know, teacher who taught them how to read. I can’t control. That’s beyond So at every level, what I’m trying to do is let my stakeholders know we’re getting less and less control, but we’re getting more and more important influence. 

Micah Jacobson: So I want to be able to stand in front of them and say, listen, the preponderance of evidence is, every time we launch a program, it seems to be doing pretty good things on the bottom end of that. I’m not going to take total credit. You have an amazing sales team. I won’t take total credit. Our product marketers are fantastic. 

Micah Jacobson: CS is crushing it. We all are playing a part in this positive sales momentum, but we are playing a part. And that’s where I want my team to be able to stand with some degree of pride. So know what you’re measuring and then understand where you, where you have control and where you don’t. 

Victoria Sanchez: I like the, uh, know what you’re measuring. 

Victoria Sanchez: I think as an enabler, it’s so important that you understand the narrative from metrics. Every single cross functional team that we have at Pure, ask us. So it has become a little bit harsh because it’s a very difficult question to solve, as probably [00:28:00] most of you know. Connecting the dots between what an intangible is with a, you know, content consumption, utilization, those doesn’t necessarily connect with selling more. 

Victoria Sanchez: And the first question that leaders want is, how am I going to train my employees? Teams, so that they can close more deals in something as specific and there’s not such a correlation like that. So we have invested actually in creating something that we call the Unified Data Model. This has been working in the back end of systems to interconnect everything so that we can come up with, that’s an ideal, we are in the midst of it, uh, but we have the first phase that interconnected the platforms for content and content assessment engagement. 

Victoria Sanchez: So we can control training record. And we can control utilization of assets, for example, views, downloads, engagement of certain materials. And now our next phase to your question, Heather, is we’re connecting with our sales operations teams so that we can interconnect with performance metrics, right? 

Victoria Sanchez: Productivity, participation, bookings, pipeline. That is the ideal [00:29:00] state. And everything is in the back end. It’s been a tremendous amount of work, but that’s, um, that’s the ultimate goal. How can we have a resource for enablers to be able to speak clearly to sales leadership when they ask about a program? 

Victoria Sanchez: Um, instead of just giving them a record timeline, okay, we had so many attendees. Uh, you know, 80 percent of your team completed the training, but that’s not necessarily connected with whether they’re closing more deals or not. So that’s, that’s our ultimate goal. But that unified data model is, um, is starting to show some, some, some good lights. 

Micah Jacobson: Can I ask a question in this? Eric, you’ve probably got one. We always talk about what you do to measure. I’m always curious. What do you do when the, when the metrics are bad? 

Eric Mingorance: I was, I was going to talk about that. I was, uh, I was a, um, a sales engineer for many years at Akamai. And, and believe it or not, sometimes the metrics are bad. 

Eric Mingorance: So the first thing you do is you get a lot of metrics. Because only some of them are going to help you paint the story. And that’s the key. The key is to tell the story. [00:30:00] Sometimes the metrics are bad. We had a 25 percent completion rate. Why is that? What does that mean our next action is? Was it that we were off the mark with the timing? 

Eric Mingorance: Maybe, you know, last week of the quarter for these things to be due? I think there’s, again, I’d like all the metrics to collect, but you’d have to tell a story. So yes, lagging indicators. They want to, what are you going to do? Well, we want to sell more. We want to drive revenue. Okay. So, yeah. What kind of leading indicators do we have for that? 

Eric Mingorance: Does that mean bigger pipelines? Does that mean more intelligent discovery questions? Does that mean that we’re only going to bring in SMEs when we’ve already qualified somebody very specific for the questions that the SME says, don’t even bother bringing me onto a call until I see the answers of this in Salesforce. 

Eric Mingorance: Um, I think that you should be able to have both leading and lagging and then pick. Um, from which [00:31:00] ones work, or if they’re all bad, then what does that say for a story? One other thing I would say in this, are we ready, right? We’ve been asking that this, these last couple days, um, seems to be like a lagging indicator. 

Eric Mingorance: So the leading indicator to get into that is before you get asked that question, go to your leader or the field or both and say, what does readiness look like? So that I know when I’m going to answer that question, I know what you think readiness looks like. And so I can say, yep, we’re ready. They are ready to go to NAB. 

Eric Mingorance: We have the new demos all rolled out for everyone. They understand that we got a value proposition on total cost of ownership. They understand how that has a white paper. Everyone knows where to find the content and they’ve done their practice pitches because someone beforehand told me that’s what readiness for NAB looks like. 

Eric Mingorance: So I would maybe. And then we have that pre question as a leading indicator. 

Heather Cole: Yeah, [00:32:00] and sometimes leading indicators can be more powerful than lagging because lagging leaders can see, but they don’t know why. And if you’re the person that can tell them why when you see the breadcrumbs, when you see them asking all sorts of questions and like the co pilot saying, you know, tell me more about this pricing, you know, you know you haven’t done your job right or they haven’t, you haven’t put it where they need to see it. 

Heather Cole: So I think that’s a really powerful thing is the leading indicators is 

Eric Mingorance: And it’s usually where the behavior change lies. 

Victoria Sanchez: And you have to make it easy. Easy for them to receive that message throughout those indicators, whatever you decide, but also for them to acknowledge what you want them to acknowledge in time. 

Victoria Sanchez: So sales leaders don’t have a lot of time, so you need to make sure that what you’re delivering, it has the same context all the time, so they know what to expect, but at the same time, it’s so easy that everybody will understand your message. I think the message is behind the theme of those, those metrics, right? 

Victoria Sanchez: So how do you do that? What kind of indicators will be delivered for certain [00:33:00] groups? I think it’s different to another set of groups. So, um, one of the things that we’ve been trying to do is, what is the right investment of resources, people, To get somebody to help us with those metrics, right? And from the team that you have, who’s the most skilled to have those analysis. 

Victoria Sanchez: And, you know, how do you leverage your team to make sure that you can deliver those metrics on time? So at the end of a certain period, your cross functional teams are going back to that trust, right? And all those self leaders and cross functional teams are really trusting that your decisions are coming from those indicators of your programs or those, you know, the result of your programs. 

Steve Watt: Unfortunately, some enablement leaders are stuck in executional delivery, whether they call it order taking or want to, but they’re stuck in a place of executional delivery. What advice would you each offer to them? How they can up level? [00:34:00] Their own role and, and the impact and, and the perception of their team to, to really become strategic partners to leadership rather than just executional delivery. 

Steve Watt: Why don’t we start with you, Micah? 

Micah Jacobson: Uh, hard question. I, I have two things that I think about all the time. I, I’m constantly delivering little tiny mini lectures. To my sales leaders. I don’t think they think of them as being lecturers, but I’m constantly saying things like, how much information do you think a human being can take in all at once? 

Micah Jacobson: Uh, and you know, they’re like, ah, that’s an interesting question. Uh, and one of the lectures that I’m constantly giving is, enablement does have a cost, and you think it’s in the cost of how much you’re paying our team or our salaries or whatever, but the real cost of enablement is time and attention. I have to get a seller to stop selling for some period of time and to go learn something. 

Micah Jacobson: There’s a time cost and there’s an attentional cost. I have to make what they’re learning more important than all of the other things. And so what I want to remind them, my sales leaders, I want to say you have to be my [00:35:00] partner in that cost and in paying that price. You have to tell them that it’s worth it. 

Micah Jacobson: You have to tell them that you care about it. You have to tell them that it matters that they, that they offer that, that, that they pay that price. That they give their attention, that they use the time. Because without that partnership, I can’t get it done. I will, I’m shocked at how many of them sort of nod their head and when I say that they go, oh, now it makes sense. 

Micah Jacobson: Now I get why it is I need to be a part of the, the, the messaging, for instance, for rolling out a new program. Because I need to be part of capturing that moment of attention. Small little mini lectures is part of how I’m moving the needle forward. 

Heather Cole: It’s one of my, like a version of one of my favorite questions which I use with my kids and sometimes in work, which is, help me understand. 

Heather Cole: But I say it a little differently in work than I do at home. 

Eric Mingorance: I mean, I find it surprising that they want to be involved, they want to dictate, they want all their sellers to do all this stuff, and then you say, great, I just need you to review the curriculum first. And they’re like, I don’t have time for that. 

Eric Mingorance: They’re like, what do you [00:36:00] think all your sellers have time for that? It’s, it’s ironic to me. 

Steve Watt: Victoria, how do you, what, what advice would you offer to someone who’s stuck in that executional delivery and really wants to up level? 

Victoria Sanchez: I would say two things. One is invest in getting your enablement team, whether that’s a That’s a group of two or a team of 50 or whatever the amount of, um, resources you have in getting them really, um, acknowledgeable about the company and what they do. 

Victoria Sanchez: They have to be aligned, they have to say the same message, so really coach them to succeed at that level because they start representing yourself more and more. So I think that’s one, um, the second one, very important, and it is for us extremely important with how the future. It’s coming. Technology investment, right? 

Victoria Sanchez: I know that we all, all our companies are trying to invest a tremendous amount of money in technology. I think as an enablement organization, we have a great opportunity to [00:37:00] stop the train and say, which one? It’s the best one. And make a plan for it. It doesn’t have to change tomorrow, but if you make a plan for it to get the best technology, you can accelerate how your sales leaders are really coaching and having more time for other activities, while you also orchestrate workflows in the internal cross functional teams so that you can operate more efficiently. 

Victoria Sanchez: So I think those things, Steve, would be better. 

Eric Mingorance: Go 

Steve Watt: ahead, Eric. 

Eric Mingorance: I think another thing that, um, Can help build trust and show the value, uh, whether it’s a program or an event is a postmortem report of some sort. So, uh, I, as we’ve said here before, you start with the end in mind. That’s how I, I like to say that if you ever did any of those mazes in a book when you were a kid, it’s a lot easier to do it if you start at the end. 

Eric Mingorance: You’re like, wow, it’s totally easy. Um, so if you start with that end in mind, Hey, what are your, and we’ve talked about, what are your outcomes? Over the output that you would like to see at this [00:38:00] event, and then you’re scheduling an event Uh, learning, sessions, activities, based on what they would like people to be able to do when that ends. 

Eric Mingorance: And then I love, I’m big on surveys and getting everyone’s, uh, input. I do it. Everyone from the leaders, to the, um, SMEs, to the instructors, to the students. I get them to do a survey, um, cause that way everyone feels like they had some input and that helps. Uh, and then I run all the answers of the survey. 

Eric Mingorance: Through chat GPT, and say, hey, these were my goals, can you tell me what kind, can you pull data points from people, and it comes out great, because it’s always so polite and balanced, so it’s so great, it’s like, I certainly, Eric, I can help you with that. Uh, John thought, to your point on building a better relationship with their cohorts, as John said, X, Y, Z, and it, you can take all that information and come away. 

Eric Mingorance: With at least a good two or three pages in your dozen page [00:39:00] report, definitely have an executive summary. But it helps culminate those data points and helps tell the story. 

Steve Watt: Love it. Listeners of the Enablement Edge, or those who watch us on YouTube, know that we end every episode by asking our guests three questions. 

Steve Watt: Since we have three guests here, 

Heather Cole: and three minutes, 

Steve Watt: and three minutes, I’ll ask each of you one. Um We’re going to start with Micah, we’re going to start with Eric. We’re going to flow one way or the other. You have no mic. We’re going to start with Micah and we’re going to go this way. So you get the first one by luck of random draw then. 

Steve Watt: Uh, looking into your crystal ball, within the realm of enablement, what do you think is going to really significantly change in the next 18 to 24 months? 

Micah Jacobson: Well, I mean, if I don’t say AI, uh, I’m probably not invited back because, uh, it’s coming our way whether we like it or not. The other really good thing is, uh, I think all of us in this room are seeing enablement rise. 

Micah Jacobson: Ten years ago, this room would have been empty at every, at every, you know, at 3, [00:40:00] 000%, 300 percent rise, I can’t remember what the exact number is. Enablement is on the rise. And so I think, uh, a year from now, this, this room is bigger. I think a year from now, our voices is bigger. There are only two ways to increase the capacity of a sales team. 

Micah Jacobson: You can hire more salespeople, or you can make the ones you have more effective. And we’re not going to, you’re seeing that, that, that budget constraint. Our job is going to be increasingly important as the world gets more complicated, as AI makes it more complicated. I have, I am very bullish on the future of enablement. 

Steve Watt: All right. And the question to you then, Victoria, would be what’s not going to change? What’s never going to change? 

Victoria Sanchez: Um, what’s never going to change 

Steve Watt: or at least not going to change within this couple of years. What’s not going to change while our world’s getting rocked by AI and all this, what’s going to remain the same? 

Victoria Sanchez: I think, um, just really talking more specifically coming [00:41:00] from the AI technology investments, I think what’s not going to change is the need to transform. 

Victoria Sanchez: At a fast, you know, like fast pace. So as an enablement organization, I think we really need to make sure that we understand that we either adapt or adapt to that change. Otherwise we’re going, we’re not gonna successfully be in that vision, which I also agree, right. These new technology implementation, AI coming, all those infrastructures, uh, that are in, in place, we requires to be more creative, more, more, uh, to focus on more specific things. 

Victoria Sanchez: So, I think that’s going to stay. We have to continue to educate ourselves to learn a little bit more and apply different things to, to make it. 

Steve Watt: Final question. Eric, what’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given? 

Eric Mingorance: Um, to be succinct. And it’s a wrap. 

Steve Watt: I mean, 

Eric Mingorance: I’m constantly giving that piece of advice, I [00:42:00] don’t know if I ever take it. 

Eric Mingorance: Um, but yeah, if I had more time I would have written you a shorter letter, right? Uh, edit, edit, edit, edit. I would say, also tie yourself up. To behavior change and change management. The only constant is change. So you don’t want to be an order taker. You don’t want to be in training. They’re always going to need people to help the team and the company pivot and be agile and, uh, and have change management. 

Eric Mingorance: And as behavior change experts, that’s what you want to hang your hat on. 

Steve Watt: Fantastic. What a great place to stop. Thank you all so much. Big round of applause for our guests. 

Steve Watt: I feel this worked as a session. I hope you agree. I hope it works as a podcast and as a YouTube video, we will soon find out. And I hope that you all. Uh, who, uh, perhaps didn’t know about the Enablement Edge or hadn’t yet dug in. I hope you will take a look, whether you prefer to watch on YouTube, listen on your [00:43:00] favorite podcast channel. 

Steve Watt: Uh, we really are doing our absolute best to bring on some great guests and hopefully get out some great education and inspiration for you all. And we would appreciate your viewership and your listenership. And thank you very much for today. 

Voiceover: The Enablement Edge is brought to you by the team at Seismic. 

Voiceover: Seismic is the global leader in enablement, keeping organizations on the cutting edge of engaging customers, enabling teams, and igniting revenue growth. You can learn more at seismic.com.