Episode 261: Andy Springer on Top Sales Trends in Today’s Business Landscape

Episode 262: Debbi Varela on Creating a Culture of Success With Coaching

Shawnna Sumaoang:Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO Podcast. I’m Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we’re here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs.

Today, I’m excited to have Debbi Varela, the author ofPut Me In, Coach, here with us today. Debbi, I would love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience.

Debbi Varela:Absolutely. Thanks for having me. My name is Debbi Varela. I have over 15 years of experience now in the sales enablement and transformation space before it was even really like what it is today. I have been lucky enough to have worked with some of the world’s smallest startups to some of the world’s largest tech companies. After working in these businesses of all sizes throughout my career, I have honestly met some of the coolest and most interesting people. I’ve learned so much about what works, what doesn’t work, why it didn’t work, and what to do next time.

SS:We’re excited to have you here, Debbi. Now, going back to your book, you actually discuss how coaching can create a culture of success for businesses. In your opinion, what are the key components of a successful sales culture?

DV:That is a great question. Funny enough, I actually had just published a blog on my website on this exact topic a few weeks ago. I believe the recipe to create a winning sales culture is really around five key things. The first one for me is really just having a defined vision so everyone understands what their position is on the field or where they fit into the bigger picture of the organization. I just feel this is incredibly important because it gives a sense of belonging and purpose to individuals.

The second one I think it’s a key element that I’m passionate about, which is really around skill, or sometimes I call it action mapping and motivation. What I mean by this is truly knowing your team member’s strengths and their areas of improvement and how to motivate each person. Where will they naturally excel? Where will they need a little bit more encouragement? What’s the best way to encourage them? Are they extrinsically motivated or intrinsically motivated? That makes a huge difference.

The third one I think is super important, which I see time and time again in organizations, is accountability and continuous feedback. That would honestly come in as one of the most important ingredients for a thriving sales culture. Interestingly enough, with many of the companies I’ve worked with, this is oftentimes their biggest weakness. When I say accountability, I’m talking about like, do you manage behavior? Do you as a leader take responsibility or do you blame other people? Do you manage your pipeline and then do you spend enough time on pipeline reviews? Do you have a cadence that you’re holding yourself and your team accountable to? That’s what I think of when I think about accountability.

The next one is really around team building and trust to ensure that your team operates as a single unit. You can see this really play out on the sports team when teammates trust each other and they really know each other. Things just look effortless for them and they just flow together.

Finally, for me, it’s the last one on my list, but it’s honestly just as important, which is celebrating successes and learning from failures. You should celebrate every win, no matter how small it is, because it’s still a win. I feel that setbacks should be reviewed with positive intent, not to blame, but to learn any ball from those.

SS:I love that approach. Especially today in the current environment, why is coaching critical in today’s sales environment and how does it help nurture a healthy sales culture?

DV:I think coaching is absolutely critical and honestly it’s interesting because I think that most people would agree with that statement, but then when you dig into that with the sellers or managers, they have a different response. They don’t feel like they’re getting enough coaching from their managers and managers don’t necessarily feel like they have enough time or even the skills to do said coaching. Typically what I see happen is the managers try, but ultimately find it difficult to get on a regular and consistent coaching cadence with their teams.

In lieu of that, they tend to jump in and rescue the seller during a sales call to show them how it’s done, but that is not coaching. Ultimately that leads to an unhealthy sales culture because that decreases accountability and responsibility on both sides. It also erodes trust and it undermines the confidence of both sides.

For me, if a more consistent coaching cadence was in place and managers were given the skills to coach effectively, then a positive and supportive culture would help to motivate and engage teams, which would then attract and retain their top talent. It would drive performance and deliver better results for customers. Coaching is just a critical factor in creating and developing high-performing sales teams in my personal and humble opinion.

SS:I love that opinion. I’d also love to get your opinion, Debbi, on what a good coaching program looks like.

DV:Absolutely. I believe that a good coaching program has to have a well-defined structure and it needs to provide some type of system, whatever it is, for managers to enhance the skills and performance for the overall effectiveness of just the individuals within their team. For example, it should have clear objectives that are measurable and aligned to the specific skills or the behaviors or outcomes that they want to improve.

One thing I just want to mention is that coaching programs really can’t take a peanut butter spread approach. You have to develop them with the individual needs in mind and there should be some kind of feedback or performance management framework in place to help provide individuals with specific things in a timely manner and also focus on the behavior that can be observed in positive reinforcement as well as constructive criticism. I mean, in coaching, really, the key is continuous improvement. Goals or milestones are established and then also be adaptable to the needs of that individual. Your coaching begins to evolve over time.

SS:Absolutely. Those are great key principles to structure your coaching program. What would you say some common challenges are when it comes to coaching and how can enablement help mitigate those challenges?

DV:I think the most common challenges that I see and hear are focused around three things, which is time, skill, and consistency. With time constraints, managers, just don’t have it. There are just way too many competing priorities. Enablement can help by providing some time management training for coaches, as well as even just like some type of structured coaching schedule.

The next one is about the lack of skills or training, I hear this all the time that managers really want to coach, but they just don’t really know how to do it. I think enablement can offer some type of coaching skills training program or provide them with some kind of organized workshop resources and just offer some ongoing support.

The third one I see a lot is that they will start coaching, but then it just falls off. Just a lack of consistency and inconsistency in coaching across teams always leads to some kind of uneven result. Enablement can help by implementing some kind of standardized coaching framework with cadences and guidelines. They can provide templates, resources, and checklists that will help managers keep that consistency and have that structure that can anchor them to keep it going over time.

SS:I think those are some great suggestions. Oftentimes in sales teams, I think front-line managers really serve as the key coaches for their teams. How can enablement help prepare those front-line managers to be more effective coaches?

DV:I think enablement teams can respond to some of the things we just talked about about the common challenges. For example, if enablement can provide comprehensive coaching skill training for frontline managers, where they focus on things like active listening, effective communication, and giving feedback, that’s often actually very hard for people to do in a way that’s effective for the person they’re giving the feedback to.

Goal setting and all the other essential coaching competencies. Developing a repository of coaching resources, as I mentioned, including guides, templates, and best practices, just so that these frontline managers have easy access to materials that can aid in their coaching efforts, make it a little bit easier for them, because remember, they have so much going on and so many competing priorities.

Offer training on goal setting and action planning. Use things like the SMART goal framework with their teams to create actionable plans to help the plans that they’re actually setting. Then establishing a system for ongoing monitoring and support. If enablement can do some kind of regular check-in with frontline manag

Episode 261: Andy Springer on Top Sales Trends in Today’s Business Landscape

Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO Podcast. I’m Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we’re here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs.

Today, I’m excited to have Andy Springer, the chief client officer at RAIN Group, join us. Andy, I would love for you to introduce yourself, and your role in your organization to our audience.

Andy Springer: Hi, everyone. Thank you very much for having me. I am Andy Springer, the Chief Client Officer at the RAIN Group. My role is one that each and every day I am a practitioner leading teams in terms of supporting large-scale sales transformations and also working with small, and medium-sized enterprises in terms of upscaling and developing sales skills that are going to shift the dial in terms of sales performance.

SS: Wonderful. The reason that we wanted to pull you on to this podcast is because RAIN Group actually recently released a study that identified some key trends in the current sales landscape. In your opinion, what are the trends that have the greatest impact on businesses and their ability to succeed in the current environment?

AS: Yeah, I would say that the trends that we saw through our research were a significant increase in terms of sales cycles. Opportunities are taking longer to close. There’s more complexity in terms of that. The amount of opportunities that are being led to a loss due to no decision. While there may be significant needs, significant problems to solve, and objectives to be supported to achieve, for whatever reason we’re seeing a lot of no decision being what they lost to instead of competitors.

I think the third one is selling in an uncertain economy. If you look at the post-pandemic world and you look at the political challenges that have impacted the market, you look at the shift in terms of the financial impacts in terms of the post-pandemic inflationary world and then how that’s changed the dynamics of the economy, it’s made it really challenging particularly in the B2B space, but not exclusive to. That uncertainty cascades uncertainty in terms of sellers and how they approach the market and what they are dealing with.

SS: Absolutely. I couldn’t agree more. From your perspective, Andy, how have these trends influenced or created top challenges that sales organizations are facing today? What would you say those top challenges are?

AS: I think it was pretty clear from our research that in terms of when I look at it through the lens of a sales leader and sales enablement space, one of the most consistent challenges that keeps showing its face in the sales space is recruiting and hiring sales talent and the associated challenges with that.

Also, the uncertain economy piece was represented very strongly, generating qualified sales leads continues to be a significant challenge for a lot of organizations. We dive into the skill areas where the key challenges in developing sales skills are relevant in the real-time selling environment. Also, the one which I found unsurprising, but I think some who I’ve spoken to in reflection on the report found surprising, which was the challenge of developing sales managers. Often in the sales enablement space, I see that sales managers are the ones who are most forgotten about. They’re also the ones that are often the loudest in asking, requesting, and demanding skills from their sellers. Often when it comes to developing skills for them to be better managers, it’s something that they’re either left out on, it’s not a focus or it may not be that there’s a budget to focus on developing them.

SS: Absolutely. Yeah. I couldn’t agree more. To that point, especially for our audience, what role can enablement play in helping businesses overcome these challenges?

AS: I think there are three key areas that we’ve really isolated and focused on. The first one is improving sales productivity as a whole. One of the fortunate things that we get to be involved in is introducing productivity thinking tools and ultimately seeking to shift behavior in productivity. Why is that? Well, every organization you go into, whether it’s, you’re going into a sales organization or the sales area of an organization or other parts, everyone says the same thing. ‘I’ve always got way too many things to do and not enough time to do them in.’

When we really focus on the sales organization, what we see is some of the greatest deficiency in skill is not necessarily around how to sell, it is how do I produce more? Everyone has the same amount of time in a week, and in our studies, what we seek to do is often define, well, what top performers in sales and sales management do that others don’t that makes them top performing.

I think one of the things that cried out really clearly was top performers have an incessant focus in terms of the productivity of their sellers and sales leaders inside their organization. and they seek to improve the way in which they focus on productivity before selling skills.

The next one I would say then leads to developing multi-skilled sellers. If you look at the journey that we’re just starting to build here we’ve identified ways to free up time for the sellers so they focus on what’s most important. Then, when we align that with the development of their selling skills in that multi-skill space, we start to see more time focused in the right areas, which means we’re going to start to see an impact on the win rate.

Those two factors are critically important. The last thing I’ve kind of touched on is leveraging our sales managers. I understand that a lot of organizations do a really good job in developing broad-based management skills, and a lot of that links very much to sales managers. We often go into organizations and we see that the management skill and application in the sales area is fairly good. I mean, obviously, there are deficiencies in some areas and industries and types, but broadly we see a consistent level of management skill. What we see as a broad-based deficit in terms of skill is coaching. Sales managers not just focusing on the management aspects, you know, territory planning, pipeline management, those sorts of day-to-day or weekly, quarterly activities including planning and those sorts of things when I’m talking in the management context, but what about the coaching? What are the coaching elements?

If we’ve got increased levels of productivity in our selling organization, we’re training our sellers in terms of the skills that are going to help enable them to perform better. When we combine that with a focus on the development of sales managers to not just manage but to be really good coaches of their selling team as well, and we develop coaching skills within that we see a transformative effect start to take place.

Now the team is operating as a whole and everyone knows their role in a lot of cases, we’re talking critical mass here. I know there’s a lot of people that will be listening to this saying, well, we’re never going to achieve that. With 100 percent of our selling organization, you don’t need to in order to see significant sales performance improvement. You only need a critical mass that is developing the learning and applying this new dynamic in their selling organization to see a significant shift. Often the first measure that we start to see lift his win rate.

SS: Absolutely. You just kind of got to thaw that frozen middle, right? What should enablement leaders be prioritizing in their strategies for the year ahead to help businesses address these challenges?

AS: What I’m seeing get the greatest traction, as I said, is probably the gap in terms of sales manager focus. How do we make our managers better managers and better coaches in order to help drive sales performance improvement? Particularly I see a lot of organizations do one thing really well, right? Selling organizations invest in training their teams.

Now, the one other thing about training is that sellers and sales managers get access to new information and knowledge. That knowledge can have an informative, motivational, and inspirational impact, but we all know that, outside of the virtual training room or the physical classroom, once they have obtained that knowledge, it means nothing without the application of that knowledge.

I think one of the critical areas is if we’re going to invest in improving the productivity of our sales organization, we’re going to develop the skills of our sellers, we’re going to develop the skills of our managers. How are we going to support the application of that learning over the first 7, 30, 90 days and beyond, so that we get the true impact of what we’re seeing?

When we see applied knowledge implemented, and then we see sellers and sales managers effectively held to account for the application of that learning, we start to see the rubber meet the road and ultimately the business outcomes that you’re seeking through developing your people start to show, as we say, the dial starts to shift in the direction that you want it to. That gap in terms of applied learning is a big one. There’s no point in working on those three areas that we’ve talked about without a significant focus on the enablement of that throughout the organization over a sustained period.

SS: I love that. You’ve talked about the importance of frontline managers, as well as I think sales leaders. How can enablement leaders and sales leaders partner to better align their strategies to the top priorities of the business?

AS:

Episode 260: Jay Shephard on Creating an Effective Enablement Charter

Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO Podcast. I’m Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we’re here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs.

Today, I’m excited to have Jay Shephard at Bentley Systems join us. Jay, I would love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience.

Jay Shephard: Thanks for the invite. I’m thrilled to meet you and spend some time with you. Where do you start? I have been doing this for a while. I started my career 25 years ago selling, and when you start your career in selling you start to pick up some things that seem to go well. All of a sudden I started being asked to do some coaching with new hires that were coming in by my boss. What I found out, Shawnna, is I loved it. It’s a lot of fun.

I thought, is there a career around this? I love selling, but I also love the coaching element. That’s how I kind of, we’ll call it backdoored into this thing called enablement. Specific to enablement, it is an evolving picture, which I’m sure we’ll get a chance to talk a little bit more about.

I’ve had an opportunity to work primarily in the enterprise software space in both sales effectiveness tools as well as software platforms. I started with Bentley in 2023 and really took on a very cool challenge and that was to redesign, revamp, and repurpose enablement to be more of a strategic aligned value add to our CRO. That’s where I am today.

SS: We’re excited to have you here, Jay. Now, a key focus for you at Bentley Systems is really, as you’ve stated in your intro, reframing the way that your organization thinks about enablement. From your perspective, what are some of enablement’s core responsibilities and what is the value that it brings to the business?

JS: I think enablement, the industry, the space, whether it’s in the United States, Europe, or Asia, doesn’t matter, it is in flux. In other words, if you ask 15 people what the definition of enablement is, you can get 25 answers. When it came to coming to Bentley, what we figured out early on was the fact that there is this talented group of people that make up the enablement team, but they were misunderstood. They were almost pushed into a corner and almost like enablement became the department of broken things, as I always call it.

They were an afterthought. It was the last thought, like oh yeah, we better get enablement involved. Well, that’s really not the purpose of enablement, but it was created to be that way based on just general culture and a lack of definition of the value of what enablement brings.

SS: Jay, I know that you created a sales enablement charter, which really kind of focuses on outlining the mission, the goals, the strategy, and the responsibilities of your enablement function. Tell our audience more about this. What are your best practices for creating an effective enablement charter?

JS: I’ll start off by saying the reason I went to Bentley. It had everything to do with the CRO. He wanted to lead a transformation project, initiative if you would, company-wide to drive the strategic value of Bentley Solutions to their end customer. The CRO realized that there were some significant gaps in there, which of course was enablement.

I took this position first and foremost because it was aligned with the CRO. I think that’s really important for your listeners to know. The CRO is critical to the direction, as well as the strategic value of what enablement brings. Knowing that, connecting with our CRO as I did through that interview process, I knew this was an opportunity I wanted to take advantage of.

Knowing that we were going to start from scratch, we went out and essentially asked individuals who were key to the business all throughout the globe, 1, what is your definition of enablement? You would not believe how many different definitions I had. 2, what are the current challenges here? Why are we not winning business? Why are we winning business? For that matter, what are the opportunities? We then used that information to build a charter that was strategically aligned to not only Bentley’s business priorities but also the CRO’s MBOs.

We built it from that perspective and then worked backward. Here are the metrics that we knew that we needed to hit to drive the priorities and the MBOs of the business. How do you design enablement to make that happen? We literally created functions as well as areas of responsibility to help drive those initiatives, those metrics, if you would, and of course, that strategic alignment, which was so critical to the CRO and myself.

SS: Absolutely. I love those. Tell us a little bit about your perspective on how an enablement charter helps to drive alignment with the broader organizational strategy and the objectives of your company.

JS: Since I have been here I probably have had no less than 50 conversations with people asking me, what does enablement do within Bentley? These are Bentley employees. First and foremost, that charter that you’re talking about, the reason it is so important is to ensure everybody’s on the same page in regards to expectations and what the possibilities could be in working with enablement or us working with that particular function of the business. That to me sets in motion a transparent relationship of our capabilities and what it is that we can deliver.

Anything you do when it comes to a charter has to be very clear in communicating what it is that you do, what you’re capable of doing, what your capacity is that you can be doing, and here’s how you are measured.

SS: It’s amazing to achieve that level of alignment. Jay, how are you driving strategic buy-in of this charter with your key stakeholders and in particular, perhaps some of your executive leaders?

JS: Well, first of all, executive leaders are measured just as well as enablement is measured. If we can align our agenda to their agenda, then we are in partnership. One of the first things that I did was I reached out to all of our global leaders and understood a little bit more about what their metrics were, what they were measured by, and really what the gaps were. Once we identified those gaps, we discovered ways that enablement could close those gaps.

Let me tell you something, when you can help someone else achieve their objectives, you don’t have a problem getting a phone call returned. That’s where they knew that I was working towards helping them with their agenda. I can tell you this team immediately got the credibility and the opportunity to drive value far more than they’ve been able to up until that point.

SS: The buy-in that you’ve been able to secure at Bentley is fantastic. Now, since Bentley is in a rapidly evolving business landscape, how do you ensure that your sales enablement strategy remains adaptive to emerging trends and industry changes?

JS: Well, that’s such a great question. Asking it in a different way, it’s almost like the old belief that when you train someone, they’re automatically trained. You never need to touch it again. We know you and I both know, Shawnna, that’s not true. To ensure that your enablement strategy and alignment are real, you have to have a continuous conversation. You have to be able to ensure that it’s not a one-and-done type of relationship.

For me, anyway, I have ongoing, anywhere from between two and four-week conversations with all of our respective leaders across the globe. I also have a similar relationship and frequency of meetings with the CRO. Here’s what we do that I think is uniquely different. I’ve taken my team and we have geographically dispersed ourselves from a coverage point of view. I have, for example, a European lead. I have a US lead. We’re going to be bringing on an Asia pack lead and so on and so on.

Because of that coverage, we now are closer to our customers. We are consistently asking not only in our coaching work that we do with them or the training work that we’re doing with them, we’re constantly getting feedback in regards to what’s missing, what we need to do differently, and so on and so on. We’re not necessarily looking for negativity, what we are looking for are opportunities to improve.

SS: Along with the adaptability of enablement, it’s also important to ensure reps are adaptable to change as well. I know a key way to do this is through coaching, which is an area that you have a lot of expertise in Jay. What role does coaching play in your enablement strategy?

JS: Coaching is critical. In fact, I would even say I put more of an emphasis on coaching and implementation than I do the training itself. Think about this. It doesn’t matter what generation you are in. If you’re millennial, if you’re Gen X, Gen Z, I don’t care. I mean, what’s the newest one now, Shawnna? I think it’s Generation Alpha, but I don’t know if they’re even in the workforce yet.

My point is they all learn differently. Some are attracted to badging, some people are attracted to microlearning, and some people want a dissertation with all the details. Then you got the audio and you got the visual and the kinesthetic elements that go into learning and transferring knowledge. That’s all well and good, and yes, you need to touch on some of those elements, but coaching is where it is applicable. You take that learning and you apply it.

It’s so different from reading a book. I don’t know about you, but I love to read. I’m always reading, but I always have that challenge that ever

Episode 259: Rodney Umrah on Taking a Non-Linear Career Path to Enablement

Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO Podcast. I’m Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we’re here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs.

Today, I’m excited to have Rodney Umrah from Forcepoint join us. Rodney, I would love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience.

Rodney Umrah: Thank you so much, Shawnna. I am delighted to be here. My name is Rodney Umrah, and I’m the global head of enablement at our go-to-market organization here at Forcepoint.

SS: I’m excited to have you here. Now, I know that you’ve shared that enablement found you rather than you finding it. Tell us a little bit about that career journey. Why and how did you transition into the enablement field?

RU: I’ll take you back a little before I get to the transition because that will help to inform why that experience was so interesting to me. I was born on the lovely island of Jamaica, Shawnna. I’m not sure if you have been there before, but that’s where I was born. I went to the University of the West Indies and I studied computer science. I was fortunate to be hired right out of school by IBM. There’s a gentleman who did that, and I don’t know how I can pay it forward to him, his name is Carl Foster. He’s still my mentor and friend today. He saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself.

While being at IBM, there were 366,000 people in the organization. That was the largest IT company at the time, but it was like a university really, and I learned a lot. That’s where my true professionalism was honed. I migrated to Canada, that’s where I live now, and I was in technical roles between IBM Jamaica and IBM Canada, but I always wanted to be in sales. I transitioned from technical roles at IBM to sales, specifically software sales.

Now, a little bit of context, Shawnna, is that my mother is actually a teacher and my brother is a professor. I used to do that part-time, I was a part-time professor myself, so, as a result of that experience, enjoying the IBM experience, and doing well, I said I wanted to transition to Microsoft. I spent about eight and a half years at IBM, then over to Microsoft. I was there for five and a half years and then moved over to NetSuite. This is where, now, your question comes in, Shawnna, which is a transition. I was doing well in sales at NetSuite, going to club every year and especially leveraging my manager at the time. He was very instrumental in my success.

My GVP or Global Vice President of Sales, invited me into his office one day, and just asked me the question: are you interested in leading enablement? Now, the truth is I didn’t know what that term meant, enablement. I was like, enable what? I didn’t know because I was used to the term training. He asked me to speak to the leader of that organization because the GVP wanted me to lead enablement for his organization. As a result of that, the rest is history as they say, because here I am 10 years later and really, really enjoying it. I’ve been all over the globe, Shawnna. I was in Australia, the Philippines, Europe, across the US, Canada, you name it. I just have a great passion for the enablement vocation.

SS: I love that career journey, and I’d love to understand more about how you think that your non-linear career path and your background in roles, spanning sales and academia, have helped you in your role as an enablement leader.

RU: It certainly did, especially because I came from a sales background. It was, as I said, my group vice president who saw it in myself and also my manager. At the time, my manager asked me to do some best practices training with the team that we had at the time and it kind of grew and so they saw it and I didn’t.

As a result of having the sales background and then being able to enable sellers, there is instant credibility there. The reason for it is not because I’m brilliant. The reason for it is that you’re coming from the same vocation that you’re enabling. You don’t only talk the talk, but you have walked the talk. People can see it. Whenever you present, they can understand for sure that you have been in the trenches before. This is not a theory. It’s not just words on a page. Coming from that background was really, really instrumental in my success.

Now, the other area is academia as a result of being a part-time professor. Being able to stand and confidently deliver content, I took it for granted. Shawnna, you probably are aware, presenting in front of an audience is like one of the top three fears that people have. All of those pieces coming together and the experiences there really bode well for me in being in enablement and I’m absolutely enjoying the ride.

SS: I love to hear that. That is fantastic. What would you say are some of the challenges that practitioners might face when they’re trying to make a career transition, and how did you overcome some of those challenges as you pivoted into the enablement career?

RU: Wow, that’s, that’s a loaded question there, Shawnna, and we don’t have the time to go over the list, but the truth is, when you transition into enablement, just like any other new role, especially if it’s different from the one that you’re coming from, you will often feel less than, meaning it’s almost like you don’t feel like you are qualified to be there.

That’s a feeling that one would need to overcome with time. So, I struggled with that, which is why I asked my GVP at the time. I was like, why are you asking me to do this? I don’t know how to do this. You know what he said to me, Shawnna? I’ll never forget it. It was in his office. He said, Rodney, all I need for you to do is to teach others what you do and what you do well when you’re in sales. That gave me the comfort level to say “Oh, what I’ll be doing is very similar to what I’m doing today. All I’m doing is really imparting my, or paying forward, my knowledge in this field.”

That really helped feeling less than is one of the areas that you need to watch out for anyone transitioning into enablement. The other one is that there are very high expectations of individuals in enablement. Very high. In fact, we all know that in sales there is always high velocity, right? The expectations are high, and there’s an anticipation that you should make an impact now, and that can cause stress. It certainly can, but of course, as long as you are pacing yourself and ensuring that you’re doing the best you can, working with the resources that you have, ensuring that you’re aligned to the strategic priorities and you have ruthless prioritization, you will certainly overcome.

The demands are high, Shawnna. They’re coming from all over. They’re probably coming from your CRO. They’re coming from the RevOps organization, legal product marketing, et cetera.
Managing all of that can be really challenging, but of course, just like anything else, you will figure it out over time as you work with others and learn from others.

SS: I love that advice. I want to drill into this a little bit. What are some of the key skills that have helped you succeed as an enablement leader? What skills do you think other enablement leaders should look for when they’re building out their teams?

RU: I was fortunate, as I mentioned earlier, to have 10 years of experience in sales, software/cloud sales to be exact. As a result of that background, I wasn’t just enabling because it was on a slide. The content that I was delivering was coming from the heart and the brain at the same time because of my experience. I think people can see through that. People are looking for transparency so that decade of sales background really helped me.

As I transitioned in, and even today, going into my eleventh year, I think I have also shown the leadership skills that I’ve gathered along the way, even when interacting with clients when I was in sales. I’ll give you an example: When I was at Oracle NetSuite, I had fifteen strategic accounts in the northeast of the U.S. Going through that process, we had lots of challenges, but we had to overcome those to be able to ensure that those organizations thrive.

You had to exhibit, on a consistent basis, leadership skills and helping your customers.
It’s the same when you are in an enablement, because, especially when you’re dealing with a global company, people are scattered all across the world. Being able to deal with so many different individuals with diverse backgrounds and thoughts is very important.

I will also hasten to say that exhibiting empathy is key as well in our roles because the sales role is stressful. It really is, and I guess because I’ve been there, I know that. As a result, when dealing with that audience, and when I say sales here, it could be business development, it could be sales themselves or sales engineers, it could be renewals, it could be customer success, those are stressful roles. Executing your job in an empathetic way is very key. Always having an open mind to continuously learn, which is why we’re in this enablement role because we’re supposed to be life-learners.

SS: I love that, and I love the life-learner approach. What benefit do you think organizations can gain from diversifying their sales enablement teams and bringing in people with different or maybe unconventional backgrounds?

RU: It is absolutely powerful, Shawnna, and I’m saying it not because it’s the right thing to say, I’m indicating that clearly because I’ve experienced it. Let me tell you what I mean. I had the awesome p

Episode 258: Regan Barker on Effective Coaching in Today’s Sales Landscape

Shawnna Sumaoang:Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO Podcast. I’m Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we’re here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs.

Today, I’m excited to have Regan Barker from Grant Thornton, Australia join us. Regan, I’d love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience.

Regan Barker:Absolutely, Shawnna. It’s great to be here. My name is Regan Barker and I am the head of sales and sales enablement here at Grant Thornton Australia. Part of my role is to work closely with the business on their sales activity and sales coaching. Grant Thornton is an accounting audit and consulting firm. We have six offices across our beautiful nation and seven service lines. We sell over a hundred products and services across 11 industry specializations with about 170 partners and 1,300 people.

SS:Thank you for joining us. We’re excited to have a guest on the podcast from the Australia region. Now, one area of expertise for you is coaching. I’d love to start there and understand why sales coaching is so important.

RB:Great question. I think for particularly working in professional services, slightly different from more product-based businesses, our partners are the owners of the business. They’re also the experts and they’re actually the product. For me, coaching and advising our 170-odd partners is pivotal.

In Australia, we have an ever-changing landscape across the business, regulation, and market pressure. We need to ensure that our partners and our people have the confidence to cut through the noise and really provide essential insights around business operations, regulatory change, and emerging issues for those businesses and senior leaders to make sound business decisions. Helping our partners in their activity helps them be more efficient as well as to be able to make sure that they’re talking to the right people around the right insights as well.

SS:Absolutely. From your perspective, what are some of the key components of an effective coaching program, especially in today’s sales landscape?

RB:I think for effective coaching, it’s really about meeting people where they are. Most sales programs are based on supporting sales operators, our partners are the owners, and service providers, they’re the team leaders. They have to run the billing, run the client programs, absolutely everything. Our effective coaching has to be integrated as a part of their everyday life to make sure that it is effective and efficient.

When I say meeting people where they are, really it’s about understanding their business, how it operates, what the sales cycles are, whether it’s heavily compliance-driven and you’ll be advising an organization and their CFO, for example, on a regular basis or cyclical basis versus some of our financial advisory experts that are heavily transactional. Meeting them where they are, both in how they operate, but also in terms of their own capability as well, some of which are extremely effective sales operators and others may be more introverted. It’s really about giving them confidence.

One of the pieces that we try to focus on is just focusing on one skill or development area at a time. Fine-tune that, making sure we find our efficiencies, and then as they build that confidence and capability, then we move on to the next area to help fine-tune something else, another skill.

SS:I think those are absolutely key components to effective coaching programs. In your experience, what does good coaching look like? In other words, what does it take to be an effective sales coach?

RB:I think the most powerful tool you can have is to also be a practitioner. In professional services, obviously, I’m not going to be a tax expert, I’m not going to be an auditor, but what I am is an expert around sales. A key thing that I’ve adopted here is in the last financial year, I took over inbound sales and really developed that channel.

Everything that I coach on, I test and I use as a part of our inbound sales program as well. That’s led to great success. It means that we frequently on a daily basis run alongside our partners in a framework that I like to call coach to close. We are working with the client, working with the partner, and ensuring that the tactics and communications, the cadence, and our tools are all adopted as a part of those sales opportunities. We can then give them to the partner and they can use it in other opportunities that they’re working on.

What we’ve seen in terms of our adoption of inbound sales as well as sales enablement means that we’ve actually increased our revenue by that channel by over 93% in comparison to the previous year. We’ve actually qualified and won more opportunities from it as well. Our median opportunity fee has increased exponentially as well. With that, it means that we can give our partners practical tips to adopt within their sales programs rather than the more high-level traditional coaching that has occurred in the past within professional services.

SS:That is fantastic advice in terms of what good looks like. On the flip side, a common challenge when it comes to sales coaching is ensuring that sellers and sales managers are able to make the time for it. It feels like productivity and staying on top of quite a few things are definitely a challenge for folks these days. How do you get buy-in from the sales team and sales leadership to lean into coaching?

RB:I think that one of the challenges for us is, again, because we are in professional services, the partners are everything. There is a power behind what we call the billable hour. There has to be enough time in the day for partners to be able to bill and provide services to their clients as well as sell. I think there are a few pieces to this one.

We’re not going to be able to influence every partner across the firm some of them are already great operators. Really it’s about working with the people that want to work with us as well. Really focusing on from their perspective, tapping into their growth mindset and their willingness to learn and more on the flip side for us is about integrating it into partners every day.

We try to integrate our sales coaching into our pipeline meetings. Everything from our inbound sales, everything from our outbound prospecting, working across the top, middle, and bottom of the funnel with our marketing team. Then, making sure that we support them across as many interactions as possible, rather than only focusing on carving out time for that one-to-one coaching.

SS:I think that is a great way to go ahead and get buy-in from the leadership organization. How can coaching help sellers better engage their clients and deepen those client relationships?

RB:This is probably my favorite question. I think that any good sales tool or anything that you can have in your arsenal will help you be a better provider to your existing clients. Take questioning, for example. We try to create a framework to ensure that we cover not just current questions, but say future and past questions to ensure that we can get the most information and the most effective information to help support our prospective clients, but also our current clients. Even adopting those components will help be able to ensure that we get accurate scoping with our existing clients and make sure that we’re delivering on our promises as well.

SS:I’d love to hear that. Last question for you, Regan. What are your best practices for measuring the impact of coaching?

RB:We measure a few components around everything from the usability and adoption of our CRM. We obviously look at the bottom line, so from a partnership, it is individual partner revenue and service line revenue. Whether they’re in tax consulting or financial advisory, the average days to close opportunities obviously would be dependent on the service line and the products we’re offering.

One of our key focuses, however, at the moment is around client mix. Making sure that when we are winning work, are we winning work with the right type of client that we want to work with? Given its services, there has to be a level of profitability as well. Also, we want to work with great clients that also want to work with us. Also, from earlier stage sales, it’s around outreach activity, the number of opportunities created, also that cross-collaboration between partners and service lines. Really looking to focus on introductions given, whether it’s across our firm, but then also our friends in other professional services like banking and law, for example. The overall engagement, particularly through say NPS scores, as well, because we want to make sure that while we’re growing as a firm, we really focus on delivering against the objectives of our clients as well.

SS:I love that. Regan. Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today.

RB:It was great to be here. I really