Ep43 ISE Season Finalé Anniversary Show with 5 Listeners
Welcome to the Inside: Sales Enablement Podcast Episode 43.
Let’s Celebrate!
Join 5 Sales Enablement Insiders and to talk through the past 12 months. In the last 12 months, 14,600 listens from 46 countries. instead of going back and reviewing all our shows again and creating some sort of review, we crowd sourced it. And you’re invited to the party!
Hear their top episodes, and how they action the podcast in their organization. Also, get the “inside scoop” on what we did behind the scenes!
Here are some other stats from the podcast thus far:
- Listeners from 46 Countries.
- USA represents 72% of listens
- When people listen: Mon – Thurs around 1pm
- Monday is our biggest listening day
Joining us to celebrate on the Anniversary Show:
- Erich Starrett, CRO / Director of Business Development @ETA and President of the Atlanta SE Society
- Sarah Fricke Senior Manager, Global Sales Enablement @ RingCentral
- Meagan Davis, Sales Enablement Manager at CyberArk
- Amy Benoit , Founder and Chief Consultant at AllPropos specializing in organizational design and strategy consulting
- Bill Ball, Director of Learning and Development at Disys and SE Society Exec Board Member
To view the research method, visit https://www.OrchestrateSales.com/research/
Join us at https://www.OrchestrateSales.com/podcast/ to collaborate with peers, join Insider Nation, participate in the conversation and be part of the continued elevation of the profession.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Intro 00:06
Welcome to the inside sales enablement podcast. Where has the profession been? Where is it now? And where is it heading? What does it mean to your company? other functions, the market? Find out here. Join the founding father of the sales enablement profession Scott Santucci and Trailblazer Brian Lambert, as they take you behind the scenes of the birth of an industry, the inside sales enablement podcast starts now.
Brian Lambert 00:38
I’m Scott Santucci, Brian Lambert, and we are the sales enablement insiders.
Scott Santucci 00:44
Our podcast is for sales enablement, leaders looking to elevate their function, expand their sphere of influence and increase the span of control within their companies. Together, Brian and I have worked on over 100 different kinds of sales enablement, initiatives, as analysts, consultants, or practitioners, we’ve learned the hard way, what works? And maybe what’s more important, what doesn’t.
Brian Lambert 01:10
Welcome to our first anniversary show. It’s the Year in Review everybody.
Unknown Speaker 01:15
Yeah.
Brian Lambert 01:19
So thanks for joining us. And I wanted to start the show by saying thank you so much insider nation for being listeners of our show. We started this exactly a year ago, this week, when this episode drops, it will be one year, and it’s been quite a ride. We started out like trying to figure out how many of these we could do. So I’ve listened to this show a lot. And I said, Okay, well, Scott, how do we do an anniversary episode. And I wanted to really take it through here and say, I can go back and listen to everything or crowdsource it. So I am going to crowdsource it, you guys heard a little bit of an audience a little bit of a crowd. And I’m excited to introduce these folks that have joined us, for our insider nation. And it’s our open mic podcast. And we’re going to have them chime in. So I know you guys like stats, and I know Scott love stats. So let me let me give you the download here on what’s been downloaded. I think you’re gonna appreciate it in the last 12 months, we’ve had 14,600 listens of our podcast, people from 46 countries, the 770 2% of that come from the US. That’s about 1200 a month.
Also, interestingly enough, Monday through Thursday, around 1pm, or our peak hours. So I don’t know if folks are out taking a walk at that time, or maybe working out around that time, or what but that was interesting. Also, Monday is our biggest listening day. We appreciate you guys starting the week off with a little dose of of Scott and Brian, that’s cool. Apple podcasts 40% of our listens. And that means a lot of you folks are on mobile 60% are on mobile and iOS is the biggest operating system, the largest operating system. 60% of folks are on iOS devices. In the past year, we feel the two surveys. One was on the COVID response that that gave it gave us actually five episodes, we’re trying to do one, but it kept just yielding great information and in detail. The second survey and research project was on the state of sales enablement, that groundbreaking research really set the tone here for coming out of COVID. And it’s really the only one I’ve seen the only research I’ve seen post COVID, especially in the sales enablement space, which hasn’t had a lot of coverage from a qualitative perspective, which means not using, you know, circle number one to five. So that was rich data, we pulled that in did a webinar, and we have about 2500 people on our newsletter list. And about 400 total people have listened to almost 500 have listened to the webinar. So that’s great. From our listeners from insider nation, you’re going to hear about that.
But before I go further, I also have another set of statistics and I I’m doing this on purpose because Scott’s such a numbers person. But Nick is our sound guy. And you guys have heard us talk about Nick before. He’s the awesome voice over talent at the beginning of the show. Yes, we made him pick the music. He’s also introducing the show. And he’s also our engineer who edits the show and does all of our cleanup to make it sound good. So he’s been tracking our stats, and we’re gonna we’re gonna give you guys some of those numbers now. So over the last 41 episodes, he’s taken out 157 arms. So that’s good. 257 double taps on Scott desk. That’s that He does that a lot and actually does that when he said something really super important. So there’s 257 of those 70 broken words due to it, it would. That’s super annoying because it, see what I did there. That was just me, that was not a bad connection. But that’s what he fixes so that you don’t get annoyed. But Nick, leave that one in. Just for a fact, I thought that was cool. I’m being creative. 340 3045 squeaky chairs like this.
I have a squeaky chair. So he’s always on me for squeaking my chair while I’m talking. So he can’t edit it out when I’m doing that. So that’s probably pretty annoying. And then, about 40 times he’s inserted our famous Whoa. And that’s almost one per show. So we’re on track for that. And five times he’s he said, he said to fix it majorly. Because I’ve said like, hey, Nick, go back and edit that out. We can’t say those cuss words, things like that. So that’s pretty cool. And thanks, Nick for doing that. Nick wrote us a quick little note. He said he’s enjoyed engineering this. And he’s sorry, he hasn’t found this. So what noise yet? And we’re gonna actually he’s asking us, Scott, if we can record this. So what noise? What do you think about that? Oh, sweet. You know, that’s so what you’ve been looking for for nine months? Yeah. We’re gonna get it right now. By the
Scott Santucci 06:23
way, thank you guys so much for doing this is awesome. I’m so excited. This is Brian’s pure directorial debut. at it. I’m loving it.
Brian Lambert 06:32
Yeah, we’re gonna record this. So what but you are the, I guess the the director or the producer, whatever. So we have to do this. So what until you’re happy?
Scott Santucci 06:42
Okay,
Brian Lambert 06:42
what do I need to do? count us down? And then we’re going to do so what until we can get it for Nick.
Scott Santucci 06:48
Okay. Awesome. Okay. 321.
Unknown Speaker 06:56
So
Scott Santucci 06:59
you guys don’t sound angry and
Brian Lambert 07:01
we got to be faster.
Scott Santucci 07:02
And you got to be angry. Like, what are the hell you talking about? Man?
Brian Lambert 07:07
Get us into the mood. Why are we so important?
Scott Santucci 07:10
I need to I need to do it the mood?
Brian Lambert 07:12
Yeah. Set the context.
Scott Santucci 07:14
A good director. Yeah, direct direct. I need director. Okay,
Unknown Speaker 07:22
what’s my motivation?
Scott Santucci 07:23
Right? Well, whose motivation so what’s your motivation? So you guys your motivation is this. You just heard me pontificate about something that whether it be World War One trenches, a Brooklyn Bridge, Dimitri medoff. Metal, metal often is a periodic table, something like that. And you’re impatient wanting to know what the hell does this have to do with insert something you care about? sales, pipeline coaching, whatever. That’s your motivation. She kind of annoyed. I get to the chase. What are you talking about, man?
Brian Lambert 07:58
All right. Okay, what needs to be fast, not a so what it needs to do what? It needs to be a jab.
Erich Starrett 08:07
So it’s 123. So what?
Unknown Speaker 08:10
Like that we need we need the rhythm. And we need an example of this. So what you’re looking for so so what first I’m serious. Yeah, call this up. demonstrate this. So what and then we need to count off and not a random rhythm and a 123 word,
Erich Starrett 08:28
right? And then again, we’re five. So what’s four or five? I’m Maxi directing.
Unknown Speaker 08:31
Sorry.
Brian Lambert 08:33
Okay. So Scott, do you want to give us your best so what is you envision it?
Erich Starrett 08:40
Scorsese? He’s reflecting right?
Unknown Speaker 08:42
Is this what we’ve come to?
Scott Santucci 08:44
Well, I think there’s a each pick your own. Oh, God. One of these. Okay.
Unknown Speaker 08:51
So what?
Scott Santucci 08:54
You can do one of those or So what? Either of those? And we have a mix of those. That’d be better.
Unknown Speaker 09:03
exasperated to irate. Yes. Got it.
Brian Lambert 09:07
Yep. You Bill. Bill, you want to count us down in a very specific rhythm.
Unknown Speaker 09:11
I got you. 123.
Unknown Speaker 09:16
So
Scott Santucci 09:18
that was perfect. Directors. So that
Brian Lambert 09:23
is
Scott Santucci 09:24
wow. Is our producer now for the next year for your next bill.
Unknown Speaker 09:28
Do you want to do one more so you guys can compare and pick which one you like better? Can we can get on with the damn show?
Brian Lambert 09:34
Yeah. All right, dude.
Unknown Speaker 09:36
Oh, what?
Unknown Speaker 09:39
123 so
Scott Santucci 09:45
nice.
Brian Lambert 09:47
So none of our listeners know who’s actually joined us. So this is perfect.
Scott Santucci 09:50
Are you recording now? Yeah,
Brian Lambert 09:52
well, no, we’ve recorded a whole bunch and that they don’t even know these folks are. It’s awesome. And you’re here in the studio with us live via Jim so let me introduce the five insiders that we have on this show, helping us celebrate our anniversary. I’m going to introduce them now that I’m going to explain after they introduce them a bit about themselves and after I introduce them, I’ll explain how this show is going to work. So to help us on the show, First up, we have Erich Starrett. Eric is the Director of Business Development at eta creative event producers and he’s based in Atlanta. Hey, Eric, tell us a little bit about yourself.
Erich Starrett 10:30
Hey, thanks, Brian. Yeah, working for at a creative event producers here where I’m focused on high tech fortune 3000 ish sales, kickoffs, and user conferences, which are more of my sales and marketing field marketing folks. And I’m also the president of the Atlanta Sales Enablement Society’s Atlanta chapter, focus there, as you probably know, working with fellow practitioners to elevate the profession, and empowering orchestrators.
Brian Lambert 10:59
Thanks for joining us and appreciate that and thanks for being a big supporter of insider nation. And actually, you’re our first back to back guest not only be on this episode, which is Episode 43, your episode that you helped her record on the research project is going to be 42. So you’re honorary back to back first ever honoree back to back person. So thanks for doing that.
Erich Starrett 11:23
Thanks, it’s an honor Brian, thank you. My favorite episode would have to be because of what I shared earlier, the rethink on sales kickoff, what is what are executives getting from the investment? And actually fanboy insider geek fat Scott in episode talks about it as Episode Five, but it is actually Episode 11 insider nation if you’re looking to look it up, and the why of it is that it’s a veritable buffet of multiple reasons. One, it was the first episode I believe that was recorded after you had released an episode and we’re actually starting to get listener feedback. And I loved hearing that my fellow Platipi also loved the whole approach of the revisit, rethink reframe, you address the critical question of if we’re going virtual, how am I going to have tequila shots with my peers? absolutely critical. And in fact, it’s kind of funny, y’all were ahead of your time now that the whole sky Oh, going virtual is such a big topic. So the couple of things you covered off on that I loved how early and how often do you start planning your SKO’s? Can you quantify the economic value of those SKO’s? And do you have a post kickoff and pre kickoff plan and those are critical questions that I rarely hear asked and rarely effectively addressed?
Brian Lambert 12:38
That’s cool. Are you gonna Are you gonna start the official insider nation wiki page with all the facts? You’re loving walking library?
Scott Santucci 12:48
I love the fact that I’m getting called out of. So I would I would love to say that was an Easter egg Eric, it wasn’t now. Well,
Erich Starrett 12:56
I feel like it’s Easter every day with y’all. So thank you.
Brian Lambert 13:00
Yeah, he called me out. What did you call me out about over text? You’re like, Hey, you said Oh, you said in the webinar. It’s the heroic framework. No holistic frame. But he wrote you said it was the holistic framework. Did you really? Yeah. He wrote I’m like, Oh, my Yes, I did. I miss
Scott Santucci 13:17
being heroic framework. Got to say the beam in front of it.
Brian Lambert 13:21
Right. Thank you for catching and calling me out as well. Erich in the lab. My pleasure. I appreciate it. All right, cool. Second Person up is Sarah Frick, and she’s the senior manager of global sales enablement at ringcentral. I met Sarah when I moved to Charlotte and a little known fact my daughter, who just graduated from Virginia Tech go Hokies. Right, Scott. She’s actually been an intern in ringcentral last summer and met Sarah there. So Sarah, and I’ve talked a lot on LinkedIn. We did some of the Charlotte sex together. And so Sara, thank you so much for joining and tell us a little bit about yourself.
Unknown Speaker 14:00
Absolutely. Brian, thank you for having me. So, as Brian mentioned, I’m Sarah Frick, I actually recently got married so I do to change that last name.
Scott Santucci 14:10
A lot here.
Unknown Speaker 14:12
But my last name is Sarah gross now. And so I’m really excited to obviously be going through the time of life, right. It’s been cool first year marriage and our family. We just have a kind of puppy named sir. I work for ringcentral day to day along with that fun family life. And my goal there is to take ringcentral from a billion dollars we are today to attend billion dollar company through helping folks right both communicate within their organizations and outside of their organizations. What I love most about what you’re doing here, Brian and Scott is it’s eight we’re all able to relate to it my favorite episode, because of that is busy, active versus productive. So it’s Episode 25. The reason Then I bring that one up is something I constantly struggle with, right? You’re there. It’s six or seven o’clock at night. Are you actually being productive with your time? Or is it something you should set aside and come back to it at another point I am and realize, right, what are your priorities constantly ranked? So thanks again for having me on.
Brian Lambert 15:20
Yeah, you bet. Thank you. Thanks for sharing your favorite episode. All right, so let’s go to our third person. Three out of five. This is awesome. I’m so excited about this. We’ve got Megan, who’s the sales enablement manager at cyber Ark. I met Megan, when she posted her picture about the show, I think I think that was the one of the coolest moments for me was I had to show my wife I was like, Look, somebody posted our show. And there was the guy running through the brick wall and his big 60 inch TV. I was like, This is so cool. She’s also been talking with Scott and I about the idea of the podcast and how to learn now that we’re in COVID. She’s been involved with SEO as the sales enablement society. And in 2018, she was actually featured on the the coverage desk. And one of the little known facts here is Megan is had had a successful Kickstarter back in 2015. And Amy, just a heads up you guys should talk after the show you guys have a lot in common. But Megan, tell us a little bit about yourself. And also what was your favorite episode?
Unknown Speaker 16:22
Sure. So a little bit about me, like you said, I lead sales enablement at cyber. Cyber ARKS a global cybersecurity company, we provide privileged access management solutions to enterprises. And from the sales enablement perspective, I like you said I got involved about two years ago now and had an awesome mentorship with Michael body lead a work group for the sales enablement society on positions. And now I got drawn back in through this podcast, and it was really convenient just to see see the pot the information available via podcast that I could listen to on my phone on the go. So I’m really just getting plugged back in through the insider nation podcast. And my favorite episode, I I’m I have a series that are my favorite. So I really liked the four part COVID response. I felt like I was being kind of bombarded by news and all directions and the episodes really kind of club cut through the clutter. Um, I really enjoyed the the snippets on john chambers and his experienced in past recessions. And his eye some of the takeaways that he provided, gave me clarity on what I could be experiencing within my company that the decisions that I was experiencing and didn’t necessarily have control over. And then it also enabled me to provide insight and put into place some programs for sales enablement that really kept the role seen as strategic and dynamic. And all those good things.
Brian Lambert 18:10
Yeah. Awesome. Thank you so much, Megan. All right. Our next person number four is Amy Ben wah. And she is the founder and chief consultant at all proposed, where she specializes in organizational design and strategy consulting. I actually met Amy through Eric, who’s the first person that introduced himself here on the show. She’s been in an enablement for about 10 years and companies like EMC and pivotal software and mesosphere. We’ve spent a lot of time talking about standing up sales enablement, initiatives and work teams, as well as clarifying to management leadership, what sales enablement is. Amy is the chapter president of FCS in San Diego. So she’s in Southern California. So Amy, can you tell us a little bit more about yourself? And also, what’s your favorite episode?
Amy Benoit 19:01
Sure. Hey, Brian, thank you for having me. My name is Amy, I have an insatiable drive to empower people to thrive, whether that be personally or professionally. And as you said, after a long career within sales enablement in fortune 500 companies, I built my own, centered around helping organizations operate more smoothly and to scale. I work really closely nowadays with executive leadership to help them prioritize initiatives and help them communicate effectively while at the same time really influencing up and downstream to create more efficiency across the board. So the name all propos comes from the respect of all the things that you have to do within this business. My favorite episode was Episode 38, panel six with the executive sponsors, there was discussion on how to create value within the sales enablement function. And I have to say, Brian, my favorite quote came from you. You refer to a quote by Mark Twain saying, If I had the time, I would have written a shorter letter. I think I have used that particular quote six times since hearing it.
Brian Lambert 20:31
Oh, wow. That’s cool. That’s a Yeah, I use that one a lot. I can’t remember where I heard that first. But Scott uses that one, too. It’s a great, great point about simplification. And I
Amy Benoit 20:42
have to say, I thought the double tap, which I just learned, because we’re behind the scenes was a Nic ad. But knowing too much. That’s awesome.
Unknown Speaker 20:51
I had no idea.
Amy Benoit 20:53
It keeps me going live. I listen. I’m like, boom. Yeah. So thanks for that. You’re like a sound mixer in the back.
Scott Santucci 21:04
I don’t even know it, do it.
Brian Lambert 21:06
Yeah, we’ll just did it. He doesn’t realize he’s doing that. So funny, buddy. Yeah. So our last person is Bill ball. And Bill is the director of learning and development dices Bill and I and Scott, actually, we go way back when Scott first put up the LinkedIn post and said he’s going to create the DC area networking group for sales enablement, professionals. Bill, were you at the first meeting of that networking group? Or was it the one subsequent thereafter? What exact which meeting were you at first? Remember,
Unknown Speaker 21:37
my first meeting was at the country club that Scott hosted meeting at and that was in October of 2016. So it may have been a couple of meetings down the road. But I can remember where I was sitting, when I got the call from you. After I registered through LinkedIn, and I was like, wait, somebody’s calling me on a LinkedIn group. I feel a little stocked. But this is kind of awesome.
Brian Lambert 22:08
He said to
Unknown Speaker 22:09
I probably did, right. So so so I’m more visual than auditory in that sense. But But yeah, that’s that was the first meeting that I attended. And the exciting thing about it was, Scott rolled out this business plan. It was a marketing plan around some initiatives. And we we broke up into two groups. And this is something that he loves to do, where people say, this is the best idea. And one group says this is the best idea. And here’s why. And one group says this is the worst idea. And here’s why. And I got put in the worst idea group. And so I was thinking, I report to the CFO CEO right now, I know exactly how a CFO CEO would rip us to shreds. So that’s what I did. And then subsequently, I found out after, you know, I said my piece that it was Scott’s idea. So that was a that was a pretty awesome introduction to potentially offending Scott and simultaneously feeling like I was in
Brian Lambert 23:06
the right room. That’s awesome. Yeah, I remember that meeting. That was fun. And those meetings are great of how they were set up and really getting everybody’s different perspectives. And you know, you’ve been involved with MCs ever since you helped us in the DC chapter. And now you’re on the national team doing a bunch of different things, including the conference work. So that’s, that’s really cool. And also little known fact, which I just found out literally, eight minutes before we started this this show is that Sarah, who is person number two that introduced yourself actually worked for Bill at a previous company, as as Sybil was Sarah’s boss. That’s a small small world, Scott, that with this coming full circle is pretty cool. Also, for you guys, new to sales enablement. It is a small world, so don’t burn any bridges. Right. I said, Sarah, you guys still like each other? She’s like, of course, it was so funny. So that was awesome. So yes, what do you think of that?
Unknown Speaker 24:06
Um, a couple of things. And I know we want to we want to talk and get to the meat of this episode. But what I’ll say is, I can remember interviewing Sara, and she was one of the most successful and rightfully as an A player, frustrating sales reps to ever work with. And one day she asked me, hey, Bill, am I the reason that you lost some of your hair? And I unequivocably said yes. And but so we’ve had beers we’ve had meetings and and you know, at this point, the student may be the teacher. I can’t wait to catch up with her again and see what I can learn from Sarah. I am on the executive board. I’ve had the privilege of being nominated to be on the executive board and sales, Newland society and to steal some language from the podcast. What I do at my current business, I inherited an l&d department and we can talk more about that later on. But I work with all of our customer facing roles, we’re managed services in global staffing, and creating an environment where they can thrive. So that not only includes sales, sales roles, but recruiting roles, super excited to be here. My favorite episode is it was really hard to choose this one. Um, but I would say the biggest was the Brooklyn Bridge, Episode Number eight. And the reason for that was both the historical frame out which I’ve used many times, but secondarily, the messaging of how you take apart a sales workshop and advertising to sellers positioning and messaging around that,
Brian Lambert 25:50
that one gets a lot of feedback, actually. So you’re not alone. That’s cool.
Unknown Speaker 25:55
Yep. Number eight. Yeah.
Brian Lambert 25:58
So Scott, we may have peaked, I don’t know.
Erich Starrett 26:02
Production? I
Scott Santucci 26:02
gotta tell you, we should just wrap this up here. I don’t know. all I’m gonna do is make this worse.
Unknown Speaker 26:08
Oh, my God.
Brian Lambert 26:09
This is fun, right? Me, podcast, Jared. No, this is this is great. Because, one, we have new folks on the show, who are who are been listening this whole time. So I totally want to geek out on this because, and literally, Eric with his running facts on our show is hilarious. I am a closet Walking Dead fan. And they had this show after walking dead called Talking Dead, where they would just dissect the whole entire show. And I feel like that’s what Eric does all the time I bump into him. And he asked me why that piece is out of place, or why the numbers or what was wrong, it was hilarious. He’s like the insider to the insiders. So if you want to know the lore of inside sales enablement. Talk to Eric. And that’s gonna be our first person, we’re gonna come back now that everybody’s introduced themselves. And I’m gonna pass the baton. So it’s remember, it’s open podcast mic time. And so I’m going to pass this to Eric. And the way this is gonna work is Eric, what did you get out of the show here? What did you like about it? And then what’s the what’s the thing that you really are taking away after listening for the last year that you maybe provide an executive summary to our listeners around?
Erich Starrett 27:21
Uh, you know, I’ll start by sharing my journey because I can’t proceed without doing so especially on the big Anniversary Edition. And thanks for having me be a part of it. As you guys know, I started out in sales and was the squeaky wheel that got grease, you’ve heard my back story. And I’d held such a wide variety of positions since then advocating for sales, field marketing leadership roles back in MCI now horizon, and level three now CenturyLink, to sale sales operations in salesforce.com, deployment roles, reporting into sales, reporting into ops reporting into just about everywhere, but always serving the Salesforce. And I was just like, kind of getting into an identity crisis, honestly. And I came across this podcast inside sales in April. You know, I knew that my passion for orchestrating the support and tool ecosystem and a productive day in the life of a rep had to have a title and be some sort of a constant. But you know, the first major step I toward took towards finding my identity was listening to your podcast. And I was like, I found my people. And now I say, I’ve found my plateau pie. And anyone who doesn’t know what that means, better listen to the the final executive readout call and or the replay actually of the Atlanta sales enablement society meeting. Thanks, guys. For again, guys for joining our town hall. That was awesome.
So I’ve now got an identity. I’m an orchestrator. And I’m part of the sales enablement community. And you know, what I’ve taken away is so much in fact, during this journey, not only that I find my identity, as you heard, I found my way into the sales enablement society as well. And in fact, Brian and Santucci and Amy and I were all at a table actually Eli Cohen sales dinner at the last sales enablement society face to face meeting back in, I think, September of last year in San Antonio. And it was just an awesome, you can hear how all of that has evolved beautifully. And in fact, I ended up being the president of the Atlanta sales enablement society thanks to Christy West believing in me and going back to the podcast and kind of what’s been the benefit of it is I was able to step back and go, Okay, I’ve got the reins of this society all of a sudden that I care the world about, I care the world about the profession, my fellow planet pi. Well, I don’t want to blow this. So what I did was I went back home and I started relisting to the podcast and going through my notes. That’s part of the reason I can nerd out about it. So I’ll just a few highlights. You know, again, you gotta love the first one with Galileo in selling the sales enablement role, which is such a huge part, we, if we don’t know who we are, how can we further the profession and I’m on a mission to work with you guys and the sales enablement society to do so. The charter, the episode on building a charter was huge and awesome and helpful. It was just such a bullseye.
In fact, I reached out to Brian and I said, Hey, man, can I get the original charter that he wrote for the society? And he thought, you know, I’ve been bugging these guys since the beginning. And now y’all can kind of see a trend. And he actually even thoughtfully provided that for me offline, so that I could begin to build a charter here for Atlanta, and we’re still working on it, by the way. So hey, maybe an updated podcast on the charter, Brian might be in the works. And I’ll just throw one more out there. I really like the one with the Conference Board and the council meeting. And there was one other one as well, it was along those lines, where you guys went deeply into kind of what that meant to the background of sales enablement and using it for a framework and and around the charter conversation as well. So everything from what is the definition of sales enablement, which I loved Scott going on trial for that again, recently, or I would have asked for that one brilliant episode, everyone, check that one out, let’s just like two ago, you guys aren’t afraid to continue to revisit and reframe and look at this stuff again. And the profession needs that. And these topics don’t get old. Thank you for continuing to revisit for challenging yourselves and for doing what you do to elevate the profession, guys.
Nick Merinkers 31:42
So with that, you
Erich Starrett 31:43
know, I think that my time on the mic has come to a close, I’ll cut myself off. How about that there might be a first and I’m going to turn around and hand the mic to my friend, Sarah, to take over and you know, what, what do you think I did a lot of rambling there any of that resonate with you? Or what what what what do you still hang out with these dudes in virtual world?
Unknown Speaker 32:04
Eric, I appreciate your perspective, they’re really helpful to get a sense of how you’ve interacted with the team. As I heard you talk a lot about right. It’s building out the career. That’s where I’ve seen it is almost like my North Star, too. Hmm. Does this seem right, right? Yeah, we all come into those moments, especially as enablers, we were pushed into executive meetings or pushed into, you know, maybe doing the role of an Operations Executive sometimes, depending on what your company needs. And so as I think about the way that I’ve used the podcast, it’s to help others start to realize if enablement is the right space for them to be in, honestly, right, if it’s a new career, and it’s also one that you can’t quite, you can’t make yourself into it. Right, you can go and you can learn marchetto and how to code and be in marketing operations, you can go and you can learn executive speaking, and you could go become a CEO of a company enabled, it’s one of those things where we almost have to have something innate inside of us, in order to do this role and to love it and to come to work with it every day. Because there is a lot of this cross functional mayhem that we run into.
So what I love about the podcast is gives me a spot to send folks that are interested in the career and say, hey, go take a look. I love Episode 12. I love Episode 24. I give them my thoughts. But of course, I’m looking for them to actually go and say, This is the perspective I have on this and why I’m so interested in the role and the function. So it’s been a nice way to folks die in their career right? of, hey, this isn’t going to be an easy road, but going to be one, you’ll see a lot to win a lot. This is something that brings out those great pieces inside of you. So within my team that I’m currently running, you know, I’ve got a lot of different personalities. And I have a lot of folks who focus in different areas, maybe they’re more process enablement focus, maybe they’re more productivity, maybe they are really that business, you know, partner to their leaders. So I love it as a spot to keep my team centered around what it is that we do and the mission, right of our enablement space. And keep us going. Man, I’m really curious to get your thoughts. What do you think of what I shared?
Unknown Speaker 34:31
Thanks. All right. Yeah, that resonates a lot and personally, right like I said, This podcast is what drew me back in so I’m kind of re onboarding and re upping myself education using the insider nation podcast. And I also want to zoom out and look at the modality being a podcast and the format and on how we apply That internally at cyber Ark. And so I was I was inspired by being able to I listen to the podcast on my phone while I was out for walks on repurposing that commute time that I no longer had to spend sitting in a car. In hindsight, I guess I could have been listening to the podcast, in the car. So we’ll, I’ll revisit that. Um, but really just this concise formatting inspired us to have a quick win right in this new normal and take our monthly internal newsletter, make a recording of it as a podcast, I it’s short, it’s concise. It’s something that we have an archive of now on, it really was an example of taking what I learned from insider nation podcast, applying it to the sales enablement program at cyber Ark, and using it in a way that met our sellers in their current reality. It’s, like I said, it’s concise, you can be listening to it while you’re doing something else, or parenting or catching up on other emails, etc. But I like that I was able to immediately apply and moving kind of beyond the the onboarding application because we also have that archive of podcasts that we send new hires to listen to. Um, whereas before we had them read through maybe the last 10 newsletters, we now have these shortened podcasts. And they’re also available to all employees in our company, right to stay current.
And I think I mentioned earlier that the COVID series were some of my favorite are the COVID episodes are some of my favorites. And that’s because right now, so many changes are happening that I think it’s even more important to for ourselves as practitioners to stay current with the news that’s happening within our industry, but also to communicate in a way that keeps our employees in the field aware of the current changes that might be happening internally. So I’m I guess I’m, I’m raving about the format of the podcast, I found it very helpful, personally, to imply internally, and did that in a way that really set the tone of sales enablement at our company as something strategic. Um, so yeah, thanks to Scott and everyone for continuing to put these episodes out. And with that, kind of laid a lot out there for you, Amy, I’m curious to hear your thoughts on on the podcast and how it’s kind of a way to check into the pulse of sales enablement.
Amy Benoit 37:56
Thanks for that. I will say this is Amy I have multiple passion projects and outside of my consulting company that I created a few years ago, I am very passionate about facilitating human experience that people behind the enablement I have had the opportunity to facilitate across the world customer advisory boards and executive leadership offsites I also on a completely different side of my brain, I teach stand up paddleboard yoga in Mission Bay and I’ve built an extended stay dog sitting business and with all of these I operate everything I do as a business and within the organizations that I consult with as a sales enablement leader, I really do think of myself as a business within a business. as a consultant, you can imagine my view is a little bit different and I am constantly prospecting new clients as well as developing deeper and deeper forms of trust within my network. So, so there were so there were conversations within Episode 38 really around the vitality and the importance of communication and how to affect you effectively communicate sales enablement to your executive sponsors. And what I know for sure, from anything that you do,
Unknown Speaker 39:33
your
Amy Benoit 39:35
ability to communicate effectively to your client and to your stakeholder is key. So making the complex simple is something that we are doing in the role. As they said in Episode 38 it takes a tremendous amount of work to make something simple. So when I am talking to My executive stakeholders, whether that be the VP of sales, the director of operations, department heads, dog owners, you know, Yogi’s, I have to make sure that I’m speaking their language. And from the business standpoint, it’s quote unquote, Business English, it can’t be sales enablement English, they’re two totally different languages. It’s almost like if I was speaking Italian to somebody that did not speak Italian, it would be impossible for anyone to understand what we were saying to each other. So the framework that really helped and was well articulated in Episode 38, spoke about creating value. And you can take this as a consultant as a prospect. You can take this once you’ve already established that trust, and as you’re building new programs, and getting more and more support within an organization, but the first thing that you have to do is identify how you add value. And you can ask the questions of what are the value drivers? How do we provide service to our customers, and making sure that it’s not the me me me.
The second thing is identifying your customers. It can be different depending, you know, dependent on each of your goals, or projects. So making sure you know who you are servicing. And third is identifying your stakeholders. The question, of course, is who are the stakeholders but making sure that you’re servicing the greater good of who is going to be able to continually invest in your the support that you’re giving? underneath everything that I do, I build trust. And that is a bet is one of the reasons that I love sales enablement, is getting this people opportunity and helping people empower themselves to be better. And this is a constant hurdle. And Scott mentioned this in one of the beginning episodes, where he talked about his career at Forrester, and how, you know, initially developing sales enablement as an identity, went around the entire circle, and then had to do it again with a different work and had to do it again. And you know, there’s this constant, need to make sure that we’re all on the same page, and really build relationship and trust within, so that you, you have those bridges when you need them. There’s a comment by Bernie brown in one of her recent podcasts, and she says, pure gold is the person who has organizational history and context, great experience and the opportunity to learn new things. And that’s the change unicorn. And I really think that within sales enablement, we have that top down view, we have access to the leaders, we have access to the individual contributors, and having us be the translator and communicator between all we become that glue that really builds the community with any organization. So I would argue that trust within leadership is sometimes the reason that they do not enable the contribution or collaboration between their people, like they just haven’t built that muscle yet with those people. And we within sales enablement, whether you’re prospecting prospecting to build or just continue developing your relationship, it is vital.
Unknown Speaker 43:45
And,
Amy Benoit 43:46
Bill, I know that you are within an organization now, what are your thoughts on what I said from from an insider’s view?
Unknown Speaker 43:54
So I have a lot of thoughts. Because because that was a lot of me. Perhaps I’ll take one thing and the thing that that stood out to me the most, and that was how you’re using, I just love hearing how everybody’s using the podcast. That’s the coolest thing, like hearing about how people are using a podcast, not how I’m listening, and what’s my favorite episode. That’s great, right? That’s a great place to start with, how am I using it? Um, I really really love the framing stories. And so it’s not just how do i do sales enablement? I think we can get that from from our connections in the sales enablement society. I think, you know, conferences, a lot of people are doing great case studies on how I wanted my business and sales enablement. But we get something a little different here. I really love the the history side of it. And when I heard the first episode, and I heard Scott, start talking about Galileo, I don’t know if I’m correct on this Scott. I think my memory serves me well. But you’re a history major. So that knee jerk reaction kicked in for me. And I was like, Oh, no Scott’s gonna go ramble off on on history. But then I heard the connection. And I started to listen more. And I heard another episode about Napoleon and and Napoleonic strategy and Allied soldiers jumping over the, you know, the barricade to go get shot up by people in tow boxes and the analogy to that with with customers, or excuse me, internal collaborators, asking, you know, saying, hey, we’ve always done it this way, you know, why should we do it a different way.
Unknown Speaker 45:43
So,
Unknown Speaker 45:44
that’s the thing that stood up stood out to me the most, um, I find the podcast to be a clinic on not just how to do sales enablement, but the positioning and the value of sales enablement for the rest of the organization for me, so I’ll give you my framing story. Um, because I think that’s fair, right. So I’m in a business that’s coming into its own. I’m, we’re, the two hunters are still heavily involved. I mean, it’s a really great story. They came over from the 80s. from Bangladesh. They built it themselves, they’ve built it through great people. And we’re, we’re in a consolidating industry where we’re acquiring other businesses, yet, we still have the same relatively the same Shared Services team to help this organization scale. And that’s a real challenge. I came into my title, my title is head of l&d, those of you who know me, that’s, you know, I don’t operate the traditional l&d way I operate in an enablement way. But um, I came tasked with marrying a very reactionary function to the the favor of all the internal customers in customer facing roles. I built a charter I did a lot of those things. But now, as I’ve only been able to grow my team somewhat, I have to use the other people in my business, the other departments in my business as collaborators, ops and marketing, and HR and so forth. And having these framing stories has really allowed me to take, I think, as Amy said, and then some of the other said, take the value of sales enablement, and simplify it and position in a way that really resonates with them. So with Ops,
Unknown Speaker 47:35
you know, they have to be reactionary, they have to do a lot of requests, they have to change fields and do all of that kind of work. But they also want to innovate. And they also want to drive efficiency, you know, as I’m helping drive effectiveness and ultimately drive productivity. I found out they’re issuing surveys to get opinions and try to figure things out from the field and not getting any responses. And, you know, I used the phrase, or the Henry Ford quote, you guys use, hey, if I wanted if my customer, if I want to know what my customers wanted, I would have, they would have told me they needed an app faster, worse, right? So once I position it that way, and we started working on some questioning, now they’re starting to get some responses. And all I did was start with that quote, and build from there. Um, we were working on manager onboarding. And I’ll get back again, back to my favorite episode. I’m nothing burns me up more than we’ve always done it this way. And you guys can’t see me, you know, catching on fire right now. But when I hear that, I internally catch a flame. So it drives me crazy. So it’s all I can do to just keep my composure? Well, we’ve always done it that way. So we were wondering why some of our managers weren’t succeeding. And the truth was, like, it was a lot of things, but everybody’s saying, Well, my thing was okay, and this part that I do is okay, and and when we start, you know, looking at all that stuff, maybe it is it.
So, I rolled out the Brooklyn Bridge story to a roomful of people and talked about how, you know, the the Germans, they were just drunks and that’s why they, you know, failed, and nobody thought about the bends. Right? And was it a transformational moment in the building manager onboarding, I’m not sure. But the whole room got silent. And this was VPS. This was a head of HR, this was our managing directors. And because I was able to position that story, the right time, the right way. It changed the conversation to Okay, you know, this is serious. And maybe it’s time for everybody to do a little bit of self reflection on their part in this and we started working together. Did I save the day? No, but that quote, came in really well, and it allowed me to get them thinking about enabling the managers versus like, well, I’m doing this what’s the managers problem? The last thing about I’ll say, also in my favorite episode, um, and how I’ve used the podcast is, we were working on positioning and messaging every every organization goes through rebranding every so often. And we are working with an external firm, and they’re great. And they do a lot of great PR for us and get us in the Wall Street Journal and fantastic stuff. But when it came to working with our hardwired internal heads of sales, and people had been with the business years and years and years, when you start asking them how a brand makes you feel, you know, like they shut down, right? So it’s, it’s a good question. But with that audience, it’s tough.
So guess what I went to? I went right to Alright, so let’s, let’s work in some of those questions. But let’s also talk about who do you sell to? What do you need to sell more? What’s the business problem you solve? What’s the impact to each stakeholder who owns the wallet whose throat gets choked. And when we started speaking that language in that simple framework, things started to turn and they started to get answers again, again, this is not about one person or one department saving the day, but it’s about using the positioning and messaging, and the value of sales enablement to get some of that cross functionality moving across the org.
Brian Lambert 51:23
Oh, that’s great bill, and really liked hearing the stories. And all of you guys have been just amazing on this show. And that’s, that’s been really humbling for me to hear, you know, we get into the day to day and we crank out these content items made 42 podcasts in a year. And we don’t have a huge staff, and, you know, some of this stuff we’re doing ourselves and, you know, had to learn how to do this stuff. And it can be a little bit of a, you know, grind. And that’s the thing about tactics and strategy together. And then, you know, we always talk about what impact are we having, and we see it on LinkedIn, we have folks reaching out and Bill, you’ve reached out through the whole year, pinging me on, hey, On this episode, what did you mean by that comment? Right, things like that. It’s been super helpful. But to hear you guys, and how you’re taking it away. And using it has been really cool for me to hear. I mean, Eric, you talked about finding your people, Sarah, you’re using this as a North Star and a touchstone for new folks in the profession to determine if they want in, you know, I’ll say it in our profession, you know, are they gonna come in or not? We don’t just let anybody in. Listen to inside sales enablement, right, and you make the decision, if that’s what you want to do. I love that. And then Megan, you know, the idea here, using this and being innovative internally, I hadn’t even thought about the structure and the format, being something that you can rip off like that. And I say that in a good way. That’s awesome. That’s super cool.
So this, this moves us beyond just, you know, putting the effort in, it’s something that you can build off of, and make your yourself successful and make your team successful in onboarding. And that’s been awesome. And then, Amy, your thoughts around stakeholders and team and activation? And? And how do people work together? And how do you make this land for each person, I’m wired that way as well. And we really have had some awesome conversations offline. And maybe one of these times we can do an episode together, where we’re talking about these real issues of activation, making it land at the at the keyboard, as I say, and that was really cool to hear about that. And, and yes, you and you, and Megan should talk because you’re both into yoga. And you guys are going to be lifelong friends, I think after this episode. Yeah. And then bill, you know, obviously, you’re always telling telling really good stories and making this land. So I really appreciate your comments around using these because I always joke with Scott about what crazy episode from the 1800s is gonna have now and I’ve actually, you know, pushed myself to come up with some of these framing stories. And it’s actually been really cool to frame it out in the ways that we have and I’ve learned a lot from him and those stories as well. So now Scott, that’s that’s the the view from how folks are using it. You’ve been quiet on this show so far. But what did you think I’d love to give you just some free time now to to react to a year of working on this together I appreciate the friendship and all the work you’ve been putting into this, I know much thought you put into these episodes and and how much you push to to make it clear to make it land well, and, and there’s so much effort that you put in behind the scenes that nobody ever sees. And, you know, I think you’re hearing in here on how how this pays off. So, you know, Thanks, Scott, for being such a good colleague here. I think when people first heard we were doing a podcast, they probably thought we could make it through five of these things. And we’re at We’re at 42 right now with no end in sight. So I’ll pass it over to you now but for your thoughts.
Scott Santucci 54:55
Yeah. So in what we like to do on our show is be Raw. So I, I’m, I’m kind of blown away here, Brian gave me only a headline yesterday about what we’re going to do here. And I’m a little speechless how amazing this content was, it’s a, it’s rare that you get to have a structured format to be able to share a lot of people’s perspectives that you can basically work as a cafeteria. And take I, you know, I’m gonna take a little bit of Amy, I’m going to take a little bit, they’re going to take a little bit of Eric, and I’m going to take a little bit of Megan, and I’m going to build bolat. And kind of make it my own thing, you know. And that’s amazing. So kudos to you for putting together this format, to have to have it flow like this. It’s, I’m kind of blown away right now. I do want to get into I love Eric being so honest about accuracy, I’m a huge fan of making sure things are validated. So I want to validate something from Bill. Bill, I’m not a history major. I’ve I’m actually I don’t I didn’t know whether I should be offended or honored that you thought that because I’ve got a math background degree, and I love numbers. Unbelievably much so and I’ve learned over my career. Numbers are pretty inaccessible to everybody other than the CFO. Oh, I’ve learned to tell stories that I can have math behind them.
So there’s a different one different one there. And so what I took away from this was how it’s it’s really fascinating for me, and I want to create more of a community of how we can take lessons learned, it’s pretty difficult to get feedback on on a podcast. So I think it’s really cool. So Brian, just as aside, Megan and I did talk about, you know, the podcast, I called her like after she posted that thing on Reddit, because I’m gonna, whenever somebody puts something out there, I’m going to, I’m going to talk to you about it, especially if it’s if it’s challenging or just a gut reaction. So a couple of things that I’m going to follow up on. Amy, you talked about you, you’re talking about translating, yoga, speak to business speak, and back and forth. We actually like are coming up with a term on that let’s English to English translation. We heard that at the Conference Board, stuff we’re working on. Do you guys remember in the COVID series, our friend or my friend Lindsey, or our friend, our show friends was the salesperson you guys remember her dishonest? Yep. So she runs in, she said that English English translation problem is her biggest problem in sales today. Like as a salesperson. Her job at Microsoft she’s got, she’s got a game buying across so many different people inside our customer base. And that’s the easy job. The hard part is getting people inside Microsoft to follow through on that, because everybody just sees the world for their own individual silos. So her and I are working on. We have our own wrapper, how we talk about it. But I keep challengers like, we’ve got to figure a way to talk about this to people who don’t see this. So maybe maybe we can get you involved there. Bill, I’d love to sort of pick your brain about how we can turn the
turn the centering stories. So a little centering story on the framing stories. I get that from Patton. So General Patton believed every battles already been thought fought. So if we lead with a battle that’s already been fought, then you already have a play that you can run, and you just never know, when you when you run it. I think the difference here is that you have the courage to actually use them in live fire, you know, live fire combat situations. So maybe we can pick your brain on on how you do that. So I just, I’m just really, really delighted. And what I’d like to do is go back from here and ask you guys, what, what can we do more of? I really like the idea of being challenged. Brian tries to stump me. So one thing that I’m personally nervous about is how I’m going to keep up the framing stories and not keep telling the same ones over and over and over again. So that but I like that competitive spirit. And I like to be challenged. So what what can we do more of how can we make this more impactful? That’s awesome that you guys are able to make the time available to help us out. Second thing is it’s it’s fantastic that just really impressed at how prepared everybody was. I’m always energized by thoughtful people putting ideas out it always energized as me, um, I like I like challenges a lot too. So part of I’m not really as eloquent as maybe I normally would be because my brains firing into could tell you that right now. But that’s just really awesome. So thanks.
Brian Lambert 1:00:21
All right. Thanks, everybody, and we will see you on the next one. Take care. Thank you. We’re out. Thanks for the extra time.
Outro 1:00:30
Thanks for joining us. To Become an insider and amplify your journey. Make sure you’ve subscribed to our show. If you have an idea for what Scott and Brian can cover in a future podcast or have a story to share, please email them at engage at inside s e.com. You can also connect with them online by going to inside se.com following them on Twitter or sending them a LinkedIn request.
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