Ep44 Women In Sales Enablement with An All Star Panel
Welcome to the Inside: Sales Enablement Podcast Episode 44
At the end of our anniversary show the guys talked with Sarah Fricke who is passionate about laying a path for other women to join us in the enablement field while also while promoting the fact that there are many paths into enablement.
Sarah joins the show to host a panel with:
- Amy Benoit – Renaissance Woman Catalyzing Change, consultant
- Lindsay Gore – Microsoft
- Hang Black – Juniper
- Sarah Fricke – RingCentral
- Alicia Leach – Salesforce
- Steph Bell – Salesforce
- Stephanie Middaugh – Divvy
The show topics include:
- Share how great women forged a path in sales enablement and why
- Share strategies of navigating career conversations within a male dominated organization that doesn’t have a definition for enablement
- To help improve businesses by creating an environment where everyone benefits by the ‘melting pot’ concept of bringing people together.
- The business case for diverse mindsets and cognitive diversity
- The importance of allies in the workplace
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 00:02
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 you, your company, other functions? The market? Find out here. Join the founding father of the sales enablement profession Scott Sam Tucci and Trailblazer Brian Lambert as they take you behind the scenes of the birth of an industry, the inside sales enablement podcast starts now. I’m Scott, Brian Lambert
Greg 00:36
and we are the sales enablement insiders. 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.
Scott Santucci 00:49
Together, Brian and I’ve worked on over 100 different kinds of sales and Avon initiatives as analysts, consultants or practitioners, we learned the hard way. What works Maybe what’s more important, what doesn’t?
Greg 01:02
That’s awesome in Yep. And we know what works because we know conversations work. And we’re going to have a conversation today in a very special episode with a great panel discussion with women in sales enablement. gotten I are super excited to host this panel because as orchestrators, we need to work with people who have different perspectives than us. And we need to be inclusive of those perspectives. And so what we’re going to do is make this fun and informal and informational. And if you guys remember in our last podcast, which was our anniversary show, it was Episode 43. And in that particular episode, Sarah Frick from ringcentral was with us. And after we were done shooting that episode and recording it. We were talking to Sarah and the rest of the panelists about ideas for this year. And as we move into season two, what could we talk about? and Sara chimed in and said, hey, let’s you know it’d be great if we brought together and created some space to have conversations with women and salespeople. And so we said, That’s great idea and help us Can you help us do that. And so that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to I’m going to pass this over to Sarah Frick, who’s going to be our guest host. And she’s going to talk through and introduce the panelists. And she’s going to talk about and ask them questions, like, you know, what’s happening when women in leadership for enablement? What does it look like when they’re working well, and when it works well, and what are some specific challenges that women in enablement face today and many, many others, and then Scott and I are going to chime in along the way. And as usual, we’ll recap it at the end. So Sarah, thanks so much for volunteering to do this. Really appreciate it. I’m gonna pass it over to you. And you can kick it off how you want to.
Unknown Speaker 02:41
That sounds great. Brian Scott, thank you so much for providing the space to do this. Part of part of part of any raid group is how can I continue to get additional perspective, one of the things that you know, I started with my colleagues that bring Central is something called the ladies room. So today I like to think that we’re kind of broadening that concept and bringing in a few more folks to the conversation. So,
Greg 03:10
there we go. Like, as a guy, I’m not sure if I want to be in the ladies room. I don’t know.
Scott Santucci 03:18
I don’t I definitely want to be in the ladies room.
Unknown Speaker 03:21
Just want to make sure.
Unknown Speaker 03:23
Well, Brian,
Unknown Speaker 03:25
you’re getting a really
Unknown Speaker 03:26
good invite. We’re having this conversation between.
Unknown Speaker 03:31
Ryan I have to say as a woman in technology, welcome to our lives every day. There you go.
Unknown Speaker 03:38
Men can have their locker rooms ladies are getting the ladies room here. So I really appreciate the great panel that we’ve got here. We have some phenomenal, strong, great enablement leaders. So I don’t even think I could do justice of introducing everyone. We’ve got folks from the south To the west to not across the pond quite yet. Let’s do that next round and tons of voices that have been highlighted by folks like LinkedIn and others of, hey, these are the people that you really should be listening to. So thank you, ladies for joining us. And I’m just going to start by asking you to introduce yourself to the crew. So Amy, would you like to kick us off?
Amy Benoit 04:24
Sure. Can you hear me? I can. Awesome. Thank you for having me. It’s very nice to be in such good company with a lot of estrogen. And not generally surrounded by as much and we’ll get into that. I’ve been in the enablement learning development space throughout my career started off at EMC, about 15 years ago, and in 2018, I started my own consulting business. What I love to be able to do is help executives make decision and influence up and down their chain to create efficiencies. I also love to make sure that we’re getting all the perspectives from the different folks in the organization. I believe that that lens is not often seen by most leaders because they, their point of view is it’s focused and so I widen the focus so that we get more diverse spot.
Unknown Speaker 05:32
That’s awesome. Thanks, Amy, for sharing that and look forward to diving into that commentary deeper.
Unknown Speaker 05:39
Lindsay, can you introduce yourself, please?
Unknown Speaker 05:43
Yeah, hi, it’s, um, I’m excited to be here today as well. So great group of women and I think this should be an excellent conversation. My name is Lindsey Gore. I’ve been in technology sales for about the last 12 years or so. Both in sales and sales leadership. roles and currently I’m at Microsoft today and in their cloud business, so selling data and AI solutions.
Unknown Speaker 06:10
Thank you, Lindsay. Really appreciate that. Let’s say you want to give go next. Yes, thank you very much for having me. My name is Alicia Leach. I come from Salesforce. I am a field enablement director at Salesforce. Prior to being in enablement, I was in sales for quite some time. I’d say I’ve had I have about a 20 year, technology sales career. And like a me who likes to help leaders in decision making. I like to help sales leaders in getting deals off the table and helping them make money. So we’re all here for make that money. I like that you you come from it’s like you’ve, you’ve come down from space. into sales bars, which totally makes sense knowing Salesforce. That’s awesome. Thank you so much. And Steph, I know you’re on the same team. Can you introduce yourself?
Unknown Speaker 07:10
Yes. Hi Sara. This is Stephanie bell. I am also a Salesforce. I’ve been here the last five years and have been in sales the last decade, just recently moving into the enablement side of the house actually under Alicia. So I’m also a manager of field enablement. And one of my passion projects is the Women’s Network at Salesforce. So I’m the president of the Salesforce Women’s Network for the southeast out of our Atlanta home. We have about 350 members. So that is my passion project and helping get more women into leadership.
Unknown Speaker 07:48
That is phenomenal. And being in the southeast, you’ve got a part of my heart. I’m actually in South Carolina, so
Unknown Speaker 07:59
hey, Yeah. Can you introduce yourself, please?
Unknown Speaker 08:02
Hi there. My name is Hank black. I’m the Vice President of global sales enablement. At Juniper Networks. I’ve been here about 18 months, my route has been a little bit circuitous. I spent almost a decade in engineering, a decade in marketing, and almost now a decade in sales. And I’ve loved all of it, but I feel like enablement is my home because it is the convergence of all three and I to hail from Louisiana. So I’m feeling the SE vibe.
Unknown Speaker 08:30
Yeah, everyone should have moved to this alfea. Everyone should be in sales. We’ve all at least experienced that a little bit. But it sounds like with this core group, I think we could build a product we could market a product we can enable a product in the market, right? So we got it all covered. No, no.
Unknown Speaker 08:48
Selling. How could I do that?
Unknown Speaker 08:52
It sells itself.
Unknown Speaker 08:53
Yeah, we’re going to create such a great product Scott that that it will just we’ll just put it out there and people will buy it.
Unknown Speaker 09:01
Well, thank you again for joining us ladies in such great backgrounds to have and give experience to others. As just to open it up quickly. I know staff you had shared the women’s group in Atlanta that you, you run, as anyone else started a group like that within your organization or doing anything within your particular teams to help create that environment for other women in the workplace.
Amy Benoit 09:29
Yeah, this is Amy. I’ve, when I was working at EMC, I was leaving the West Coast women’s organization. So we had a west and east of the Americas. And it was something that we ran quarterly events, had newsletters and just drove a lot of conversation and awareness around women in the industry.
Unknown Speaker 09:55
Awesome in a quarterly newsletter. It’s a fun way to capture it and Get it out there.
Amy Benoit 10:01
Oh, yes, this is back when newsletters were a hit right. But yes, we did have it was just a great way for folks to get the information and we found that a lot of our audience actually enjoyed reading the newsletters. So
Unknown Speaker 10:18
that’s great. Yeah, I remember the, from the desk of x days, whenever you get the highest readership and you’re like, yeah, now it’s like doesn’t have a hashtag nobody’s listening.
Unknown Speaker 10:31
Anyone else.
Unknown Speaker 10:33
This is happening. I am a few years ago created a leading group called marketing mavens of the Bay Area. But since I’ve exited marketing, I’ve actually tended to be more involved in not intercompany, but intra company women’s functions as sponsoring that from my company as part of engagement other companies examples would be networking with a purpose that connects some of the largest 14 companies in the Bay Area, and women Unlimited, those sorts of connections and I’m now kicking off a new group where we want to focus on actually creating action.
Unknown Speaker 11:13
That’s a good one.
Unknown Speaker 11:15
There’s a lot to talk and create an inclusive environment stock, but there’s a whole nother part of actually taking the action and making it happen. Steph, tell us a little bit more about your group in Atlanta.
Unknown Speaker 11:28
Sure, so I can’t take all of the credit for launching. So I want to be clear, there’s a lot of people that helped. We are lucky at Salesforce to have a lot of er G’s. And a few years ago, four years ago, they started thinking about things like wit that exists on a national level and how we bring things like that is Salesforce. So a group of women started to think through what that would look like as an ER G and the sales worse. Women’s Network was born. And we decided to launch a version of that in Atlanta. So you were lucky enough to have some executive sponsors who helped us get it off the ground and say, Hey, whatever you need, we’re here, both male and female, we find that it’s really important to have male allies, because they tend to be the majority of leadership. So we were lucky that we had a great male ally and lots of female executives that helped us stand it up. And then basically what we do is we try and grow our membership. And every year at the global level, Women’s Network, that’s a v2 mom. So if you’re not familiar with the v2 mom framework, it’s your vision, your values, your methods, your measurements and your obstacles. So we work from that framework, work as a company and we also work with that framework as the Women’s Network.
So every year we set that out and this year, our major goal is to see 50% of women in leadership. So we structured Are events in our engagement with all of our members around? How do we get them exposure to leaders? How do we focus on the intersectionality of women and other groups? And how do we build diverse teams, and offer people networking, mentorship, sponsorship opportunities. So we try and really stick closely to that one big goal and center everything we do with our members around that. So it’s really interesting that we sort of have a global lead, but we get to run it how best works for our members in and around Atlanta.
Unknown Speaker 13:35
I am floored and impressed with the model that you both use right as a company and then you’ve put that into your ear. Geez. One of the things that I’ve really noticed as folks are creating them and crafting them is we don’t always remember that we should use all the core business practices that we already have in place, as we’re starting essentially a new team and Just for clarification for everyone er DS or employee research groups, hang Good call out there. And it really, obviously right diversity and inclusion as as part of a company have now become an actual division and typically they’re running the RGS at a high level and then of course right like staffs point of view it’s you can’t have any RG in just headquarter say out in San Francisco like our organizations are based and expect that to apply everywhere. There’s got to be these offshoots of organizations. How Tell me kind of a little bit guys, as you think about er G’s that you’ve gotten placed within your company. How, at UNICEF, you mentioned male and female. Does everyone agree with having both parties included in the conversation? fill out a heads nodding for Harlan. No early listeners. What about you know, if you Have that diversity around the table. And you’ve had women that have spoken up and said I’d actually rather have a, you know, a forum. That’s just women only as that happens anyone?
Unknown Speaker 15:14
Well, I think there are two types of conversations. There are conversations that are kind of, you know, Vegas rules and their conversations where you bring in allies and I don’t think it’s just men. I think inclusion and diversity. There’s a little bit of a misnomer around. It’s just around race is just around gender is just around this, that or the other. It’s a non exclusion of all parties. It’s it’s bringing in voices and cognitive diversity to the table. And there’s no social movement ever. I repeat ever in history, who that has been one without the Allies at the table.
Unknown Speaker 15:52
really true. I think. I couldn’t agree with you more hang at Salesforce. We have this tagline that says is the greatest platform for change. And at first, I thought that that was branding maybe 10 to 10 years ago when we first started with that. And it’s not it’s actually a living breathing mantra at our, at our workplace. And if you don’t diversity, inclusion is just that is diversity. It’s the diversity of men, women, race, cultural background, sexual Association, all of it. And so if you don’t have, if you create a group that is a vacuum of all like one person, then you’re missing the diversity and inclusion part.
Unknown Speaker 16:42
It’s interesting, though, on the flip side of that, I’ll just sort of throw this out there it for folks that maybe haven’t had as much of a voice or have had a hard time finding their voice being in a group of like folks with shared experiences, give something of that context to actually develop that voice. So then When you’re in a mixed audience, I think you can show up in a different way and feel supported. So, you know, I think the allies are certainly very, very important. But I think, you know, sort of the group connection as well, is also important. So I think there’s probably value on both sides, I would say from, from my own experience, and this hasn’t been intentional at all. But I’ve never worked in an organization with as many women as I do now. And women leaders, so I’ve, I’ve never actually had a female boss until you know, the last two years of my career. And you’re her boss’s boss as a woman and there’s a quite a chain. But my networking within the within Microsoft has been very female focused, and that hasn’t really been intentional, but I found that those connections have been easier to make in terms of building up my own network versus in other places where the organization was very heavily male, and it was a lot harder. to approach executives to build out my network that way, and I don’t know that that has anything here there in terms of saying one way is better than the other. But I think you’ve got to be able to span both directions. And, and maybe there’s value in both types of conversations one with with your group and then the other, with your allies and inclusive.
Unknown Speaker 18:21
As Lindsey, I’ve found that, definitely to be the case, right? I think we’re all in agreement. We want our allies around the table, but they’re also, you know, creating space to have this more the smaller conversations and like we continue to talk about it can’t be all just one big corporate piece. It’s breaking it up into little, little groups, so that different conversations can be hacked. Not all of them make sense. At the same table. Hang you had mentioned something around cognitive diversity. We’re not something rather you mentioned cognitive diversity. Can you help us in impacting that a little bit
Unknown Speaker 18:58
and so I’ve been said before that my team will never ever be in orchestra full of violence. So it’s important for my team to be to be, you know, full of very interesting and different unicorns because we bring so many different ideas and thoughts to the table. And we are able to challenge each other respectfully. Whether it’s again race, gender, but tenure, age, background, I have a simile a pastry chef, a, an actor and musician. Technology and non technology, different industry backgrounds, just because they bring all this different innovation and we’re able to unpack it and think about, okay, how do we skate to the puck, and use the skill sets that we have towards a technology framework. And so I believe that it makes my team more agile. And I believe it actually brings us a competitive advantage.
Unknown Speaker 20:07
Completely agree. That’s awesome. And I, I love the fact that the way you talk about your team members isn’t about their contributions to the business necessarily. It’s about how my mindset and frame that they’re bringing because of their backgrounds and what they’re actually, you know, their interest levels outside of work. I think very similarly, and I love that you shared that with us.
Unknown Speaker 20:30
Thank you. And you know what? Absolutely, it contributes to the bottom line at the end of the day. You know, we are business minded salespeople, it absolutely contributes to the bottom line. So Sara,
Scott Santucci 20:42
on something that hangs hangs talking about one of the things that I know that intimidates men in general, or many men, I don’t want to say all men, but many men that I talked to, is when the diversity card gets played in their opinion or the Discussion happens, people tend to get into a defensive posture of Oh no, I’m not going to be allowed to say what I want to say. And it becomes an HR thing. And what’s interesting for me is everything Hank said, I agree with 100%. I think it’s universal. we as human beings are better when we’re together. And when you have an environment where people feel like they can collaborate, everybody improves, and we win more. And I think there’s some, what I’m interested in hearing, from your perspective, is, when you take the word diversity, can you also hear it similarly? I know that for myself, when I message it to other men, I say, look, this isn’t an HR exercise. This is about getting creating the environment to get the most ideas so you can win more. But I have to work hard to reinforce that because for whatever reason, diversity is interpreted differently with some men. So I’m interested in hearing what you guys’s perspectives are around just the nature of diversity and how do we make it more about, you know, all working together to you know, to make our environment better for everybody? What’s the goal? And I guess, Amy, I’ll ask you first. Okay.
Amy Benoit 22:19
I find that in part hang what you’re talking about and Sarah, if you humanize the people that you work with, and you connect with them on a level that’s even more valuable to them, if they’re musician or if they love serving wine with their dinner and you understand this about them, you build that relationship and its relationship one on one we all know it will sell, but you have a deeper level of trust and psychological safety and in turn, people work with you better they like to work with you, they’ll work harder, whatever that incremental add is, and as a person I connection, I fake connections, my drug of choice. So I always am trying to learn about people curious about getting to know them. But I found very early on in my life six or seven that like people like that too, you know, so if they like it, they were giving me whatever was hanging out with me more and then in business, it became better clientele relationships or managers were driving their teams to hit their numbers faster. They would read emails from me, which we know sometimes that doesn’t happen. So it’s far more for me just the level of relationship and knowing that each person has something unique to offer and trying to figure out what that is because I’m, I like learning about people. And it’s been a benefit.
Scott Santucci 23:53
So when we’ve talked about this, a lot what sort of situations Do you run into having been in a career in sales that sales has traditionally been male dominated, and we tend men in general can be very, we can get very micro focused. And we can get competitive. And sometimes we get competitive with each other than with competition. And that can be seen as stupid. But we do that. How do you find your voice in that kind of environment? I mean, you’re also hyper competitive Lindsey is if you guys don’t know, play college soccer. But how do you find the space to be able to make those connections and create an environment for your voice to be heard?
Unknown Speaker 24:41
Um,
Unknown Speaker 24:43
you know, I think I would say it’s, it’s changed a lot over the course of my career. I would say that in the last, you know, handful of years, there’s a lot more awareness to what Hank was describing in terms of building teams that are diverse and how do you create space for for people to have perspective and voice. So if you’re in an organization that has a culture like that, with leaders like that, it’s, it’s very different than sort of coming up in, in the way that I did at the start of my career where it was basically, like, you kind of had to be one of the boys to get the credibility to have to have a voice and to be validated in it. So, you know, it was a lot of this concept of how do you show up in a way where you know, your competitiveness, and again, maybe this was because I grew up playing sports and played lots of sports boys growing up, but it was sort of that kind of mentality where How do I how do I participate? How do I act like one of the boys How do I compete like one of the boys, but then I’m also very aware of, of things that you know, are unique to my situation as a woman and just sort of manage those on the side without much support and, you know, and kind of keep those two myself so I’d say it’s, it’s changed a lot. I don’t know that I have any, you know, specific examples.
But I guess maybe early in my career, I will say that, you know, I was coached as I was moving into an A Field Sales role in terms of, of entertaining clients and how to manage that. And it was basically like, you know, don’t don’t do drinks or dinner with with folks without bringing somebody along from your company. Whereas for any of the guys, that was totally fine. But you know, you just didn’t want to put the potential client in a situation where something awkward might happen, and then you me would have to deal with it at the, at the end of the day or the next day when here I’m trying to build a professional relationship with this person. You know, what have you so I think, I think it’s sort of those types of things that, you know, I was aware of early on and, and sort of tried to manage in that way.
Unknown Speaker 26:46
But I think a lot has changed since then, too.
Unknown Speaker 26:49
I have a funny question for the less the rest of the ladies on this group. And it may be because, as you mentioned, Lindsey times have changed over the year. You know, an inch at a time but they have. How many of you have ever said I hate working with women?
Amy Benoit 27:10
No, honest, never. I would say it’s easier working with men it is but I would
Unknown Speaker 27:15
couch it at this. Okay. The reason I asked that is because I just from our tenure that we were talking about here. One of the things that I found was when I was first coming up working with women was heinous. You had a lot of Queen Bee syndrome. And it was because when there was a seat at the table, you were fighting for one seat out of 10, not 10 seats out of 10. So people got very protective of having that seat and they acted like a boy. So to your point, Scott earlier. Is it uncomfortable to have a conversation with a man I would actually argue that those women at the top 2530 years ago were as uncomfortable because the way they got forward was to act competitive like men. So I think what women aren’t voted to bring to the table right now what we’re really good at as our sweet spots, we’re tend we tend to be a little more collaborative than competitive, which makes us really, really good at neutralizing friction. We bring our authenticity and vulnerability to the table, which helps with connections, which by the way, really, really helps with sales. If you really want to close the door dollar, you have to understand your customer that comes with listening and collaboration.
Unknown Speaker 28:28
Hang I really appreciate you sharing that. And it’s interesting the whole time you were walking through that I was reflecting on your question, which was, you know, who’s ever said don’t you don’t like working with other women? And a lot of that I think, is really dependent on what we’re what company to join first. What was the diversity? Pretty interesting as the first company I ever joined at a college. I was it was me and one other woman who started after me. And so I didn’t buy don’t reflect back to my really early conversations and that way, but I relate to Lindsey a lot where I was told, like, don’t put the client in an awkward situation, right? And so you, you, it’s funny because those things get instilled in you. And then you bring them to the next company, whether you are reporting to a woman, and instead of remembering that piece, right, you should figure out what you could learn from her.
But to your point, folks, we’re being competitive, and therefore not wanting to impart that wisdom on the women that were coming behind them. One of the reasons I think it’s so important for us to be coming to the table together is to to impart that on to the next crew. So, Alicia, you and I have been having one on ones and you’ve already imparted tons of wisdom and I think we’ve spoken twice. I’d love to hear from you. I mean throughout your career. You’ve got stuff here right from your team. I know that there’s many others that you’ve touched. Tell me a little bit about how you’ve ensured that you’re not the woman that’s being competitive and sitting in that ivory tower, but rather, helping pass the baton. Though, so I think over the years, I have been influenced by some pretty incredible women in leadership. And there are bits and pieces that you glean from things that look real good to you, right? Like, I happen to align with this female leader, probably because she’s a woman. And she might be 10 years older than me, her kids might be 10 years older than my kids. And she still has it, what do I need to do to make sure that I still have it 10 years from now. And now I am 10 years past that time, and I can look back and say, there were experiences I had with some female sales leaders where I thought I As good as she is, as a sales leader, I’m not sure I want to be the same mother that she is. And I’ve had that conversation with some of one on one with some of my peers who have become mothers during this time, because they want to be the best at both, and you can absolutely be the best. And so back to Lindsay’s point, you can have these big group conversations with many people and lead conversations with a diverse group. But you can also have very effective one on one when you get into that mentor position. When you help women who look like you 10 years ago, and talk about what does your career look like to you? When you sit back and say, this is where I want to be in 10 years? What does that look like? Explain it to me and then Let’s talk about the decisions you might be interested in making between now and then.
I think that is, that’s awesome that you’re asking those questions for other women. And that you brought up the Can you be a good mother and be really powerful in the workplace? Like, can you can you do it all? And it’s one of those. If you’re right, you can do it all. You can have it all. But I’ve seen many of my peers that have that back or have said I can’t I just can’t do both mean as you sit and think and I don’t know who always a mother on the lines. I don’t wanna make any assumptions. But hang I’m curious. I mean, when you had your, your your baby for the first time, like, how did you think through and did others give you advice that you could do it all?
Unknown Speaker 32:55
They did, and I actually think it’s incorrect. I think you can have pieces of it at specific times, and you have to prioritize. And it also takes sacrifice from your partner. So if your partner has zero of the housework, it’s going to limit your career progression. If there is an equal partnership, that’s better, but both careers will likely suffer the females career probably a little bit more in that situation, but it’ll probably suffer. But you know, do you negotiate a period of, you know, I take the first five years you take the next five years, whatever, but having being coached you can have it all at all times. I think it’s the most frustrating thing for a woman because you feel like a failure, because you can’t be perfect and we strive to be perfect. So what I usually coach people is strive to be the best that you can be in the moment and pick your prioritizations because you know, otherwise, we have this We will have this unrealistic expectation of being Superman Superwoman at all times and we will absolutely set ourselves up to to fail.
Unknown Speaker 34:13
I
Unknown Speaker 34:16
if you think about it being Superman, Superwoman, whichever, right? It is one of those things that I like, I like your, your, your framework there of you have to redefine what what is Superwoman in at that point in time. And that’s a lot of enablement, right, as we think about the our roles as humans in the workforce, like people are always going to want more enablement, because they’re always going to want make more money. And hopefully, we’re all defining our roles really well within the organization. That is, if you do what we’re saying, I’m defining as best practice you will make more money here at that company. So as we think about the role We’ve defined in the workplace and and how we are kind of evolving. What is our definition of Superwoman? What does it in your opinion? And I’ll start with you, Lindsay. What does enablement look like when women in leadership and women in enablement is working? Well?
Unknown Speaker 35:19
Hmm. I think
Unknown Speaker 35:22
I think some of the things that I think it sort of goes back to where we started our initial conversation where it’s, you know, some of that one on one mentorship and how do you help coach women? I love what Alicia said about, you know, helping younger women have a perspective that through her experience in her career, and some of the things that hang said to around how do you define success and meet, you know, meet folks where they are. And I think also it’s important on the bigger scale to really, you know, if you’re driving equality for women overall, leaning into those organizations that you have allies coming into as well. Where where you’re meeting people and they’re and meeting not not like shaking hands and Hello, nice to meet you but meeting people where they actually have been, yeah, none of that anymore. But where you’re actually sort of meeting people where they are and showing, you know, potential allies, what it’s like to be a women in a community of women, you know, and also meeting them as part of that community. I think all of those things become really important for lifting everybody up. I think those are kind of foundational pieces of it across the board.
Unknown Speaker 36:35
I really I like that a lot. And I mean, staff. I know you’ve got some great hands on experience here with the group. You’re running out of Atlanta. Anything in specific y’all are doing to start to shape that and what’s really working for you.
Unknown Speaker 36:50
Yeah, I’ll actually build on what Lindsay said a little bit. I think when you look at like what makes teams successful and having mentorship up and down the way it is, She said, women want to see people who look like them at the top. So if there aren’t other female leaders, it’s going to make it really hard for their voice to be heard and for them to be their authentic selves. So Amy, I think it was you, you’re saying, you know, I crave connection and understanding people. And I think that the more diversity you have on any leadership team, the better you understand all types of people who work for you, and the more likely you are to have creative ideas and have a team that’s humming. Well, someone gave me the sports analogy of like, you can’t have a team full of Kobe’s because Kobe wants the ball in his hand all the time. So then your team would be fighting with each other right? So that same holds true with like male versus female races, ethnicities, religion, right you can have a team that looks exactly like each other and be successful.
So I think the way that we apply principles of we need women in leadership is partly we need women sponsors and leadership positions and into that we need those women to be mentors to the women who are coming behind them like Alicia’s doing, because they need to feel comfortable having a voice and finding their voice and figuring out what they want it to be. And being comfortable being their authentic selves. I think a lot of that gets hard when you’re in a company that’s largely male. And so it’s important that you see people in front of you and behind you. And it goes up and down the chain, like Alicia said. So that’s a lot of what we try to do as part of our goal with the Women’s Network is how do we create sponsorship and mentorship opportunities so that when there’s a leadership position available, a woman feels comfortable raising her hand and saying, I’m qualified for this, I’m a good fit. And then when she’s in that position, she can continue to diversify and create connections other places. So we focus on it in that way, part of the way that we like actually action that is we have executive sponsors. So females who are currently in leadership positions, and we We rely on them heavily to like, get out there, get their voices heard, help people understand how to promote themselves. So that’s a big thing that we rely on is like that networking and mentorship aspect of things so that females have that connection above them, and they’re giving that connection to people, potentially below them are still our individual contributors.
Unknown Speaker 39:23
That’s phenomenal.
Unknown Speaker 39:25
Go ahead and add something to what Stephanie said there because I’d like to bring it back to Scott’s question about how we communicate diversity and inclusion in a way that doesn’t spook the male contingent and have an HR title linked to overhead. Stephanie just gave an excellent verbal visual on what the operations of good diversity and inclusion looks like. like giving every person the ability to raise their hand and be like, I’m interested in this leadership. Position I’d like to be considered. So that’s the operational aspect. Now, if you were to ask Scott, one of your or any of us was to ask one of our male counterparts when you ask yourself what diversity inclusion really means, take yourself out of it, zoom out of this view that you have the four walls of your building, when you actually get to go back to your building and see what the next generations are going to bring to your business. Right now we’ve got children ages, eight through 18 and teenagers to 18 who crave that connection that Amy was talking about. And they are so far ahead of connecting with people of different races, different ethnicities, different I mean in different countries, and are able to connect through video song different social media platforms that when they hit your business, you got to be ready to bring them into the workforce. And you’ve got to have the operations that Stacey as I said Steph was just talking about in place to be able to move them up the food chain real fast. I it kind of reminds me actually what Hank was talking about in the beginning, which was it’s been a great to talk, but let’s also make action. Right and the new group that your founding stuff, and Alicia, you guys, you did that? Right. So I think that that is phenomenal as you think about how can it every idea has to be operationalized we know this from business and what we do every day. But how do you make sure that you put it in practice very quickly. So Scott, as we’re kind of thinking about this, I know we’d like to get some tips from the group says do being a sales leader how to get a sales leader be a great sponsor.
Unknown Speaker 41:59
How to Have you thought about that, Scott.
Scott Santucci 42:02
But I don’t want to put myself in a spot. I want to practice what Alicia is preaching over there. But let’s, let’s do a little bit of role playing here. I’m in a position to give you guys perspective of many VPS of sales, and other other leaders, where we are at this point in time and 2020. Most of them are men. And I have a lot of conversations with these. For whatever reason, I’ve been blessed of being able to participate in many women in sales or women in sales enablement panels. And then the conversations I have with men in the bar afterwards are very different and they don’t bring the issues up. They’re kind of scared to bring them up because they think they’re going to get labeled as sexist or whatever. So right now I’m going to do my best to channel many bar conversations. So these are not the opinions of Scots in Tucci. This is why Lindsey and hanger here to get my back for sure. But what I’d like us to do is, let’s coach What a executive sponsor. So if I’m if I’m a VP of sales, and I’ve listened to this, and I bought it and said, You know what? You’re absolutely right, my team will be more competitive if we have a more inclusive environment. I don’t want anybody to I don’t want to invite HR because I still want to maintain control over my team. But I want to create a diverse work experience.
So step number one, though, is how do I even bring that up? Who do I talk to? Because if I bring it up to say, Alicia, am I going to put off Lindsay? And then am I creating competition? because keep in mind what I experienced in my world, I’m probably I’m 50 years old, just so you know. So I’ve experienced what Hank brought up earlier on. I’ve experienced lots of women complaining about other women in the workplace. It’s very confusing as a leader to know how to navigate that. So how would you suggest I get started on that? And I’ll ask you, Alicia, because I’ve been inspired by what you said about just not making it about myself. back. What advice would you give me? As the amalgam? We’ll call myself Steve, not Scott. So that’s not what no one thinks it’s Scott saying this, but me, Hey, Steve, this is what you should do. How do I get? How do I get a great program going?
Unknown Speaker 44:19
Well, let’s first Steven Scott, talk about
Scott Santucci 44:24
SCADA beat SCADA be my last day.
Unknown Speaker 44:29
Let’s talk about the cultural aspect of the team, and what your goals are for that. And then let’s talk about the performance aspect of the team. Right. So you want a strong culture in your team. You also want all of your reps to hit their number and exceed their number. So start with with cultural. You have Alicia on your team, who happens to like golf. So whenever you do your team offsites it’s a great day. Not the course. But she’s the only female that shows up all your male A’s show up. But not any of your female A’s except for Alicia. But it must be okay because Alicia likes golf. That’s not 100% win on the cultural aspect, right? So let’s think about ways in which we might be able to increase your culture on your team. Let’s ask the whole team for what they want to do for the next boss outside, maybe do a vote. And let’s add in their one item. That’s not optional. We’re going to do a veto. volunteer time off. And we are going to serve meals to homeless
Unknown Speaker 45:41
next weekend.
Unknown Speaker 45:44
Let’s see how those events pan out. And then let’s just ask people, how do you feel about it? Do you feel a little bit more connected with your team?
Unknown Speaker 45:54
Would you like to do a volunteer time off project again
Scott Santucci 46:02
So that’s one, let me give you some real time feedback on that. Here’s what resonated really strongly with me, starting off with performance and culture. So what I think we want to isolate what kind of culture do I want to have? Yep. And I want to hyper competitive culture, but I don’t want my people competing with each other. I want to compete against the, you know, I was gonna curse there. But, you know, the bad people, the people that aren’t us. So how do we create that environment where all of us, we want to have individual Ward’s who doesn’t like to be individually recognized? Right, and you talked about everybody hitting quota, but how do I make sure all of us are more anti our competition than we are pro our individual props? How does diversity help help me do that? Because that’s where you’re gonna really hooked me.
Unknown Speaker 47:02
Here your question is how does diversity help you win?
Scott Santucci 47:08
I think I think it’s more I like competition. I think a lot of us do. What I don’t like is competition amongst my team. I like competition where we’re all in it together and competing against somebody else. To me, I think we just give you a little more friend for that give you some tools, and anybody else can chime in on this. What was I’ve been listening a lot. And what I’ve been excited about what everybody is saying is there’s this common thread of, you know, to Amy’s point, let’s treat people as their individuals hangs point, hey, the more we empathize with our customers, the more we’re all going to win. To Lindsay’s point that, you know, boy, it’s way more fun to win together than it is individually. All of these points that You are making a really resonating strongly with the kind of environment that I think most heads of sales want. So if you can a, we’re going to do this. And then your next point about, like, hey, Alicia likes to play golf. But how come other women aren’t signing up for golf? or How come when I start using football references like playbooks or whatever. A lot of women just sort of glaze over. How do I how do I create the inclusion to get the culture that I want, when I don’t know what’s relatable or not relatable?
Unknown Speaker 48:33
So when I add a plate
Unknown Speaker 48:38
Oh, sorry. Okay, sorry.
Unknown Speaker 48:41
Um, Scott, I was just going to say I would take it back to the initial question of, what does that help you when or how does diversity help you in Alicia’s first point? What is the culture that you want? I think it’s important that the leader, male or female sets that culture because if your team doesn’t know that, that’s what you’re driving towards. It’s hard For them to follow. So you have to set that first. I think the second piece is back to Amy’s point about connection. If you’re treating them as individuals, as the leader of that team, you should know what drives every individual and what they’re interested in. And I think that if you have those two things, if you have a vision for your team, and you know, their individual visions, you can take all of their strengths. And that’s where you create a culture that’s more effective than 10, Kobe Bryant’s on a team, you then have 10 individuals on a team that all serve a different purpose. And you figure out okay x person, they are the best customer facing person we have, they can help my ease who struggle here, this person is the best deal strategy, they can help my ease here. And I think that that’s where you start to win more. The more that you set the tone for culture and the more you understand the individual and what their goals are, that’s where diversity and thought starts to help teams win in mind. opinion
Scott Santucci 50:03
was awesome. I want to highlight he was super awesome too. This is a hard question because kind of roleplay out on the spot. And now we’re getting to some great momentum. Hang you have some thoughts about vocabulary and language.
Unknown Speaker 50:15
Yeah. So if you think about having cognitive diversity and bringing in these portfolio of people, the first seven people I brought in, I think represented 11 or 12 languages between us. And it helps you think about not just language and dialect, but culturally too. So for instance, when you use it’s not just a male using sports analogy, it’s not just male dominated. It’s it’s kind of it’s, it’s Western centric. So for instance, when I talk to my Asian audiences, I may use a different sport, I may use a different cultural arts perspective, when I talk about, you know, competition One person may not like golf, but they may like something equally athletic, but just a different sport. So, you know, we bring in different diversities Steve. Where, where, where, where? Where do you see your gaps? So I like to ask, you know, salespeople, how many medic people are here? I used to I really like to ask Ted question. Right. So where people are self discovering their answers, Steve, as Alicia mentioned, what type of culture? Are you driving? What type of blind spots Do you think that your team has? And how would you fill them? Besides me? How many other people are you talking to that represents other corners of diversity? Not just female, not just person of color. Those are the types of questions that I would ask to say, I’m not offended at all. In fact, I thank you so much for asking me and I really encourage you to open the door and ask other people that are even more different than me.
Scott Santucci 51:58
I want to piggyback on that. Ang, and, Lindsay, I’m going to ask you a question after this. So pay attention. One of the things that I’m noticing is that sale, the external sales environment is becoming more complex. The number of stakeholders our salespeople have to navigate is increasing exponentially. And those people, those individual stakeholders have a difficult time getting together. And one of the things that Lindsay and I have built a great rapport over is this idea of what do we call it, English to English translation. And I think what really matters a lot is to be able to understand all of the different perspectives you might run into and how you orchestrate that. Lindsay, would you care to comment on that about how important that you think that is and sitting in You’re the only one of us who’s in actually in a sales role right now. Could you comment on how big of a challenge. Do you think that is and how important bringing a diversity lens to that is?
Unknown Speaker 53:05
Yeah, I think, you know, I, we talk a lot about sort of cultural transformation and cultural change in terms of driving, you know, consumption of technology that you’re trying to sell. And I see that a lot in the organizations that I’m actually working with is, is you’ve got so much technological change that’s happened in the last handful of years and so many people that have the experience that they have that has been great, and executive organizations that are also trying to transform their business, but this enormous gap across understanding within organizations themselves about, you know, what’s the baseline of everybody’s knowledge, how do we talk in a way that we can move things forward? effectively, how does an executive articulated a vision that then people can actually get on board with an execute against and you see it a lot where the the language of of conversation hear the words are the same, but you can just sort of tell that people are talking past each other in those conversations so it’s really interesting to a lot of that is being part of of the conversation seeing that happening and then managing this the subject matter, or or forcing the conversation to go deeper. I think kind of you guys role played it out really well, right there is how do you get it deeper so that you can actually get into a level of understanding when you recognize that people aren’t understanding versus just sort of letting the the language that seems the same, just sort of stand for itself and everybody moves on?
Unknown Speaker 54:43
I couldn’t agree more. Lindsey, if it is very. As we think about communication in the workplace, it’s even, you know, female to female, female and a male doesn’t really matter which direction it is. Communication is the core of what we do and even how we go to market with our products. So I really, really am inspired and grateful for the conversation that we’ve been able to foster today. My hope is is that you know, those that are listening are thinking through, how could I maybe reach out to one of these great ladies right and get additional perspectives? But also, how can I know that it’s okay to raise my hand to Stephanie’s point, right and say, I’m interested in that opportunity. We all need to get to a place where we can ensure that we are providing folks below us and above us the opportunity to do so. So, Brian, I’m going to hand it over to you to summarize our conversation today and close this out.
Greg 55:49
Yeah, sure. And have a bit of an ask the ladies. I’m going to I’m going to recap here but then at the end if you guys could just share a topic you think we should cover Going forward on the podcast, I really like this. You know, Sarah, we asked that of you on the last one, and you came up with this idea. So I’m gonna let you guys think about that. And just, we can just kind of popcorn it at the end. But for me, where this conversation has really went into is this idea of, look, you know, we’re all in a knowledge working business. Our brains are what makes us valuable. And as humans, our ability to produce is critical. And I often tell my kids that if you’re stuck on something, and you cannot achieve something, or you can’t do the homework, it’s not because you can’t output. It’s not because you can’t put the pen to paper. It’s because you don’t have the inputs you need. It’s an input problem. And I think so many times are focused on the output side of knowledge work, when we want to sit in judgment of people or things or whatever. And and what this conversation has been really helpful for me to think about is, where do inputs come from? And how diverse can those inputs be? Because the more diverse it is, the better off you’re going to be. And a quick story of this when I was going through my officer training, they take us as, as future officers to huge obstacle courses. It’s kind of like Wipeout, or American Gladiator or whatever. And you have these big huge puzzles you have to solve. And it’s everything from you got to cross the lava, things like that. But you have to rely on each other to do it. And at first, you have a bunch of people going at it alone, and you can never solve it, and you end up losing, but quickly learned that there’s a way to survey everybody to get the inputs and to make decisions. And actually, the more diverse those inputs are, the more creative you can be in solving the puzzle. And it doesn’t seem like that would be the case. But it is. And maybe you’ve actually seen this happen before. This is where some of the creative thinking comes.
So for me the conversation around what’s the business impact of diversity? That’s been? Absolutely, you know, for me a great reminder. And then you know that I really like the cognitive diversity angle. This isn’t necessarily about gender, skin color, race, religion, sexual preference, etc. It’s about diversity of thought and cognitive diversity. And that’s that those audiences having a voice or crit is critical to the diversity that you might need to win. And when you frame it that way, why wouldn’t you create space for people to provide input? Why wouldn’t you be proactive about seeking out? So to Hanks point, you don’t have all violence in these in the orchestra, or you don’t have everybody? A team full of coviz like Lindsay said, so That’s the summary that I would have is that, you know, don’t be an analogy, don’t be on the sidelines. At some point, my hope is that everybody’s fighting for men’s voices to be heard because they’ve been forgotten. And the pendulum swung. And now we have to include men in the conversation, because women have advance so far that might take forever. And maybe that’s my naive for me to say, but I think there’s a an idea here that we’re even having an inclusive conversation, right? This isn’t just women talking about it by themselves, Scott and Brian, or Steven Brian, we’re here to, and I think that’s really what’s required from an orchestrator perspective, is being inclusive of the actual opinions as we talk about inclusion to win. So that’s, that’s my summary there. And let me just go around and, you know, let’s go around the horn and i’d love your take on that. And then also, you know, I’d love to hear anything you have about what can we do going forward on the podcast and then we’re done. And with Scott,
Unknown Speaker 1:00:01
you got Amy, you want to kick us off?
Unknown Speaker 1:00:03
Sure.
Amy Benoit 1:00:06
I believe that we’re wired for connection and growth. And I would like to see those VPS Scott that Steve Scott, Scott, Steve, that you mentioned, we have a conversation and almost the same conversation that we’re having here but through the lens of them, what vulnerabilities are they able to break through now in their careers that they may have not been able to see beforehand? Because I think those pockets of light are going to help illuminate for for future people or even just people in their careers to date. I’d be interested in hearing what that conversation sounded like.
Unknown Speaker 1:00:53
Awesome. Amy, thank you so much for sharing that. What about you?
Unknown Speaker 1:00:59
I think I didn’t really interested, kind of on that same note just about what mentorship and sponsorship look like from an executive perspective, how you tackle it, how you reach out, and the types of people that you mentor and sponsor along the way. Where if you’re in sales or sales enablement, like, what what does that look like? And how do you start doing it and how are you an effective mentor?
Unknown Speaker 1:01:25
Okay, awesome penguin about you.
Unknown Speaker 1:01:28
And maybe it’s my enablement DNA. It could also be that my Clifton strengths number one is activator. But I believe in, you know, challenging people, what are you going to actually do about it? And I’m writing a book and it’s specifically about creating access and elevation by those of us who were others. Once we How did we get there, share our stories of how did we get there. And once we get there, what is our collective responsibility to drive awareness Not only mentor but actually put our necks out on the line to sponsor and bring more chairs to the table instead of shutting the door. How do we bring more chairs to the table behind us by giving the the women the people of color, the underrepresented permission to raise their hands permission to be a little bit different permission to navigate the reality that they live in. And the reason is one of the quotes that I always love is everything you’ve already accomplished is a mountain someone else is currently trying to climb. Maybe they you can give them a leg up. How do we get our peers to have the open minds and open hearts to open their own eyes and ears? That’s I think would be a very interesting topic.
Unknown Speaker 1:02:47
I love that hang. I love your bring all your differences to the table that makes us makes us amazing. But what about you just like with Amy and specimen hang, we’re saying I think it’s, it would be really interesting to have those discussions in the next topic or in the next series of topics, but also add a quarter of it that are very specific examples. And since we’re in the world of enablement, and our job is to help our sellers sell. A lot of those sellers come from diverse backgrounds, a lot of them are women. Let’s talk about women in negotiation. How How can women become better negotiators? How can I be better at the table in terms of getting the deal off the table? And I know there are some great third party skill based workshops. Maybe if somebody has had an experience around that with a third party that they brought in to to elevate diverse sellers. I would love to hear about those experiences. Stop And I have a lot that we can talk about in terms of Salesforce, but you know, Microsoft, it would be great to hear what kinds of programs they bring in to help women in the workplace, workplace. I love that. And I actually know a few consultants, right that are going in and doing this at some of the big tech companies in the Bay Area. So be interesting to have that perspective around the table next go round.
Unknown Speaker 1:04:24
I love it. Lindsay, last but not least,
Unknown Speaker 1:04:29
yeah. I think you guys all hit great topics for for next follow on I think maybe, you know, an area again, Scott kind of mentioned it that we’ve been talking about how do you dig into a little bit more, it’s just the the straight up communication and and we’re calling it English English translation. But, you know, again, how do you level set to create that, that way that people can engage with each other and actually understand and build the communities that we’re talking about. So
Unknown Speaker 1:04:58
completely agree? We got to Start with understanding the language that each other speaking. Thank you all so much for doing this and spending time with us. I know it’s quarter end we all have a ton going on in our plates. So this perspective has been invaluable. And again, I am grateful for having the ability to learn from
Unknown Speaker 1:05:19
each of you.
Outro 1:05:21
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 sp.com. You can also connect with him online by going to inside s e.com. following them on Twitter or sending them a LinkedIn request.
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