EP59 Gaining Executive Buy-in to your SE Charter with Tamara Schenk
Laying the foundation is critical to Sales Enablement Orchestrators. Laying the foundation is a foundational step to create the survival kit for an enablement leader. It’s absolutely mandatory for the enablement leader.
In this episode, we’re joined by Tamara Schenk. Tamara talks with us about the blueprint Sales Enablement Orchestrators need to create with all teams and roles that are involved. Laying the foundation requires approval by senior executives so that this is your blueprint you’re going to achieve.
Laying a foundation is not an exercise you do for somebody else, it’s not something you you do for finance or controlling. And it’s definitely not filling out a form. That’s the absolute the last step, when you put all the pieces together. It’s a creative process of creating the blueprint you need in your organization, in your context, where you’re currently at to achieve your goals. You You have to achieve an enablement to meet your company’s sales objectives.
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 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.
Scott Santucci 00:33
I’m Scott Santucci,
Brian Lambert 00:35
Brian Lambert, 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 00:48
together, Brian and I’ve 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 01:01
Our focus is on you as sales enablement leaders and orchestrators as an orchestrator, you need to be able to blend both strategy and tactics in order to execute. Our goal on this show is to help clarify the metrics of success, provide examples of what that looks like, and give you confidence to engage up down and across the organization. As always, we start with a centering story, Scott, what do you have for us today?
Scott Santucci 01:25
Okay, so today’s centering story, the timeframe on this is 1400 1400. Okay, got it. It was it was it was imagine that a little imagine that in 1400. And Florence, the Republic of Florence commissioned a whole bunch of sculptors, because to celebrate, hey, you know, we’re done with the plague. I thought this was a little time, like, given where we are today. Maybe some wishful thinking with maybe, maybe co it would be over. Yeah. And one of the people who was commissioned one of the sculptors that was commissioned is someone we’ve talked about on the show before Brian, who might
Brian Lambert 02:05
have a, I don’t know, we’ve talked about so many Italians for some reason.
Unknown Speaker 02:12
I know a lot of times, um,
Brian Lambert 02:16
my favorite though, was vilfredo Pareto.
Scott Santucci 02:19
So his tamaraws that’s a little foreshadowing. Okay. Uh, well, it’s one that you brought up
Brian Lambert 02:27
to Vinci. Oh, Which one is that? Oh, um, I don’t know. I can’t remember. Man. You stuck in me. I love it. So it’s 55 shows in man,
Scott Santucci 02:37
the lipo Bruna.
Unknown Speaker 02:41
Rinna leschi. There you go.
Scott Santucci 02:43
That’s right. So he actually started out as an engineer, and you brought it up in your podcast about perspective, right back divx. But, so he didn’t have perspective at this time in 1400. Well, he didn’t. concept of perspective, obviously, we all have a perspective,
Brian Lambert 03:00
right? I think he just didn’t put it on paper and make machines around it yet.
Scott Santucci 03:03
So in 1400, he was just a sculptor, and the sculpting. He wanted to make it more and more real. So we developed the concept of, of a perspective. But I think one of the things that people don’t realize about him is he’s considered the father of modern architecture. And if you go back and think about the Duomo, if you know anything about Florence, there’s this beautiful, beautiful, beautiful Duomo. And it’s the largest dome that had been built since the antiquity since the senate says the largest dome ever built. And it’s a big, big, big, significant event, in terms of architecture construction. And one of his biggest innovations that hadn’t been done before, was the creation of drawings, or what are now called what are called technical technical diagrams, which a lot of us today refer to as blueprints. So if he hadn’t have done that, it would have been very impossible to break down the work to describe the machines required to build this innovation to help get everybody coordinated, dare I say, orchestrated? In order to do that.
So there’s a whole bunch of things that we have. And Bruno lasky is considered the father of modern engineering, of planning, construction, super construction, supervision, all of these things he did. And he started out as a sculptor, he had to develop the concept of perspective in order to create this, this amazing masterpiece, which a lot of people call is, you know, sort of the birthplace of you know, the the Renaissance. You can’t really put a pinpoint on it, but from an architectural standpoint is a big difference between the dark ages and where we are today. It’s a very pivotal moment.
Brian Lambert 04:59
All right, there you go. So what? So what
Scott Santucci 05:05
does that have to do with sales enablement? Well, the reason it has something to do with sales enablement is in today in today’s modern world, have you ever wondered, how is it that a company can assemble a whole bunch of laborers together, that many of them aren’t even college educated, can pull all those people together. And they can build a building or build a house really, really quickly, with a lot of changes that are being made to beat to the spec of different people, and everybody has their own lens and their own perspective, and this thing gets built, right hva see works, the electricity works, the laborers know what to do, because things are coded and diagrammed out. You can hire individual contractors to do to do that work, all of it, is because it’s orchestrated to be to these, these construction designs. And the reason that this is important. And one of the things that we’re going to talk about on this show today is how important it is to have a charter and really envision what your charter really is, what your mission is, what’s your what’s your focus, what foundations are you laying, because ultimately, we have to move out of the dark ages with how we’re doing with sales in a way and have a Renaissance period of where we think differently. And that’s really what we want to talk about today.
Brian Lambert 06:28
Awesome. That’s great. Well, I’m excited to talk about this. And I know we have a very special guest on the show today. Scott, why don’t you introduce her?
Scott Santucci 06:37
So I’m very excited. So our guest today is Tamra shank, and Tamra and I go but way back also with with with you, Brian Tamra was one of the members of the sales enablement Leadership Council that we had put together at Forrester. And when I met Tamra, she was the she was in charge of the energy vertical at at t systems. And she was so frustrated with the amount of materials provided for provided for for sales, she got she developed this concept that she called spot on, which was a content based way to to address some of these challenges. And she actually moved from being in the business unit into running sales enablement. So what I love about Tamra story is that she’s got a different entry point than a lot of us a lot of us a lot of our sales enablement members come from training or come from the field, a few of them come from marketing, not too many come from come from business unit background. So tamaraws perspective is so interesting and fascinating. And one of the things that I talk to her a lot about is we got to get more, we have to do a lot better job of making sure people realize where you came from, and why you advocate the things that you do. The other thing that I’m really excited about, Tamra Joyner show a lot of people know or a lot of people have read her blogs, and many of many of the people have read her book, and her book is a great way to have a foundation. So, Tamra, how did you how did you arrive here on the show to give us a little bit of background about our relationship? And you know what, why are you here today?
Unknown Speaker 08:19
Yeah, so what a great story. Opening story from yours. Scott, thanks so much for having me. Yeah, I mean, you’re basically in touch over the last 10 years. And yeah, I’m following the podcast is for me, it’s always hard to make the time to really sit down and listen to an hour podcast or so. So whenever I am in the car, and I’m going to see my mother it is two hours one way and two hours back, then I take the time to catch up with the inside on a podcast. And I have to say what I love a lot about it is that podcast provides different perspectives looks at the same issue from different perspectives, different roles, discusses different concepts and principles people can apply. And I think this is especially in our fast moving world rarely where change in volatility is, is the normal thing, the normal state of doing things, it’s very important to understand basic principles so that we can apply them in every situation. I think this is especially important for any person who is in any kind of enablement role. So this is why I reached out to you what, what we frequently do and so this is I think how I got here today.
Scott Santucci 09:45
Yes. So one thing that you’ll know as an insider nation, we want you to come up with with ideas. So Tamra sent us an email about I think was the the one that we did and Systems Thinking recently and and, you know, then it triggered a lot of past conversations that we had is that
Unknown Speaker 10:06
vilfredo Pareto. That’s right, my favorite.
Scott Santucci 10:10
So there’s always going to be something. So it’s interesting, whether it’s the centering story that gets us like, oh, or whether it’s what what the conversation was. But what we want to do is encourage you to just shout out like, Hey, here’s what’s resonating with me, here’s what you think, then I’m going to contact you. And then we’re going to put together when we say, hey, let’s do a show. And the show that we’re going to talk about here is laying foundations. And one of the things that I know about Tamra that is near and dear to her heart, is the idea of a charter. So talk to me about why a charter is so important. And then hold on. Before we do that. Audience, I’m going to ask you to do something here. Don’t roll your eyes. Stop it. Just listen for a second. Because a charter is not a shopping list of a bunch of tasks to go do. Oh, it’s not that. What is it, Tamra?
Unknown Speaker 11:05
To me, it’s a survival kit for an enablement leader. So it’s absolutely mandatory for the enablement leader. So if you’re in that role, you want to have that blueprint for yourself, that has been created with all teams and roles that are involved, that’s approved by senior executives so that this is you, blueprint, you’re going for it. So it’s it’s not an exercise you do for somebody else, it’s not something you you do for finance or controlling. And it’s definitely not filling out a form. That’s the absolute the last step, when you put all the pieces together. It’s a creative process of creating the blueprint you need in your organization, in your context, where you’re currently at to achieve your goals. You You have to achieve an enablement to meet your company’s sales objectives.
Scott Santucci 12:11
So let’s unpack this a little bit together. So if I’m listening, I might think a blueprint. Wow, that sounds really heavy technical diagram and everything like that. What I just heard you say earlier on tamaraws, we got to be principles and dealing with a rapidly changing world. How does a document do that I think about a charter is just a document. what actually is, what what does that mean? What is the charter? And how does that help me lay a foundation for being successful.
Unknown Speaker 12:42
I mean, it’s first of all, a really a living document, I would call it a living asset. So I would look at it this way, for everything you do in life, if you don’t take the time, and get into an acceptance mode, and assess where you currently are, and are really honest on where you currently are, then you cannot map out where you want to go. And only if you have this point A in this point B you can say okay, this is where we’re at, this is what we need to do, in order to achieve a certain goal and all the journey in between, that’s a journey, you can’t win alone, you can’t walk it alone, you have to do it in an enablement role, always with other team members. And to map this out, so that actually everyone knows at the end of the day, what to do and how to do it is the creative process and laying out the steps and then also the principles how you want to work together. So this is how I would look at this. So it really helps you because you will always run into situations that I had. This was a couple of clients this year. You know what we we’ve had a charter and some really had done great Berg and great efforts and beginning of the year, then coverted and everyone was getting into panic mode. And then all the great ideas and strategies for set apart. And then how should I call it? You call about Productitis is this action tonight is how should we call this? You know, it’s just audit in it when stuff to do stuff sake? Yeah, it is exactly it’s so we just want to show that we do things that we take action, whatever it is, but we have taken action. And then the strategies the way we do maybe before back into patterns we we’ve had in the past we know they’re actually not not working very well. But we showed Hey guys, we showed that we have taken action. And this is rather difficult. I’m currently working with clients to help them to work with their senior executives to get back on You know what the crisis mode was actually not so very successful, we still have done the same basic challenges. So let’s map out how we could actually get back on track and really tackle them in in a more effective way.
Scott Santucci 15:14
Yeah, I think one of the things that comes to mind and i’d love your reaction to this, what comes to mind is that quote by Einstein is what’s the definition of insanity, doing the same things over again and expecting a different result? And I think what, what what you’re talking about here, and the way that this is relating to me, is a charter is really the opportunity that you have to talk through or write down or codify some way. So it doesn’t need to be just a Word document. It could be PowerPoint, shoot, it can be hieroglyphics and pictures, whatever works for you. Yes, but really, the idea is, we need to write down here is our problem. Let’s make sure people understand what our real problem is, we’re not chasing symptoms, here is the nucleolus, or the the enabling capability we have to develop. And then here’s the sequence of events that we need to lay it out so that we get forward momentum, and we can fix the plane while it’s flying. That’s that’s what I’m hearing from you. And that if you don’t have that documented, or clarity of thought, clarity, I’m using that word on purpose for you, I’m setting you up.
Unknown Speaker 16:24
I see that.
Scott Santucci 16:27
But that that clarity of purpose, then it’s almost impossible to galvanize and really orchestrate all the resources around you. That’s that’s what I’m taking from that. Is that right? Is that what you’re laying down? Or how would you add to that?
Unknown Speaker 16:42
Yeah, so it did, the clarity is really very, very important, especially in the beginning. So if I don’t know where I’m at, I have a hard time, you know, to to even define a departure point for all my team members and collaboration partners, I want to start on this journey. So I really need to know where I’m at. So if I can map this out where I’m at, we will all start at different at different stages and rollout will come together. So we want to make sure that we can take everyone on the hike on that journey together. That is why clarity on where you’re at right now is really key to success. And then the clarity on the point of the project. What does it really mean, as you said, Scott, it’s about or what is the real problem you’re having. And I think this is for enablement. Teams dealing with different business units, different senior executives, that all have different agendas really challenging, which is why I’m saying this is your survival kit throughout the year. Because in that role, I mean, Scott, you know that I mean, there is not a single week, when somebody will come into your office now call you or zoom you and tell you, you know, I need this. And I need that. And what you’ve done here is great, but we need it differently because we are so special. So if you don’t have this survival kit, your child or business plan, whatever you call it, this blueprint, this structure, then you can say, Oh great, by the way this is on this is on our agenda, maybe in a month from now on or no, sorry, but this has not been prioritized, you’re not going to do it right now. Or we map it to the current situation, maybe there were changes we reflected. But then you have a foundation from where you can actually do it. Otherwise you will be moved around from left to right and back to the left and and so on. And you will do a ton of stuff you will be extremely busy without without achieving anything. That’s the danger Roman enablement is run into. And then they have a hard time to actually show it. This was the business to sell we were impacting. And then you have a crisis like COVID or whatnot. And then a finance guy comes around the corner and says, do we need these guys?
Scott Santucci 19:06
Right? Yes. So let me there was so much there that I went on, unpack a lot of these things to help you our listener relate to them. So one thing, that pattern. So one of the challenges that’s difficult for a lot of us to think about is more or less like a story arc. And then when we’re in sales enablement, we have to be thinking about the end in mind. And what is it what are things going to look like a year from now? Not how do I clear my inbox from today, which is filled up by stuff from yesterday. One reason of having a going through the exercise of creating this, this charter, one of the things that it helps you do is think about time differently. What Tamra is saying and I’m gonna add you know ask you to confirm this. Her and I have seen the same play over and over and over again sales in a month group starts sales in a one group expands, sales enablement group gets eliminated because finances What are we getting for our money and that site then that company won’t have a sales enabled group a while. But the problem that has never been addressed bubbles up sales enablement starts, builds out, finding a different CFO pops that this cycle continues over and over and over again, the way to break that cycle is to think how does this all come together? What’s the holistic plan? Is that is that fair? Tamar? Did you see the same patterns?
Unknown Speaker 20:49
Yeah, absolutely. Anything? Yeah. And to your point is you shutting down by finance guys, it’s, this is a part of this core creation of a charter blueprint, our call it is really to map out coming from the business strategy. What are the metrics your senior executives are measured by? Is it this is just really one of the key things in one of our two worlds? Then I hear you, okay, but we don’t really impact this metric, maybe revenue growth directly? No, we don’t do it directly. We do it indirectly. But what you can do if you know these metrics, you can go back and say, okay, given the fact give it, let’s assume we have identified a real problem, or you’re tackling it with our enablement services. Let’s assume that for a moment, then you can start with measuring leading indicators, conversion rates, for instance, and you can see, okay, are we doing the right things, right now, to be able to impact the broader goal. I mean, this is the logical flow, you want to map out in your charter, so that you have this available to you when you need it for, for a conversation.
Scott Santucci 22:07
So one of the things that Tamra is talking about right now, and this is why I love this format, because we get to we get to hear people talk in flow. And I get to brag on their unconscious competence. So I love I love highlighting out things that people do really well. They don’t realize they’re doing it well and differently. So one of the things that we’ve been sharing, Brian, and I’ve been sharing on our podcast, has been if you’ve been tracking this idea of Commercial Ratio, so we’ve had a few podcasts about it, we had Tom sharing his point of view, when we introduced it in a webinar. We’ve had another person who’s got a perspective of do we even really need it? I don’t get it. Right, that that kind of perspective. And then also, we had somebody who, Tamar knows. So Tamra, you know, canol, metha, right. Yeah.
So canal canal is has joined us many times he works at, at TCP, and shared insights about what investors look at. And the reason that these things are important, is a lot of us inside our community. Because we’re in because we don’t know enough about financial language, we get intimidated by it. And we can get really rigid about it. What Tamra is saying is, look, lean into it and embrace it, just try to understand it more, the metrics that your investors are going to be looking at are one thing, the metrics that your CEO is looking at are going to be different than the metrics that but they’re driven from the metrics of your investors, and the metrics that your CFO might have are looking at differently. And if you can connect the dots between those things, then what it allows you to do is prioritize your activities. So that’s one aspect of of building a charter. And Tamra has that expertise, because she ran a p&l. Many of us inside our community haven’t run pianos before. So how would we go about getting that getting that knowledge? But that’s just one element of putting together the pieces of a charter, timber, what are would be some other pieces that you would go through to build what you would consider a good charter a good foundation?
Unknown Speaker 24:14
Yeah, let me come from that perspective. What I see a lot what’s missing in charters is so there is, for instance, a mission statement in the charter. And then we actually missed the part on on the matrix. We missed the poem on purpose and really sales strategy and challenges and then we move directly into the list of activities. Yeah, and that is a big danger. And I let’s discuss this is what I see in many conversation, but this is coming from the people come into an enablement role with the intrinsic motivation to help and what comes with that compassionate energy is that I know what’s good for you. Yes, which results into the fact you know, I’ve done this awesome program in the last company I’ve worked for this is awesome this work, we do it here. So that means then the charter gets a tool to bring in a program, it’s already predefined. Yeah. And that’s not gonna work. This is why this is why how I always talk or write or explain a charter is you have to understand the principles of the process to walk through you that you come up with a blueprint, a charter, a business plan, whatever works for you, that works in your organization, in your contacts at this point in time. So let me pause
Scott Santucci 25:41
here. Yes, I think there’s there’s a lot to what you just said, What Tamra is talking about is one of the reasons why I’m a big fan of saying, I’m not really a big fan of quote, unquote, best practices. I’m a fan of right practices. And the reason I say that is, if you go out and say, Well, this worked, it’s I learned, say, I went to the sales enablement society conference, and I learned how, you know, Tamra spot on project, and then I asked for her deck. And I repeated exactly in my company, and how come it didn’t work? Well, it can’t work, because Tamra designed her spot on projects specifically for her company. Her company has its own business drivers. They are running their own race. They’ve got their own culture, they’ve got their own unique org structure, and she’s starting at a different place than you are.
So that’s why I think it’s important what what did Tamra say earlier on? This is about understanding where you are, and being honest with that. That means taking a really good hard look at what your company’s structure looks like. Who are the sales leaders who may or may not endorse this? Where are you coming from? What’s your power base, but if your power base is I was successful with a project here, and now we’re going to impose it on everybody else? That’s not going to work? And if you think about it, do you like other people imposing their will on you, you know, it’s just, it’s one of those things where many people in sales enablement, say, Hey, I’m here to help, and you want to help, and you you advocate for humanity, but then you don’t apply the same principles that you’d want to buy it, you know, apply the golden rule on it, and you want to impose your will on other people. So I think that’s why it’s so important for you to spend the time to really understand how your organization works. Wouldn’t you say that that’s one of the critical success factor of the of the process, the benefit of going through the process of doing a good charter is to understand what those things are so that you leverage principles to make it work for your company.
Unknown Speaker 27:50
Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, in many contexts, we usually talk about the company is on a growth journey. And, you know, it’s, it’s all about growth, you have to facilitate that. We also have different situations, we have large organizations who are number one in their market, and the market itself is not growing a lot right now. So a company in that situation has very different challenges, or probably they’re expanding in a different market. So they will need in that industry at very different strategy than in in the old one, where they come from. So it’s just very important to really, really understand the business strategy and the current challenges. And when you’ll have interviews with your senior executives, I would always encourage you to have interviews, not just reading a business strategy, talk to these people, even if you can only get 20 minutes of your time, but let them talk about the strategy and the challenges they see. And you will probably get if you talk to five SR x’s, you’ll probably get three different perspectives shared from a different role from a different lens they have and now it’s probably the time to invest in some kind of audit or assessment to get some data in place that that really create credibility in your organization. So in my previous analyst role, and and Scott is probably the same for you people ask, can I use the data he can I use this is and depending on the relationship they had with a company that can do it, of course, but it’s not always it. It’s actually it makes always what you do more credible if you have third party data, but then you always run into the risk. Yep. And that doesn’t apply for us. We had a right that’s just not working this way. So if you have some kind of data that really comes out of an audit or an assessment you did and
Unknown Speaker 29:55
what I’m currently working with a partner on is
Unknown Speaker 29:59
to have a Very laser focused audits that help you to understand water the patterns in the sales force you only have to deal with because you run very often in situations like you know, we are close rate isn’t good enough. So then somebody comes in, you know, there is this rate negotiation training, we just have them to to get better at closing, but this is a symptom. And the symptom doesn’t get better, you know, when we just polished the mirror, the problem that reflects into the mirror will stay the same. And this is probably we really weren’t good enough at diagnosing the problem and, and creating the value for that business problem, just as an example. So that’s one of the problem symptom things that usually comes up. So on the charter level, you really want to point out the problem, and then you develop your neighborhood strategy based on that.
Scott Santucci 30:55
So one of there’s two things that I want to react to, and I wish that we can learn how to make the podcast a whiteboarding session, like everybody does sort of imagine right now. Imagine in your head, we’re at a whiteboard. And what I’m drawing are two concentric circles that are connecting with each other. One is I’m calling it strategy. And the other one, I’m labeling a tactics. Okay, and we have to converge these. So what I heard Tamra say is, hey, on the business side, go and interview your your executives. This is an area I think our field isn’t paying enough attention to. And we skip by and say, Oh, that’s too theoretical or whatever. I can’t stress enough for you how important it is to go and interview different executives, because they do have different variations of perspectives on the overall company mission. And that that is where expectations come from. Expectations are more important to manage the metrics metrics are, you know, what you do operationally, it’s drive to tactics, but how you manage and balance the expectations of all of your key stakeholders is really, really important. And one thing that we’ve found and I tell you an anecdote, I’m gonna tell everybody an anecdote, Tamra, you don’t even know this anecdote, because I’m excited that we’re talking having a space to talk about it. When people have different perspectives of what the mission is, and then they go off and direct other people to go do things, it puts you as the sales enablement person at risk. If you don’t have clarity of purpose among the leadership, you are at risk, and you’re never going to be able to meet expectations.
So let me give you a story, a real concrete story that happened? Well, one of the things that I’ve moved to in terms of our deliverables and how we drive change, is leveraging design thinking techniques. Because part of the challenge is to get people on the same page, we want to expose these things. But as you know, Tamra, people only are best convinced by things, they discover themselves. You can’t come in and say, well, you have these gaps. Of course, I don’t have these gaps. We’re locked in. So what we did is we took quotes, so I interviewed the CEO of their strategy, and we took four quotes from that interview and put them in a screen and we had the entire we had a group of Brian out, you know, the session I’m talking about, they’re about 30 different executives, that director VP levels,
Brian Lambert 33:34
right, right.
Scott Santucci 33:36
Yep. And we put these quotes on and we said, Who said this? And what do you think? And what’s interesting is, Oh, I know for sure. That’s set insert sales leader. And there he goes, again, hyping what we can’t sell. Who is that? Who is right? Then there was another one. Oh, whoever said that doesn’t know the first thing about our industry,
Brian Lambert 33:59
or our product
Scott Santucci 34:00
or our products, right? Then there’s another one. Oh, God, can you Quit complaining about our lack of delivery? Jeez. So the point is all four of these quotes and obviously, nondisclosure prevents us from sharing even more detail. But the key point was, no one thought that these quotes were from the executive, or the CEO, all of them thought it was somebody lower level. The third thing is no one agreed. And then when we revealed all of these were our quotes are your CEO and this is the direction that your company is going because your investors are behind it and etc. It was really eye opening. And that it’s it creates the oh my gosh, maybe we need to take a step back a bit. The reason I share that is I don’t think we do enough of holding the mirror back to say and we say we expect management. We have company The sales plan is different than the marketing plan. Well, if you’re in the middle, and you’re being asked to, quote unquote, enable sales and make it better, and these two aren’t on the same page, if you’re not getting them on the same page, you’re gonna get blamed for the, for the lack for those gaps.
Unknown Speaker 35:15
Yeah. And you’re setting up the you you’re set up for failure.
Scott Santucci 35:17
That’s right. And to me, this is one of the benefits of going through the process. And I know a lot of you’re thinking, Why don’t have time to do that. I think Tamra and I would both agree, we don’t think you have time not to do it.
Unknown Speaker 35:29
Yes. Yes. Right. It’s just like, we don’t have the time to really develop a proper value messaging, but Okay, we have the time to accept a low win rate. Right. Yeah, I think. Okay. Yeah.
Brian Lambert 35:43
And I think it’s also helpful to say, Well, you know, I’ve we’ve had, we’ve seen 15 different sessions on charters out in the market, I went to three of them, they’re all saying the same thing. This is different. You know, so the word charter in this conversation, don’t let it trip you up. You know, this is the this is important because it carves out the the license to operate.
Unknown Speaker 36:08
And yeah, it is what I said is a survival K to license to operate. These are all great terms that really describe the need for for you who are in a sales enablement leader role.
Scott Santucci 36:19
So the other thing to help you as a sales enablement leader to help you envision this differently, we have on our show this idea that you should run sales in a what is a businesswoman in business? And, you know, I’m going to telegraph a little bit about the post COVID research that we added. Tamra, you were on one of our panels, one of the questions that we asked sales enablement leaders was what? What would your letter to shareholders sound like? Oh, and that was what that was your favorite question. And I and what I want to do is, uh, you know, get get, you’re talking a little bit about Taylor about how important it is to have a mission statement, and what actually is a mission statement, you’re, you’re probably not going to find a good mission statement definition, by looking at textbooks, you’d probably find a better mission statement by looking at trying to model like, write out a letter to shareholders, or go and look at how CEOs communicate their business to the rest of the company. And that’s something that’s written that resonated a lot with you. Tell me why that resonated a lot with you, given this conversation about how important a charter is?
Unknown Speaker 37:27
Yeah, it is, you know, I’m from from my thinking here, I’m a big picture person that creates a blueprint around the big picture and tackles it down to the details, and then we’re operating on that. So it did this is why I always resonate. Absolutely with me. So there are challenged, it’s to develop this and there is a lot of resistance to do it, which prevents you from doing it. So just what you shared Scott with a statement from executives, you anonymize them and share them, and it was at Oh, they have no idea and they didn’t understand the business or the products or whatnot. And no one no executive ever said that. So this is resistance on all levels. Yep. If you have resistance within ourselves, within a group within an organization, we won’t solve any problem because the resistance stands in the way of accepting what is. And if we don’t accept what is and look really into the current state, we cannot come up with a vision, we cannot come up with a mission statement. And we also cannot come up with a purpose with a clear purpose for the enablement initiative, function program, whatever. It’s not easy for for many people to follow that because anything Oh, we don’t have the time for dual, which is, which is doing this activity and program and so on. I mean, you can continue to do that. But probably you’re not that successful. Right now with that, because you You’re still you operate on these underlying problems. So having these conversations with different executives is one way to get to a point, okay, we can at least accept that we have very different perspectives in the room. And if I have to serve with my team, you as a group of executives, and we are not at the same page, we can imagine that we will have some challenges on the rate.
So taking a step back is taking it on a higher level on a more aggregated level to say, what is the vision for the customer facing part of the organization? I would start there. So what do we want to achieve? What is the vision which means where do we want to be? And the mission then is how do we want to get there on a high level and then we come down to Okay, and then we can detail the strategy in more detail level of division, how do we how are we going to do this? And then we can connect the tactics to it, what is it, we actually have to do to fulfill that strategy to lift that mission to to achieve the vision we articulated in the first in the first place? And then it’s very simple at the end of that process to say, okay, and enablement role is to be, for instance, orchestrating all the different streams to achieve that, to achieve that vision, for instance, Yeah, something like that. But this is also very important, that purpose really defines Why do we exist? Right, you should have an answer to it.
Scott Santucci 40:47
That’s right. And in what I’m a fan of, is, what did I used to shape my thinking? Is I said, Hmm, none of these definitions of charters work for me? Why don’t I go into the investor world and we’ll get in the investor world, they’ll evaluate a company on its raison de tre. I’m like, What the heck does that mean? Well, it’s French, for whatever reason, investors like to use French, like tranches and things like that. I have no idea. While you know, I’ll learn that maybe we’ll have that’s all on and put them on the hotspot and say, why is French such a big deal with investors? It sounds fancy, I don’t know.
Unknown Speaker 41:27
But it’s elegant.
Scott Santucci 41:29
It’s elegant. It’s true. That’s true. So a restaurant a tray really just means Why do you exist? And that’s one thing investors will look at is, is because does the company does this entity that they’re investing in? Is it clear? And is it focused? And when we go in to what we’re talking about here, it does your business, your charter? The reason you exist? Is it clear? Because if it’s not clear, and it’s just a bunch of words, that are, you know, authorizing you to go do tasks, you’re at huge risk, because from an investor’s standpoint, how am I giving you money? And what do you what is your focus to convert it into value for me? So stepping that down? Tamra is going to get money is going to be asking for money. In the case of where our story started and meeting, she’s going to be asking money for different stakeholders within tea systems. She definitely wants to she, boy, how many roleplays? Do we do Tamar? Right? Oh,
Brian Lambert 42:31
my goodness.
Scott Santucci 42:32
Yeah. Lots of roleplaying about well, what’s my return on investment gonna be how long a defendant before she asked for the adult money. And that’s something that a lot of us don’t do in our in our community, we look at it as a form. And to Brian’s point out there, there are some people out there talking about charters, and they say, hey, fill this form out. Look how easy it is. And I think we would all agree that Tamra would agree that that is a big mistake, it isn’t easy. Your job isn’t easy. If you think your job is easy, then you’re not you’re going to be valued. That way, you’re not going to get the resources, you’re not going to get the raises, you’re not going to have the impact that’s required for things to keep moving forward, you’re a change agent. And change is hard. For all of the reasons Tamra outlined and the only way that you’re going to be able to get your head around that is to be able to accept, I need to learn about strategy. I can’t win strategy, people talk and you say, Oh, that’s theoretical, you need to check yourself because a lot of people put a lot of work into that. And it’s not theoretical to them. So immediately, if you talk that way, guess what you’re doing, you’re alienating yourself from a lot of very important stakeholders. So there’s a lot of different nuances to this. And a lot of this has to come to things that Tamra has been very consistent about which is we need to put ourselves in other people’s shoes, we need to have empathy. It’s not just empathy for the salespeople, we have to have empathy for all of the people involved in our, in our community in our ecosystem. Any thoughts on that? Tamra? Is that is that more like where you’re coming from? And what why you’re so passionate about a charter, it’s not filling out a form. It’s it’s factoring all these things to be successful.
Unknown Speaker 44:20
It’s creating a survival kit. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And it’s I I would add to having empathy for all the cycles around Absolutely. And I would add to this, don’t judge their perspectives, they are their perspectives as you have your perspective and just go into acceptance mode and then build on from that current state and then you can see how to connect the thoughts which is then the, you know, the principle of orchestrating things. So how can we align different perspectives or strategy you know, what is you know, what is What is at the core of different perspectives and then you can make this transparent and that increases clarity for everyone’s if you take that on a higher level, you get a lot more clarity on it, and then you can derive what you really need to do. You said
Scott Santucci 45:14
another word that I love transparency. Nothing gives you credibility, more than transparency. It is far better to give an executive an answer. I don’t know, I’ll tell you tomorrow, then make up something that isn’t true. Okay, so I’m going to I’m going to summarize this stuff, and then we’ll let Bryan Bryan wrap it up, let’s connect some dots to our centering story about Bruna leschi. So Bruna lasky started out as a sculptor, many of us starting out are starting out in this space in different ways Tamra started out as a business unit person, I started out as an individual salesperson pulled out of the field. Many of you are starting out as a, as trainers being tapped on the shoulder. So a lot of us start out here as VPS or directors of broken things, just like Bruna Shelley developed a interim step before his big accomplishment is a linear perspective. So part of what we’re gonna have to learn to do is instead of saying, hey, this thing, this program worked, and now we’re going to impose it on everybody else, we need to learn perspective as well. So we have to develop skills to be able to do that. And then finally, in order to build the demo, we need to have a construction diagram because there’s so many different variables to do, Bruna lasky, even had to innovate different, different tools and different mechanisms in order to do the construction to build the design of what was look for. So those are those are the ways that I’m connecting the dots. Does that resonate with you? Tamra, you want to you know, elaborate on that a bit?
Unknown Speaker 46:55
Yeah, absolutely. So actually, it’s great to go back to print, alecky and Duomo in Florence. So I think to bring this vision from, from the dome back to something that’s more practical for many people is building a house. But I think but what the whole story of Prunella Lesko makes So, you know, it’s applicable because there was the vision to build such a beautiful building. Nobody’s ever seen before. Yeah, it was the origin. Yes. And I think if for all those of you who have ever built a house, there was the wishon, how it should look like how to Rakhine should function, how you want to live in that what experience you want to have in that new building in your new home. So and there are so many dots to be connected to architectural Foundation, electricity, the network’s the heating the water, the gas, oil, the solar systems, whatever. And you you wouldn’t have the idea Oh, that’s, you know, that’s too complicated. I simplified, you know, I don’t care about the water or the gas, you wouldn’t, you would never do that. So you accept, because you know, what a house should look like that all the things have to happen. And you need to do interiors that have in the kitchen and the bathroom and all this stuff. You accept that because you know it already. And what we don’t know, when we start out with enablement, we don’t have a clear vision of hard the future should look like and Dan, we think it’s not necessary. We just go ahead with what we’ve done in Vf, this program and that one, and, you know, some magic will make it happen, saying this is probably what really did the decentering story really bring spag and I think that that at the end of the podcast to say, okay, there was this vision from this big, beautiful dome something is that has never been built before. And we need the blueprint that guides us to do this.
Scott Santucci 49:08
Awesome. That’s a great, that’s a great place to end our portion of it. So Brian, connect the dots for our listeners and type in an Orchestrator, please.
Brian Lambert 49:19
Yeah, absolutely. And I think the first thought I have to connect is, Hey, you know, you guys never told us this whole thing was about a chart or until we started listening to it. So now you know why. It’s about laying foundations. And I didn’t we didn’t want to put we didn’t want to put the word charter in the title because we think that you might not have listened to quite frankly. So by thinking about this in terms of laying foundations, you guys really covered a lot of ground and I’m going to use the six aspects of Orchestrator. And the first one I’m going to go with is this idea of creating momentum. And I love it. This concept of it’s a survival kit. And Tamara started with that and said, this document, whatever it looks like
it’s a living asset. It’s about understanding where you are. And being honest with that. The second part is, once you understand, you know where you’re at, and also what’s in in the document itself, so that you can get momentum, it’s about doing it with other people, and not doing it alone. There’s so much isolation. And and you guys talked about this idea of, we’ve done it before we know what best practice is. So let’s just roll it out. Everybody’s doing it. In this idea of how do we do it with people that the the document helps do that? The charter helps do that. And when you do when you have those two things as a kind of a frame, you know, I’ve got to create momentum, I want to do this with people, then you can say, okay, where are we now? And where do we want to be this idea that Tamara talked about, of point A to point B, if I really want to do this to, you know, carve this out and do it with with others, I have to understand what this gap is? And we’re also going to default to who’s the loudest or, you know, maybe it’s just a prioritization based on first in first out, what’s the value of that? And if you don’t tackle those concepts and confront that reality, which is the third piece, then it’s really hard to answer the question of, you know, why, why are you here, when the finance folks come come around? And that’s the idea of prioritizing the right goal for what you’re doing. When you’re at when the finance team comes around and says, Why are you here? or Why does your function exist? Which they don’t, they don’t really do that.
But if you if you if you were to say, okay, pretend that they did, and you didn’t get get laid off? What would that look like? You better have an answer to that, or else you’re going to be you’re not going to be prioritizing the right goals. At the right moments, you’re going to be prioritizing other people’s goals. And quite frankly, those goals are going to be in conflict and Scott outline this idea of if you’re not rationalizing that, if you’re not orchestrating if you’re not bringing those perspectives together, and you have two conflicting priorities, and your initiative doesn’t work, you’re you’re the one that’s, that’s on the hook for that. And then when you look at, okay, we’re going to do that we’re going to we’re going to bring these things together the right goal, we’re going to confront reality. How do we design this? Well, you have to be clear, and Tamara talked about, let’s get to root cause let’s not tackle symptoms, you have to get to the root cause, understand the measures. And more importantly, she talked about idea, the idea of understanding the sales strategy and the business strategy. And that’s oftentimes the gap that’s missing. So how are you going to drive results by design, if you haven’t even thought of what the sales strategy is, or the business strategy is, and and you know, more importantly, you’re not able to talk about that with the executives. And all of that means if you, you know, if you do those things, if you, if you do what we’re talking about here, you’re going to focus on the right mission and the right goals, you’re going to be able to drive the right strategy, you’re going to be able to understand what everybody’s perspective is, there’s that word again, and bring it together and bring it forward into a document that gains agreement, not consensus, because somebody’s probably not going to be necessarily happy with everything that’s in there. But you’re going to, you’re going to be able to gain agreement on what’s important for the business.
And to Scott’s point, the knowledge that you need to be able to pull this off goes way beyond your knowledge and understanding of something like a methodology or, you know, I know challenger sales, so therefore I can do this. We’re in a different zip code than that. So that’s what the the charter document that we’re talking about does, to help lay that foundation. So that’s, that’s my recap. When you do those things that we just outlined, you’ll be able to focus on the mission and the goals drive results by design, not by effort, guide narrative by confronting reality, prioritize the right goals at the right moments, unlock energy and create momentum and catalyze change through collaboration. That means you’ll be an orchestrator. And that’s a that’s my thought, Scott, do you have anything you want to add? Or tomorrow?
Unknown Speaker 54:27
I thought it was perfect.
Scott Santucci 54:29
I do too. And I think there’s a very well done. But there’s a lot of things. So I’m trying to imagine, Tamra, let’s sort of put together you’re driving on your way home from from visiting your mom. And hopefully you go visit your mom more. So you’ll find more time to listen to our podcast. But how would you go about digesting it and how would you go about? What would you go about of listening to a podcast like this? How would you think about putting it into action? What would you do?
Unknown Speaker 54:58
Yeah, that’s a great question. So What could you do next morning is maybe just look at what the foundation is you are currently working from. And then if you find some holes in that, so maybe really go back to Okay, let’s dig into the business under sales strategy. Let’s understand this for a moment. And then in the next week, we go about really assessing the current state, and we map against that what we’re currently doing to really get this this flow going. As simpler re, for just mapping out for you what your next steps would be, would simply be if you have a kind of charter right now, and it’s very activity based, just look at your activities, map it to the business strategy and the challenges and really look at it, is it? Is this really treating symptoms? Or is it treating the underlying root causes of it? So all it is might help you with a quick check to see, probably we have some elements in place, but we didn’t address others, or we don’t even have a workaround for that. So just using these principles we shared to simply mirror this to where you’re currently at and and take appropriate next actions.
Scott Santucci 56:23
Awesome. So I had a conversation with one of our listeners. Four days ago, I was gonna say on Monday, but who knows when this is going to be releasing? And so what I’m trying to get into is an is ask a question, what’s one thing that we can do Brian and I can do to improve the podcast. So she’s putting on the spot her gut reaction, her name was though, and she said, Give me one thing to go do. So here’s a suggested one thing to go do. Here’s an activity, go find a letter to shareholders. That’s written by a well respected company, maybe pick apples, maybe pick Yeah, maybe pick Amazon’s pick one of those. Read it. use that as a model. Now write your own letter to shareholders in the same vein, for your group. And see what where those gaps are. One of the things that we’ve learned is that this stuff is done through experience by actually doing stuff rather than doing theoretical stuff. And that’s one thing that you can go do. So where would you go and find more information about it? Well, number one, a lot of the podcasts that we’ve talked about all our talking about these things one way, shape, or form, if you listen to them, they are all connected. And they’re connected, because it’s about human experience. It’s why we lead with these centering stories, Brian, but there’s also there’s some website that you’ve been working on, what is that website? And where can people go to get even more information, like slides that, that that we’ve shared, or other kinds of tangible things that people go and download and print out and look at?
Brian Lambert 58:09
That’s right. For our most active listeners, you probably have noticed this, but we’ve been socializing, and now it’s ready to go. It’s at orchestrate sales.com check out orchestrate sales.com it’s our new site, new community, all the podcasts are there. And we have a lot of content that we’ve been organizing around the Orchestrator role in concept.
Scott Santucci 58:31
Like what
Brian Lambert 58:32
what? Well, you can find recordings of Scott’s webinars, we’ve got also A Guide to Understanding the site. And there are other people in the site in Talent Enablement, Message Enablement, Pipeline Enablement, and Organizational Enablement, all sharing ideas and more importantly, working on stuff together. So there’s actually a login area where you can network.
Scott Santucci 58:58
How’s that different than the sales enablement society?
Brian Lambert 59:01
Or the sales enablement society? You know, you and I started that, Scott. And I would say that when you look at this site orchestrate sales comm we’re really targeting the orchestrators that are dealing with and managing the complexity that we’ve outlined here with Tamara. And when you look at that role they need unique and very specific kind of help. And that’s what we’re providing there. You can kind of think of that site is like the Delta Force for sales enablement.
Scott Santucci 59:29
I want to stress that Brian are both you huge fans and members of the sales enablement society. We think it’s great. There are different people along the journey. If you’ve heard we’re bringing in people who have many, many years of experience. Tamra, how long have you been working on this stuff?
Unknown Speaker 59:46
Great question. It’s now 1112 years,
Scott Santucci 59:50
right? Even written a book on it. And what we’re trying to do is create a community that’s, I don’t want to say walled off but a community dedicated to people Who want to make it to elevate the role? Concentrate on, on having conversations about things that work, rather than things to go do? Because a lot of the information that’s put out there are by people, we’re just getting started. And we’re, we’re building a community for people who are who’ve been doing this for a while, where, where would you go and learn the craft of Bruna? leschi, for example, in Florence, Michelangelo, learn from him. And, you know, Leonardo, they learn from each other. That’s what we’re trying to do is create that that mechanism so we can share these share the expert opinions of people who are doing it and have done it not tech, quote unquote, tactic tactics do to go and get get started. That’s what we’re trying to build.
Brian Lambert 1:00:48
Yeah, and I gotta tell you, we’ve been piloting it for about two weeks, but the learning has been exponential between everybody that’s in there. It’s phenomenal. So check it out.
Scott Santucci 1:00:59
Put us on the spot to so Dell, thank you for your thank you for your contribution. Tamra, thank you so much. As you know, this show came 100% organically from an email camera sent. So these are the things that we want to drive our community. Please just share a reaction.
Outro 1:01:19
Thanks for joining us. To Become an insider and amplify your journey. Please make sure you subscribe to our show. If you have an idea of what Scott and Brian can cover in a future podcast or have a story to share. Please email them at engage at orchestrate sales.com You can also connect with them online by going to orchestrate sales.com following them on Twitter or sending them a LinkedIn connection request.
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