ISEs3 Ep6: Christopher Kingman​ – SES Fore-founder, RES + Emblaze Exec Board Member

Hello, everyone. Today we have Mr. Chris Kingman, coming hot off the SKO train at TransUnion. And he is also, if you don't know, a member of the executive board who's got a few ideas up his sleeve about the possibility that someone, even me, might be able to be, my words, an MBA in enablement. Chris, let's start there. Anything I missed in your vast, wide, and global portfolio

Thanks, Erich. I can proudly say I'm also a member of the advisory board for Emblaze, the professional sales leadership network. I have a foot in each pond, if you will.

I would say you have a foot in each ocean. I got a big toe in each pond here. I'm, president of the Atlanta chapter of the RES. And,, recently the board here with Emblaze. So I have a lot to learn from you, big brother. And, love hearing that talk track. I think we're onto something. So today, you know what, let's go ahead and start out with super simple, When did you first hear the words sales enablement and what did they mean to you?

That's a good question. I think in maybe 2015, 2014, I built a small enablement and support team within TransUnion in a local office in South Florida. And the manager that I was assigned to somebody based on an acquisition, the question was, Hey, what do you want to go do? And I said, I want to go do this thing called sales enablement. And I was on LinkedIn trying to understand, the evolution of sales operations, sales training and development. I was building, product training, product demos, new hire onboarding. And consistently every kind of article I would come across would say, what is sales enablement, what's this thing, and you pull on that thread. It started to unravel rather quickly. There's a lot of emerging opinions and emerging kind of ideas on it. The big consulting firms were all kind of putting their pieces together and their stances. and I think it all culminated with the founding of, the society as a LinkedIn group. And some of the early works of those wonderful folks driving the conversation and being very open. About conversing with anybody who had anything to say about it, that drew me in, and then stars align and the first meeting was 30 minutes, 45 minutes up the street. Otherwise, I probably wouldn't have flown across the country for that. So I drove up to the meeting, and I got to see, a lot of these people that I've been exchanging with online and they knew who I was. They were like, hey, it's good to see you. Thanks for coming. I did the first signed the statements that everybody signed, worked on the definition

Awesome.

and that was it. It was off to the races. and then over the years, just. More and more both staying on top of the research and being in, invested in the research. Ingesting as much as I could in the earlier parts of my career, and then volunteering here and there with the society, being on the advisory board, doing a lot of kind of side projects and then eventually being asked to join the board as well.

Wow. What a storied history. You might be the winner in the past, present and future categories. So you already jumped into my question number two. So maybe I'll throw you a little bit of a curve which is where, when, and how does the sales enablement now revenue enablement we'll get there in a minute, fit into your timeline and professional journey. You were there at the original. You're one of the 100 ish. I hear fore founders. So thank you for that. Now on the executive board. Curious. along that journey. Can you in that meeting? Are there 456 10 people you remember? Part of it is my personal treasure hunt I'm on to identify the hundred, right? So maybe we could take it offline and you can rattle off as many folks as you can remember were in that room, the room where it happened, right? but are there a couple folks that stick out early on, that maybe you're even still in touch with and are still part of the evolution?

Sure, we all know Scott was there and doing most of the work with Scott Santucci.

Oh, okay. Yeah. I've heard of him.

He's going to mention I was there, so I'll talk about him being there, Scott commands attention. He did an awesome job of driving the conversation. It was interesting to go to something that I thought at the time was like, wow, I don't know what I'm going to get when I go to, I just, I know I got a strong feeling. I got to be there. I got to go see what this is about. And you can tell very quickly, like there is some intention behind doing this. We're not just, no, we're not in a room full of. People,, just talking about the weather, like there was some things that needed to get out in the open and discussed and aligned and agreed upon. It was a successful meeting. I don't know if we would have made it this far if we didn't have the engagement and the outcome. And a lot of people traveled very far, to be there, Thierry came from the Netherlands, I believe. And you had lots of big names. You had Gerhardt there. You had a bunch of other folks. Jill Rowley was there. you had,

She always is mentioned that we're six or seven for six or seven. Rowley is always. And that's yeah, I love that. She was there.

She played a very, impactful role in the early days, was very generous with her time. When people want to talk to her about hey, how do we grow this? What do we do? How do we grow my network? Just an awesome person to know, right? Like influencer for sure. But when you actually sit down and talk to this person, they had something for you. Even when you had nothing, I had nothing to offer her. And she still gave me value. It was great. my favorite person enabled my Rob Peterson was there. Cause obviously Rob takes every chance to pot shot me and remind me that I'm much younger than him.

Dr. Rob.

Still keep in touch with Rob a lot. And every time he's got an enablement question, I feel very honored that he always reaches out to me for help.. That's where I met Rob and I met Howard Dover

yes. Doctor Dover. That's awesome. He's got a book too. I got to get him on the show. Talk it up.

you should, it was an amazing experience. The thing that always gets brought up, especially when I guess I get looped into the conversation is. I was the youngest person in that room.

That's cool.

Now, I don't care about that. People, of other generations tend to make a big deal, I guess about 10 years ago, the whole millennial thing was a really big, point of contention, if you will. So it was a hot topic, in that session the conversation navigated to what about millennials and how are they changing buying? And I felt it wasn't that I needed to say anything, but I believe Scott said, are there any millennials in the room? And I was the only one other than two vendors who were not there to talk, right? They, they were just supporting. I was the only one I stood up. They said this and, because I know Scott talked about this, too.

Yeah You were in episode one of season three.

I think I I recall I said something like this. Millennials aren't special and we don't need to be treated special. I believe that then I believe now we're no different than a generation. And that was it. It was the only thing I said, but for some reason, I got a lot of praise just for standing up and saying that I don't, I didn't think it was a big deal. but just because I was the youngest enablement person who opened their mouth that carried me just a little bit, the first conference where I could actually talk about the stuff that I do and, hopefully demonstrate I know what I'm talking about. And my age has nothing to do with this.

I'm a believer. And, honored to have you here on the podcast, Chris. So let's shift to the next one, What of the founding positions, right? And I don't need to tell you them.. But, of the three and just for the audience, I'll reiterate, position one being sales enablement as a strategic approach and there being different flavors of it in the four primary areas that were originally discussed back in Palm beach, talent message., demand management and administration where the four kind of flavors of enablement Position two, in order to accomplish the mission sales enablement needs to be chartered as a cross functional business within a business. To be effective. And then finally, we're evolving to something the aspirational state at the time was chief productivity officer. So of those three, which you're clearly very familiar with and might have even penned one of them. Okay. Which subgroup were you in of those three? Do you even pay any attention to those three anymore? No, Where are we today? Where are we going?

I worked on one of the projects, but I couldn't tell you which one of those it was, because it was so long ago. they're still relevant, but they could also use an update. I'll tell you, My stance on really what the position for me is.

Okay,

I believe that it is and should be a strategic approach. I've always loved eliminating friction. I think that is for me that's the thing that I strive for the most. I have teams that oversee training and development. We build. All kinds of programs to help you upscale, to help you be better at your job to help you understand what you should be doing based on your expectations and make sure you get the most out of your tools. At the end of the day, I view sales as an organic conversation between a customer and a seller. An exchange that's based on value and context and it has to be organic. It can't be forced. Everything else around that is an opportunity for enablement to improve and to reduce the friction. I don't necessarily think chief productivity officer is the title I would align with, or it resonates the most with me. I don't know. If you could collapse it into such a concise thing, I used to call it the chief director of traffic.

it's better than fixer of broken things, stepping up strategically.

Yep. I don't like fixer broken things. I don't like land misfit toys. I think it mislabels what we do.

And I think those were said in jest as that was the perception of rather than, Hey, this is who we are. It's people think we're this, but we're so much more. That's the impression I get, but I wasn't there.

Yeah, I totally agree with you Erich. I think that's. we, we may be having that conversation for another decade, right? I think, when we talk about. where the position is going. It's almost like it's the person who removes all of the roadblocks to revenue attainment.

I love that

I like to think about enablement and what we do as to increase the ease of buying and the ease of selling.

both.

aligned to those concepts, everything that we do falls in one or two buckets. And I try to make it as simple as possible.

So You want to simultaneously reduce the friction from both the inside out, but really leading. because I know you leading with the outside in, right? Love that. So on to four and you've already brought up a few of these. I'm gonna keep digging any good stories that could be considered SES history. Even RES. It's been around six months There might be some little nooks and crannies we haven't heard of even in just that amount of time. Or even lore, something that is unknown to the larger community or I love the millennial thing, I love that you unpacked it further already. Or maybe just something that you haven't shared before and you had a front row seat.

The consistent theme for me Over the history of the society is that it is volunteer driven. Everybody who I've ever engaged with, that's part of it. In some leadership capacity has a job or two and they still find time to try to elevate the profession in some way. And, I would say everybody gave something. Some people. We're there for a long time. Some weren't that long, but I'm always impressed with, the diversity in the walks of life that say, hey, I want to help. This means a lot to me. This community means a lot to me. I've gotten so much out of it and it doesn't have to be a person in a leadership position that's influenced a member Members learn from members all the time. For me, it's always been. The networking has always been the real highlight. The friendships that I've made, right? I talk about Rob Peterson, but, there's a dozen other folks that I still connect with,, frequently. And you get to meet new people all the time and they're so very talented and they're, they have a different perspective. The number of people I've met over the years is just, it's astonishing. I would not have met that many people sitting in a singular career, the amount of friendships I've built, I think those are great. And the doors that it opens I don't think I'm a podcaster, but I end up on, a dozen or so a year just from people's Hey so and so from this place said to talk to you about this thing, but cool let's have a chat. the consulting opportunities that it's opened, the endless amounts of, Hey, I want to pick your brain about this platform I'm building because I want to know if people like you would buy it. Stuff like that. I've met so many smart and talented people who are going to blow sales tech out of the water in the next decade. Just through networking and just the relationships, they end up, in my inbox and I'm so excited to talk to these people.

I'll put words in your mouth. What a great poster child for that community and how you are doing that very thing right now as we speak, as a matter of fact, right? so great answer. And I too, I'm a big fan of the amazing community I can't. Put any kind of price tag on the folks including yourself. I've had the opportunity to meet and learn from Let's head on to the recent past back in Ses still calling it that at the time exp in sd san diego back in october It seems like that was years ago at this point. the big announcement, We're evolving. We're becoming the revenue enablement society. I loved how each member of the board stood up, gave their personal take. And so really, it would be great. Maybe some of the folks in the audience haven't heard. What is your take on sales versus revenue and kind of maybe give us even a little bit more of a peek behind the curtain on why you gave it the green light and were all in as an advocate

In 2017 I was, I participated in the keynote for a Forrester conference. and one of the questions is, what do I think the evolution of enablement is? And I said, drop the sales. Sales enablement is a self limiting term, right? And it paints the perception that all we do is help sales or enable sales. As I've grown, across my organization and the things that I get exposed to and want to work on. And as my team has grown, not all of that is aligned to the frontline. And although I'm a big proponent of you should never lose sight of the frontline, you should always have a relationship with your sellers, with your sales leadership. You should listen to their calls if you can, you should see them in action if you can. I don't spend as much time with them. I spend time with procurement and legal. And as I was telling Erich before this telephony engineering, these people don't understand sales per se, or their needs or the motions that they go through. And as an enablement professional, it's just as much my responsibility to help the sellers, but also help people in my organization understand what supports the sellers, right? At the end of the day, what, what brings in the money that then funds all of the investments? It's sales. It's not, doesn't materialize. I don't know where we don't engineer our way to a lot. We don't, red line contracts are to do a lot of money. We sell stuff. And anything that, gets in the way or causes friction, right? If we point backwards or impacts productivity or people's, the, if it makes it harder to buy or harder to sell. I think somebody should have the ability to, almost like the Patriot Act. Hey, this is slowing us down. I'm going to unpack this and we're going to fix it. I don't, there's very few things I think should be off limits. And as I've grown in my career. The door is open to fixing larger and broader issues that have largely been sitting in silence, right? And instead, look, when you look at them holistically of how is this, break in legal process impacting selling? How is the break or how is the outdated telephony system impacted selling? What could happen for sales? How can we enable sales better if this is improved? It's those questions that after sales enablement fixes onboarding and skill training and career pathing, And gets them up and running and, gets them through negotiation training. What else are you going to do? You need to go fix the bigger, broader things. I think that's where we're headed. Certainly where I've been headed and where I've been. And so when it came time to vote on that decision, there's no question.

I heard you call out some of those flavors of enablement, right? as we shift from sales Enablement to revenue enablement of those four flavors I think what you're saying is the talent enablement bucket so to speak Of the onboarding, the new hire ramp up the ever boarding, the SKO ing all of those things that are more in the talent development, skills development, helping empowering folks with message sales specifically of the other buckets, the administration, the marketing messaging, funnel management. Which of those other domains or flavors do you see being focused on more through the lens of revenue?

That's a good question. I think the talent, all the components that you listed under talent will be number one. And that, wherever you are doing enablement, if that's all you do and You want to call it a sales enablement. That's great. I think where we're going is that accepting our influence in an organization should expand. And the things that we should tackle is going to get broader. When we talk about the evolution to revenue enabling, a lot of the idea here is to help people be better at those things. That aren't discussed. How do you get better relationships with procurement? What are procurement practices you need to understand to be better at sourcing sales tech, right? Everybody knows you need a tech stack. It's debatable what goes in that tech stack. No one talks about how do I navigate buying one from my procurement department when no one wants to fund this? That's enablement, right? Like I have to go and figure out who I need to talk to and how to fund it. And then I need to work with procurement. To then figure out what exactly are the internal mechanisms to do this? It's not we picked name a platform. We're good folks. That's just the beginning. That's not even the beginning. That's the middle. And so I think if you're thinking about evolution of the practice, right? Think about the evolution of every process. I do spend a lot of time with my procurement team. And they're fantastic people who just want to educate me to make my job easier. So I make their job easy, right? For me, the collaboration and the strategic nature and, breaking down silos is something we've talked about forever, and that is part of the evolution of enablement. It's a core component. The fifth (flavor) could be silo breaker for all I care. Cause I think that's, it's an important aspect. Like it's a requirement of your job at this point to me.

And part of what brought me all in on the inside sales enablement podcast, first couple of seasons to begin with I love that you said silo breaker the commercial enablement orchestrator and that concept. I was like, that's what I've been doing my entire career, whether I was in field marketing or on the sales front lines or in sales ops or effectiveness, I always had this tendency to knock down some silos more strategically than tactically. So it sounds like the low hanging fruit might actually be working with some of the different functions internally.

Yeah, it's gonna be, it's gonna be organization dependent whether demand management is number one for you, right? Because that whole sales marketing getting along thing that we've talked about for years some people have gotten it figured out, right? I don't think it's gonna be cats and dogs forever. I have a great relationship, my marketing department, they're awesome people and they totally get what I need, but that was not always the case. Before this call started, Erich and I were talking about the latest Gartner report on their fresh take on enablement and it's all around driving behavior. If you take that framework and you say, okay, I need to change a seller's behavior. Here's what I need to do. Think about your person in procurement, your person in it. Are they rewarded for certain behaviors? How are they compensated? Probably have no idea, right? You don't deal with engineer compensation models. They may not be incentivized to do anything outside of their silo. but I guarantee you, if you went to them and you said, hey. This process doesn't work. Would you mind if I helped you fix it? You're probably going to get a pretty warm reception. Step in. Say, we want to make this better because it does impact revenue down the line. Without being forceful and without people telling people that they're terrible at what they do there's always a, tactful way to say this doesn't work. We need to make it better. And, Leverage age old mechanisms, executive sponsorship, go to the CRO. Hey, this is not working. And here's the downstream impact. If we fix this goes away today. Tomorrow, this is possible, right? They're simple conversations. You're applying the same level of behavior, modeling or defining on different functions. It's no different. We need to fix something, or we need to optimize something. it just not maybe the very next step to revenue recognition, right? It may be two steps down the line, or three.

To your point, since it's not revenue generating, maybe the first click, how do you track that metric? And some of that's going to be a little esoteric, but it's going to land in a adept customer facing frontline.

Back to the talent comment, right? Those are your big rocks. Those probably are your priority, and chances are if you're in enablement, you were hired to focus on them. It's table stakes, right? And I would, I'd caution you don't move on to engaging with procurement until you figure out new hire onboarding

right

You can't build, can't build a castle by stacking pebbles. You're going to have to bring in some big rocks. It may not seem like the biggest priority, but I have to assume that if you are a competent enablement professional, eventually you will figure out all of the components. And if you prove that they work, typically that'll help you secure investment. If you're semi articulate about, we did this thing, brought in this money, give me more investment. I'll bring in more people. We'll do more things, bring in more money. Eventually you're going to get that stuff figured out and it's, you're going to need to go fix something else. So why not prepare for that day instead of. Saying it's I'm never going to do that or it's never, it's never going to happen if you're really good at enablement, chances are you're going to get the reputation of somebody A can fix things or B is strategic and can orientate the organization in the direction they need to go.

You're making the pivot from reactive to proactive And back to the Gartner report we were discussing, they're basically leading with the new mandate is be in at the chief strategy officer, just in general, at the corporate strategy level and have that next couple of things, slay that first dragon, crush it, get on everyone's radar. And that dragon is probably going to be talent enablement. And then have that strategic. And next we're going here and here. And have the eyeballs of the executive suite watching you through that lens. Oh, talk about elevating the profession, right?

You got to sway hearts, minds, and metrics, you got to make sure that people know that you can help them. You got to show people you care about their success, and then you got to move the needle. And that's, I think that's the foundation for enablement success sales or not.

New t shirt. Swaying hearts, minds, and metrics one executive at a time. We've done a such awesome past. Thanks again. So in the present what attribute or aspect of enablement are you most passionate? You shared the volunteering. You shared the Emblaze I'm really excited to see what y'all are doing at the top so that we can implement that out here in the chapters as we partner with our peers

As I mentioned at the beginning, I'm on the advisory board for Emblaze. I've, it's been, I've been honored to be involved with that organization for years now. They are a great group of people that truly care about sellers and sales success. So I think they're all just enablement folks at heart. Two years ago I joined, I joined their sales transformation executive forum. If you are a seller listening to this, and if you are a sales leader or a CRO, I definitely recommend you check them out. It's CROs from very large sales organizations and they would bring their problems to the table, or new research would be presented and it would be interpreted and more and more. The impression, was that these aren't sales problems. These are enablement problems. And I went to their executive retreat, which. Probably one of my favorite conferences ever. Big heads of sales, big organizations. Vendors were all there and it's three days of whiteboarding and solving problems. And I had a fantastic experience helping people navigate their challenges. And they were talking about onboarding and training and upscaling and how to pick a methodology, right? I don't think these are sales manager challenges anymore. There are concerns for sure, but I don't think you should task your sales leaders to solve these. I think that's what enablement is for, to free up your sales leaders, to go do what they need to do, coach sellers and sell. And at one of the summits, I think two years ago, I, got some time with the leadership team from AAISP now Emblaze, and I said, I think this is what you need to do. We need an enablement thing. And a year later, they added an enablement track to their summit, and it was the most attended, most requested track, and it was great. The summit was great. Huge turnout I got to present, I had a blast. And, now this year, RES and Emblaze have partnered, and this is all around this concept that Your enablement person and your CRO are two sides of the same coin, right? They need to be joined at the hip, in lockstep, they need to be in tune. If you're an enablement person and you are not the most strategic, and that's totally okay, you should be partnering with your CRO to help fill in the gaps of your strategy, right? And if you're a CRO and you are bogged down with all of these things, how do I train people? How do I coach them? I don't have this. I don't have that. Where do I get a tech stack from? You need to go and find yourself an enablement person. And my dream for this event was bring those people together and put them in a room and whiteboard their problems, cROs, come on in, bring all your challenges. From I don't know what enablement is, to how do I put together a business case, to how do I figure out what content management piece I need, get it in there and have them hash it out. Have these leaders see the value of enablement. For enablement people and practitioners, go to the event and meet CROs. I want to put people in jobs. It's very important, especially in our industry, we've definitely been impacted by the layoffs. So many folks that I know are open to work, and that's unfortunate. Because I think enablement can conquer market conditions when it's applied, but sometimes those choices aren't really in the hands of practitioners, the, from the top down, it's cut, cut, cut, save money. And they're impacted and it's unfortunate. And so let's get you in front of sales leaders, let's network, let's let them see your value. And hopefully that will turn into something. And I think this is just the beginning, right? Certainly, I'll be there, trying to talk to everybody as possible. President Gail Behun will be there. We're doing a panel together how to speak CRO. There'll be a lot of other enablement practitioners and presenters there. I think it's going to be an amazing experience and I think this is the beginning of something great. And, shameless plug for the event. It's April 2nd through 4th, just outside of Chicago. It's in the same place every year. I cannot stress enough, especially, for sales leaders who want to understand enablement. I think this is the place you need to go because you're going to get the right info.

I there's a Cracker Jack prize in this episode for the first time ever. That I can't wait to reveal that has exactly to do with what you just shared so let's go future We talked about the possibility of this MBA in Enablement, we talked about that a little bit at SES experience, right? In October. Where are we at? How quick is the future coming? How soon will our children be at high school and the career counselor's going, you should be in enablement, and here are the 15 universities that you can go to get a degree.

That future cannot come soon enough. I don't know if I'm doing an MBA anytime soon, but we're developing the first executive education program. We recognize there is a need for a few things. one of my mission goals at SES is to establish standards. If you look at the Society of Automotive Engineers, they have standards for things like, why shouldn't we? Now that can be tough because a lot of what we do is very subjective, but ultimately we're tied to metrics. And there's, common themes, best practices that can emerge. If you compare 10 onboarding programs, all 10 are going to be different, but they can still contain the same things that make up a good onboarding program. It's educating people on these things, right? What do you need to look at? How far and how wide can you go? Enablement's great because you can be an absolute expert at one thing. I have a bunch of trainers on my team and they're very specialized. And I have one guy who just does sales tech. So all he does is train on sales tech. I have another person who does skills. I have another person that does onboarding and they are the masters of those things. And it's amazing, but that doesn't have to be your experience. You can be. A mile wide, an inch deep, you can get exposure to everything because that'll help you shape your organization, but also focus on the things that either A, your organization needs, or B, your passion. And that's what we're trying to do. We're working with a major, university in the United States. We're putting together a very accessible program. That covers what we believe to be, pretty full spectrum of everything that's related to enablement and what drives enablement. And where you can focus your attention and we're bringing in the right people, the practitioners with the backgrounds, the education to bring forward best in class experiences and best in class certification. And we're working on an introductory, beginner level certification, if you will. And in the advance, you're going to bring forward a business case, just like a capstone project, and you're going to go through the program, learn what you need to learn to then improve this thing, and then present to a panel of expert judges. We hope to launch this thing by September of this year, because we want to bring a cohort of folks to the experience, sales enablement experience. In October to talk about the value, right? We want to make sure that the vendors in our space, the participants, practitioners, the leaders all know that we're putting our name on this and saying this is the education. This is the certificate.

Couldn't be too soon, Chris. Thank you for all your efforts in that. And you want to talk about elevating the profession, you start with education, right? It's talent development, you might say, of ourselves. Without further ado you ready? Drum roll, please. Affiliation with the 2024 Digital Now Revenue Growth Summit in Chicagoland. As Chris already shared, April second to fourth, the must attend event of Digital First Revenue Leaders, with a session about how to talk CRO with Mr. Kingman and Gail Behun. Don't miss that one hosted by Emblaze powered by corporate visions. We have a coupon code for you for not 99, not 299, 395 dollars off off to our inside sales enablement season three. enablement history listening audience. And what better timing than with a man who embodies in so many ways the past and present and future of enablement. Chris, I can't wait to see you face to face again in Chicagoland. And thanks again, and you get the final word. What's the parting shot?.

The future of enablement continues to be bright. I will encourage everybody to lean into the evolution of the trade of the practice, open yourself to leaning into the evolution of your own skills, your development, your careers we've come a long way as an organization as a, a career, if you will to being, loosely organized and a loose set of skills to very organized and things are only getting better. I only hope to elevate the profession and expand awareness, to a different audience and a different set of folks that will really value and benefit from what we do. And I think we're gonna make great strides towards that this year.

Outstanding. With volunteers like you and the volunteers around the world that are driving the RES and the combination with Emblaze, all of that's possible and then some. I'm all in. Thanks again, Mr. Kingman, and thanks to everyone for listening in.

Thank you, Erich. Thank you, everybody.

Pleasure.