ISEs3 Ep7: Tim Riesterer – Chief Strategy Officer, Corporate Visions + Chief Visionary, Emblaze

Hello everyone and welcome to Inside Sales Enablement Season 3 Enablement History. Joining me today on the Orchestrate Sales property, Mr. Tim Reisterer himself, the Chief Strategy Officer of Corporate Visions. He's not only been there from the beginning, he's been there before the beginning and has so many different things going on in the present has such a storied past and Tim, I'm so excited about the future, especially with a couple of the recent announcements, including the partnership with the revenue enablement society.

You know, when you, when you get invited to something like this, it does have that feeling. Of like when you get the lifetime achievement award kind of means like your best work was behind you But thanks yeah There's a lot of a lot of memories and a lot of history in enablement and and mine started out in in december of 2000. I was recruited out of a small Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where my home is, based marketing firm. We were doing B2B marketing. and if you look back on it now, like 80 percent of what our agency did at the time, remember the timeframe, was we built sales collateral for salespeople. And I think the funny thing is that, you know, the kind of stuff that ended up in the trunk of a salesperson's car and never got used. So that was sales enablement. We basically created ballast for the car. and I was recruited by a company called Ventaso. And that may be a name that has or has not come up but it was the precursor to the current day modern sales enablement platforms. We didn't call it that back then because it was creating automated RFPs, automated proposals, automated. Email, letters even some PowerPoint decks and automated collateral pieces. It seemed brilliant and it demoed amazing. but how complicated it was to implement. You had to create these little bite sized chunks of content called data gems that once a salesperson put in some inputs, it would dynamically assemble these things. like I said, it was the precursor of today's sales enablement, but it was a little ahead of its time and it was just a little too hard to administer. Most marketing people and others who saw this were like, I did not go to school to create copy and content in a database. So we spent 50 million in venture capital across four years, 2000 2004. And, we wanted to create a category. And I, I'm going to admit right now, I blew it. I named our work customer message management because it was C. R. M. Customer relationship management. That was all the rage, right? Salesforce was just taken off and trouncing Siebel at the time. So I'm like, if we're gonna have a category should be adjacent to C. R. M. How about C. M. M. Customer message management? Because that's what we're really talking about here. We're talking about having a better conversation, better presentations, a better customer message. And we put some time and effort into that brand and, and that name and no one knows it. And so there you go, Erich, my beginnings in sales enablement were inauspicious. and then four years later, we were, we were code in a shoe box. At a law firm, it was, it was a ride, and you have to have some of those in your career to, like, be part of the story, somewhat of an epic failure, but yet an epic launch pad as well.

Well, uh, Craig Nelson ring a bell?,

You know, so then the Isenteras and the Savos of the world appeared. Um, and I had moved on into my own business. So I started I took the phrase C. M. M. And I started a company around it because it was available because the company was out of business. And so I created a messaging consulting practice where we went in and created what we call sales ready messaging out of your traditional company and product centric messaging And that's where I ran into craig at eisenterra and john aiello at savo Because they had the technology now and i'm like, yeah, you guys now you here's the torch you can do the tech part I'll do the services part and so I had some really nice partnerships with those guys building the messaging and the content assets that these tools would Serve up. That's when you really start to see the phrase sales enablement start to come out. people would ask all the time What what does sales enablement mean to you? And I said, well, It's the picture of in one hand you're pulling marketing closer to sales The other hand you're pulling sales closer to marketing and you stand in the middle trying to bridge this gap with all responsibility all accountability and like zero budget and authority That's sales enablement. What a great job. This is awesome. And, it needed to be done. It felt like you were doing God's good work by trying to bring these groups together, span the gap, like reframe marketing stuff to be useful for sales. And then they gave it a name sales enablement. And then it became a department sales enablement. Then it became a technology sales enablement. But it really what it was first was, Self defense. You know, like I got it. We're getting a bunch of crap that we can't use and it goes in the trunks of salespeople's car, now it just goes on their hard drive and it just becomes a disaster. So, what became sales enablement. Was born out of self defense, just trying to bring marketing and sales together.

That is a new tagline. Each episode there's a new t shirt and I think that's the one we're printing. So when did you first hear the words sales enablement and what did and what do they mean to you? We got into that a little bit.

Okay, so I don't know who said the words first, but,, all I know is the technology companies had the most money to say those words. So whoever said 'em, the ones who popularized 'em where the tech companies for sure. And, the same reason in my 1st incarnation in a tech company that failed, we were trying to create a category. This, generation of tech. came up with a better phrase or at least popularized a better phrase that has now stuck for, 20 plus years. and so yes, what it used to mean to me was the alignment of marketing and sales in service to how you appear in front of the customer. I used to joke how you appear in front of the customer with your lips moving. I always tell this story to begin all my keynotes. And anybody can write this down if you haven't heard me tell this story, write down three numbers, 103, 12, and 88. 103 is 103 million hands of online poker that they've studied, and determined that only 12 percent of the time the best hand wins. 88 percent of the time the best player wins. And I look at that as like the spirit of sales enablement. You're trying to equip and build the best players. The best players can win regardless of the hand they're dealt. And by hand I mean your products and your services. The reality is They all look the same, sound the same, smell the same, taste the same to a customer anyways. So the real distinction, the last bastion of differentiation, is a salesperson. The best player. The one who tells the best story with the best skill. And, and so that's enablement. Your job is to pull your company out of the commodity trap by creating a differentiated buying experience through your sellers. And that when all things are considered equal, you win. So your job is to make these best players. Your job is to help make that 88%,, regardless, of the hand that you're dealt. Buying is, is a journey of many conversations. Multiple decisions, right? Questions that must be answered. Why should I change? Why should I do it now? Why should I choose you? Right? We know those questions and facilitating those answers. Is now the commercial team's job, and it's the enablement team's job to equip, your commercial teams to help answer and facilitate those questions because your job is to facilitate a decision And so, the best player wins, enablement creates the best players. That's my second t shirt.

I was going to say there's at least another one in there. I, jotted down helping 88 win regardless of the hand, they're dealt

I mean, that's just it. When I go and do that at a sales kickoff and I say, That 88 percent of the time the best player wins. I look at out in the room and I'm like, that's you. That's literally you. What you want to do. And I I'm I'm I'm polite about this is as a salesperson. You want to complain that your product's not good enough. Your price isn't right. And you blame all the other things that are outside your control when the reality is most of the win is within your control. So now what are you going to do about it? How are you going to own that? And the way that it happens is Through what enablement brings to them. So it's a huge job. It's, has so much strategic potential, and I still think like there's now going to be a third epoch of sales enablement, right? It's, not just the bringing marketing and sales together and doing it out of self defense. And it's not just a glorified training and collateralization and alike. It's, a new epoch coming that is going to take the strategic altitude of sales enablement to another height. And the opportunity to demonstrate impact far beyond what we've been able to show so far.

I love that, Tim. And this is a great segue into first. The sales enablement society clearly you were there before it and we're helping you generating the platforms that we're driving the conversation that we're getting people to think the way you're even speaking right now.

You know, I was like, Oh, look at that. They did a thing. And, it was interesting because you know, full transparency. The world's so authentic now, in the early days, I was, I'm just viewed as a vendor. And there was like almost a rule that, vendors were verboten. We were forbidden, because all we would do is commercialize and advertise. And now that's not I always prided myself on the work we did. We did original research. It was thoughtful. It was rigorous. It was a legitimate sort of cause and effect thing. And we could share that with the market. I don't care if you use my company or not. We just had some really good thought leadership, but it just came under the banner of being a vendor. And so, the early days are our company Corporate Visions. We had our own sort of industry customer summit because we have on average, um, 250 to 300 active customers in any given year. And we would share all that content there. The thing I will tell you is over the years of running our own customer summit, the titles that showed up let's say 2008 to 2012, the titles that showed up were not sales enablement,. 2012 to just before COVID. And I feel like they were the same exact people like I recognize them, but they now had a new title called sales enablement. So what I will say is I felt like I was running in a parallel path with the sales enablement society with our Corporate Visions Client Summit, which was geared to sales enablement people, they happen to be our customer base but I saw that sort of groundswell of, title change, going on. And so I'm excited that I'm going to be more active and engaged with the sales slash revenue enablement society. Excited again about the future on so many levels, including the partnership with the society.

Tim, I'm curious, what's your relationship with the founding positions of the sales enablement society?

I think the the founding positions in many ways were prescient in terms of the opportunity that would be available to somebody who wanted to solve this set of problems now, whether or not we as let's just say sales enablement folks have been able to grasp hold of all those. I think is the bigger question. I think that's the challenge with enablement. You could put a lot of things under that banner. And I think companies struggle with that every day. First, does enablement roll up to sales or does it roll up to marketing? is it the last mile of marketing into sales or is it the first mile of, stuff from sales into the field. And, that's, I think like a 50, 50 split right now. So the idea of having an endpoint number two is like cross functional. I don't know. I think you, you have to function cross functionally, but it's really hard to define that in an organization and people have a hard time resourcing that they have a hard time budgeting for that. I think these founding principles are, we're hoping that maybe corporate inertia would surrender to this vision. And I haven't seen that yet. In fact, sometimes my worry is that,. As the commercial engine has expanded from including marketing and all forms of selling and even customer success, and they're being like a single through line that a customer should experience, right? My experience as a buyer should with your marketing team, your selling team and your CS team should feel like a seamless experience. I think that's why the move from sales enablement to revenue enablement. Totally makes sense on paper because that has to be an integrated effort. My question is when are organizations going to be able to actually make that happen? Because you have a head of CS, you have a CRO, you have a CMO. my concern is that trying to bridge all those gaps, like that, then the risk is that you are going to end up roadkill. What I'm hoping to see, and I I'm starting to see, but I'm wondering where this lands. Is that going to be a senior sales enablement leader that figures that out? Or is that going to be some sort of revenue ops leader where sales enablement is a component? Because they said these are your pieces sales enablement. and I think that all depends on who's in the seat. Like, what's their origin story? I'd be a messenger. Trainer developer, um, let's go find some places where there's constraints in the pipe and go after that with initiatives. But I wouldn't do this. I wouldn't do that. You just can't say we want to be this right. We also now got to figure out again How to do it across those three disciplines marketing sales cs how to do it within the confines of an incredibly more dense tech stack than we had when those principles were being developed I don't think we saw the tech stack like it is today coming and we didn't see AI coming. And so I do feel like something that looks more like revenue ops is going to potentially be the banner here. enablement folks, like, we're going to have a huge role in this. and that data is going to be super important. The business outcomes we're going to go after should inform everything we do. But my view of the future is we are going to be running growth plays. And our job is to take here's the business outcome that's been identified. What needs to happen in terms of the process, the leadership, the message, the skills, and how does that get packaged into, an all encompassing play that you can deploy. Into the right field team or teams that need to make it happen. Our job is exceedingly important, but the dashboard and the data is going to dictate or identify the initiatives. And we're going to need to bring those initiatives to life. And so we're going to bridge. Here's the data, the business initiative. Now, how do we get our field to do it? Because none of it happens until the field does something and that's us. And so Chief Productivity Officer, I don't know, maybe Chief Sales Execution. Officer, because I always say there's a big gap between the data and the idea and a salesperson's lips moving and somebody has to bridge that gap. And and the thing is that there's a huge gap between the plan and the data and the customer saying yes. And that's where a salesperson shows up. So our ability to help drive sustainable change, and programming, I call them growth plays, with all the pieces, that's gonna be, I think, where it all hits. So we have to be fanatical about helping execute the direction that the data points to, and getting it to done.

So Tim, one of the things that I'm so curious about with you and applaud that is unique that the listening audience might not realize is that you are the chief strategy officer of a premier global enablement company and enablement reports to you. So through that lens, share a little bit about. Why enablement reports to strategy and be what that might look like. And we'll start to sneak towards the future in a future state. What would that ideal hierarchy be if you were to help a client, to build from the ground up Greenfield.

Yeah, I'm fortunate the best part of my title, just chief strategy officer is I can put my hands on everything. And that what's under my remit can shift based on need, selectively sales enablement and marketing roll up to me in, in our. strategy description. It's really our go to market. And so I run our research arm, I run our product development arm, and then our marketing arm, and our sales enablement arm. So from the original research all the way to loading up the salespeople feels like the strategy of the company. The strategy has a through line from original research to sales execution. And, owning the product team. As well as the marketing team means you can align those things so that when something comes out on the sales end You haven't had the product team doing an end run and talking to sales and doing their thing the marketing team doing an end run And going to sales with their thing In in effect, I get to control it You know what? and that's why I like Orchestrate Sales But the reality is I I get to control it And it should be controlled. Like, I mean, like what makes it to the field, how it makes it to the field, how it's prioritized, in what form factor it goes, and in what cadence it comes out. I love having all that, strategy responsibility because you feel like you aren't like just giving the strategy and then crossing your fingers that it becomes a reality because that's the gap right between strategy and effectiveness is like it hits reality. You can take it right down., to the enablement level, the execution level. So, I'm not saying everybody's going to be able to do that. Um, but it's a mindset at least,

Well, and I've seen a trend, sales enablement And sales and marketing reporting to the CRO. Um, is that a

and maybe even success. Um,

there you go. Success as well.

yeah, I think chief revenue officer as a title has a lot of promise. but it, it becomes like a promotional thing for the chief sales officer. And it still looks like a C, chief sales officer. and they haven't moved the CMO or the chief customer officer in that direction. And, then sometimes companies want to have those career paths. They want to have opportunities for people to take those positions. And if you don't have the right person leading as a CRO, Everything's going to bend, to the origin story of the person in that chair. But that's the promise of chief revenue officer. That they should see this thing end to end. From all the work to create the demand and have the client buying journey from the marketing the buyer led journey where they're doing their own work Be under the revenue officer because again that that singular thread that customer through line the experience being organized and integrated It'd be great if the CRO owned that end to end. And I think it's on the table because we're starting to see the title. And I think companies are just going to have to figure out how to legitimize that, with the rest of their org structure. But there's promise there.

So, Tim, let's go boldly into the future. 1 of the things that I'm very excited about is an upcoming, summit happening in Chicago land. and I'd love to hear your take our listening audience and thank you again for the alliance with. Orchestrate sales inside sales enablement podcast. We're going to have a code for everybody in the speaker's notes thank you, Tim. Very much. Uh, anything that you would like to share about the future, that summit and parting shot.

Yeah. So it's called the digital now revenue summit in recognition that all selling is digital selling. our data shows that. All selling, including traditional field selling up to 70 percent of your customer contacts and experiences are virtual digital. And that just changes the game for everybody. C. S. has a track sales enablement has a track. There's a lot of sales leadership tracks at this thing. It's sponsored by Emblaze. A selling community made up of sales leaders that Corporate Visions, has acquired and now presents an industry conference. It is not a Corporate Visions commercial or conference. It's literally its own community. And the research is there. the cross functional participation is there. Sales enablement and success and a marketing with their own breakout track as well. So we're trying to create the wide net. For leaders, revenue leaders in all those areas of responsibility to come to the same room. And work on these problems together. Last year we had 700 some people. We're hoping for a thousand this year and we'd love to have all the listeners be there.

Well, thanks Tim insider nation. Don't miss the opportunity to see this magi of enablement in person in Chicago, April 2nd to 4th, we'll get you the code in the speaker's notes. Tim, can't wait to see you face to face there along with, I'm sure up to a thousand. We'll try not to break the place, of our listeners. Thank you for all that you have done are doing presently and continue to do for the profession and function of enablement, sir.

Yeah, it's been an honor. Thanks, Erich. Appreciate it. Take care, everyone.