Ep27 Part 1: COVID-19 Response Series: Making Sense of What is Happening

Welcome to the Inside Sales Enablement Podcast, Episode 27

This is part 1 of 5 in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic, specifically tailored to sales enablement.

We’re bringing together a diverse set of perspectives to provide you actionable insights in response to the COVID-19 Virus gripping the global economy.

Scott Santucci and Brian Lambert are joined by a group of leading experts to provide you with clarity about what’s going on in a rapidly changing landscape. 

Joining us are:

• Dr. Howard Dover, Professor from UT- Dallas 
• Kunal Metha, Operations Principal at TCV private equity 
• Lindsey Gore, Consumption Sales Executive, Microsoft 

Our agenda for this podcast series in response to the global pandemic has five parts:

• Part 1 (Ep27): What is really happening in the market?
• Part 2: (Ep28): How are companies likely going to respond?
• Part 3 (Ep29): What can Sales Enablement leaders do?
• Part 4 (Ep30): What are your peers thinking and doing?
• Part 5 (Ep31): How do we lead our teams, our companies, and our initiatives to help sellers be successful?

Join us at https://www.OrchestrateSales.com/podcast/ to collaborate with peers, join Insider Nation, participate in the conversation and be part of the continued elevation of the profession.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Nick Merinkers 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 00:34

I’m Scott Santucci.

Brian Lambert 00:36

I’m Brian Lambert and together were the sales enablement insiders. Today, we’re going to do a special edition to help our audience be the most equipped and prepared to navigate these trying times, insider nation, we’re going to focus this episode on helping make sense out of what’s going on explaining what you should expect to happen, providing you with actionable insights, you can take on and in order to help your business improve. And I’m going to hand it over to Scott in a minute but before I do, I want to orient you to the flow of this call. What we’re going to do on this episode is run a panel of amazing experts, whom we will introduce this conversation is going to be pretty strategic in nature to provide you with a lot of context and clear ideas.

Scott Santucci 01:23

That’s right, Brian, as part of our panel, what we’re trying to do is create a format. There’s so many different variables going on, we want to be able to give you lots of perspectives, the opportunity to synthesize it, and the perspective in the voice of sales might react to it.

Brian Lambert 01:39

Yeah, that’s great. I love that and we’ve got quite a quite a diverse group today and as part of insider nation, you know that Scott and I are encouraged to wear this, this bifocal lens, you know, balancing strategy with tactics. And at the end of each section, I’m going to summarize this pretty strategic conversation into something that I believe you should take Way, and what it really means to you as a sales enablement leader, Scott while you introduce folks to the to our listeners.

Scott Santucci 02:07

Okay, so let’s get started. So, we’re going to introduce our panel, and I’m super excited that we have friends, friends of the show. And when you get to introduce these, these folks are going to be really impressed as well. So first up is Dr. Howard Dover. And actually, it was Howard’s idea for us to do something like this in the first place. So, if it goes well, he gets all the credit and if it goes poorly, it’s clearly Brian and I’s poor execution. That’s right. Oh, that’s, that’s that’s the way things that the way things roll. But I first met Howard at the founding meeting of the sales enablement society, at the breakers in Palm Beach in November 2016. And if you know anything about that there were 100 people, they’re all trying to figure out what is the sales enablement thing should we form a volunteer organization to share information. And there were two economists sitting at a table together. Of course, they didn’t go and mingle.

Brian Lambert 03:08

I was there too, and I’m not sure you’re not including Howard in that are you? Was he an economist or professor?

Scott Santucci 03:15

Did I say economist? I meant, so there we go, I meantt academics, right.

Brian Lambert 03:22

That’s all right. I got you. I got you. He’s gonna you’re gonna have to buy him a drink. Now, though.

Scott Santucci 03:26

He’s a he’s a classically trained economist, turned sales and marketing professor. And one of the things that’s amazing about him is he’s the director. His official title is the director of the Center of sales and sales coaching, working out of the University of Texas, Dallas. Now this group and what he does, he’s done some amazing innovative things which we’re going to get to hear about he’s he’s involved in many programs of studying sales and the impact of it, just incredibly honored that he’s joining us.

Howard Dover 03:59

Thanks, Scott. That was very kind. As, as Brian knows, we know a lot of people in our sales industry, so there’s a lot of really amazing people. And you know, I remember the experience, I had to go to the breakers, a good friend of mine that I do research with Rob Peterson, and I were studying sales enablement. And when we saw that conference, I got on the phone with Rob and I said, Hey, we need we need to go and he said, are you kidding me? We don’t have expense accounts, we can’t go to the breakers. And I said, just just go figure out I’m going to be there you need to go and the two of us showed up. And I remember Scott was saying, you know, something many of you know Scott, so Scott was talking, and he was trying to get the group to discuss and, and he was sitting kind of right next to me. And and I just looked at him I finally said, we were acting like this whole thing’s gonna stay the way it is. So, it’s we UT Dallas we obviously right to have we were part of hosting your first conference here in Dallas to allow the first sales enablement society event and so that’s enough about me I’m sure we’ll get into other details in a little bit.

Scott Santucci 05:12

Yeah. So let me add a little bit of color to that. That moment what was actually happening as Scott wasn’t talking, Scott was facilitating a lot of dialogue with a lot of people. Mr. Dover degraded a doctor there on that on that point, but really what what happened is, we gotten to this point of a lot of people are talking about things the existing way. And Howard asked the question, Well, why are we assuming we’re going to be organized the same way that we’ve always been organized? And that’s a great question. And to me, that’s the value of having lots of perspectives. Nobody in a corporate world would think to ask that question. And having the courage to put it out there allows us to think and this is the kind of value of having multiple perspective There’s and bringing it together. So, the next panelist I’d like to introduce is Kunaal, Kunaal Metha and Kunaal and I’ve worked together consistently since 2008. He’s helped many sales enablement and operational roles and companies like HP, VMware, Informatica and implement infoblox. He was actually a regular attendee of the thing before the sales enablement society. The official title was the local area, the DC local area sales and marketing networking group, which of course, our members turned to the sales enablement society, which is way better, but he was very much participative and knows he’s a systems thinker, and a design thinking advocate. He’s actually been to a lot of that training. It’s very interesting to hear him talk about design thinking and me being in the role to actually translate from translate and say, well, I can speak Kunaal, he means this. Today he works for TCP, which is a leading private equity firm. That’s that if you don’t know TCP, they are the money behind Netflix and Airbnb is a business that really, really knows what they’re doing. In his role he works with CEO Sales and Marketing Leaders. So, his focus is on the commercial process. And he sits on boards of directors, board meetings, and is constantly working with portfolio companies around sales and marketing. So welcome Kunall would you give us a little color about about your background?

Kunaal 07:34

Thank you, Scott. Thank you for that really wonderful introduction. I remember when we met it was it was around my birthday, actually, my daughter had just given me a pen which wrote underwater and and I remember thinking like, man, if I’m underwater, I got bigger problems than thinking about what I’m going to write. But I felt that way about My onboarding program at HP and I remember being past your presentation that you had just given, and I was like, wow, somebody gets me and gets my problems. And I got to meet Scott and we we arranged for an analyst day with you in, in your in your office in in McLean.

Scott Santucci 08:18

That’s right.

Kunaal 08:20

It’s it’s, we’ve been continuing to work with each other since then.

Scott Santucci 08:24

That’s right. Excellent. I want to tell a lot of other stories. We’ve got a lot of war stories to share, but we got a, you know, we have a bigger agenda here. So finally, I want to share Lindsey Gore. So first of all, Lindsay’s role in this isn’t necessarily a panelist, but she’s here to keep us honest. So, I want to make sure that we’re very, very clear Lindsay’s role in this podcast, but I actually met Lindsay during a client engagement I’ve been when I was working at Forrester, I’ve been hired by NetApp to run a sales boot camp. I don’t I don’t want to say teach, but to help introduce concepts to help the Salesforce sell to cloud. And I always run in so I’m a huge, huge fan of a reps. And you can tell them immediately, because they’re the ones that ask you the hard questions. And Lindsay was one of those people during the breakout sessions like, What’s this for? Will this really work? And ever since then we became good friends. We’ve, what we do is over over that period of time, she’s been enrolled at nimble, and now she’s at Microsoft. And we’ve had a lot of opportunities to talk about what’s really going on in the trenches. And one of the things that we’re really focused on is really trying to raise awareness and grow understanding around this English English translation problem, which I’m hopeful she’ll join us for a podcast exclusively than that. But I want to just frame out what our perspective is because ultimately, if dots don’t connected, none of these ideas work. He’s one of the top reps at Microsoft earlier this year, or actually, at the end of last year, he was one of the keynote speakers at their global kickoff for some of the innovative strategies she’s executing to sell cloud based and consumption, consumption products for Microsoft. Thank you so much for joining us. Lindsay. Could you tell us a little bit of background on yourself?

Lindsey Gore 10:22

Yeah, thanks so much, Scott. I appreciate the introduction. I I will say that, you know, our relationship over the years has started at net up and I’ve been at EMC, nimble and Microsoft since then, it’s been incredibly helpful to be to try to understand, you know, a lot of times my customers are saying things to me, but but my commercial process internally, and it doesn’t necessarily align with what my customers are asking for across multiple different companies that I’ve worked at. So really trying to figure out you know, how to align the messaging, why is so much of that translation sitting with me in the field and how to think about that stuff. So, you you’ve been incredibly helpful in terms of just sort of understanding that there’s a much bigger picture context. So really excited to hear this panel today and and think about what you guys are talking about seeing from a broader level than just my view from the field.

Scott Santucci 11:15

Excellent. So, with that, what does this have to do with responding to the events around, so we’ve assembled this session, and what we’re doing is we’re tackling what’s going on. And what should sales enablement do about it. So, before we do that, we typically in our show frame things out, and after the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was a memo in 1990, written in the Pentagon, that has become what we now know is vuca. And really, what it was is a prediction of goodness, we were all focused all of our attention on one thing, one big bad thing, the Soviet Union. Now we have lots and lots and lots and lots, and lots and lots and lots of unpredictable factors that we have to be aware of. So vuca stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. And the difficulty that we run into is none of us really have a strategy for handling it. And what happens when human beings in general, get overloaded or have to deal with unknown, we have one of three responses, we fight it, we run from it, or we freeze. And neither of those are good strategies in a downturn. So, what we’re going to do is we’re going to apply some, some thoughtfulness here to provide some some structure. And the way that we’re going to go tackle this is we’re going to say, first, let’s talk about what’s really going on. So, with volatility, instead of always reacting to events. Let’s just pause, slow down to go fast. with uncertainty. It’s to factor in you know what, maybe we don’t know for sure exactly what’s going to happen. But you know, we could probably figure out common patterns that have happened in the past and predict what’s likely to occur. With complexity, it’s really two variables, the number of interconnected parts and today, human beings are so interconnected with each other, we have to factor that in. And then also how many moving parts there are. And then finally, with ambiguity, this is one of the things that Lindsay and I talk a lot about, is that human to human connection, there are so many different people involved, all of us look at it through a different lens. How do you make things clear? And in order to do that, that’s what the valuable about having different insights. So, the first thing that we’re going to tackle is what’s really going on. So, let’s timestamp this as of March 19. Here’s where we are. The stock market has lost all gains during the Trump entire administration. So basically, we’re back to where we were four years ago, in terms of stock market, $4 trillion in market capital has been eliminated. Another thing that’s that that’s going on is the Fed. So, if you know what the Fed does, the Fed is one of the drivers of the economy and they they have a lot to do with banking. The fed on Sunday dropped the basis points or dropped the lending rate 100 basis points. So, what does that mean? It’s just a measure of of significance, let’s put it into context. At no point in time during the last recession, did the did the Fed drop basis points that much. Another thing that that the Fed has done is that they have authorized the printing of $1 trillion of of money to give you frame of reference during the last great recession. They only printed $2 trillion over that period of time. So, the point is the Fed is taking very aggressive stances to what’s happening. Now the question is what is happening? We have two events happening at the same time. So, Dr. Dover called me out on one of the LinkedIn post trying to share, you know, some of these facts was, hey, you only highlighted responses to COVID. We also have this gas crisis or, or looming gas uncertainty. And markets hate uncertainty. They hate it more than anything which we’re going to hear which we’re going to hear from canola. So, as a lot of the attention happens to what to do with COVID, how to wash your hands, how to beat treat people with empathy. What we want to do is figure out what’s going to happen with business and what what responses we should be taking, so that we are more productive or proactive and what what actions we take so that we find the tactics that work. The last key fact to share is if you look at analysis across Wall Street, they are producing acting as an 8% decline in GDP this quarter, many people think that’s a conservative estimate about what’s happening. We have completed the SMB space is pretty much shut down. There is a whole bunch of things going on and we’re pushing work into into virtual experiences of which a lot of people don’t really know how to do. So, we have a lot of uncertainty and factors there. So, these are the facts. What I’d like to do is ask Dr. Dover to share his perspective and then also get from from his perspective about what what they’re seeing in each of their perspective, lenses. So, Kunaal, you are in the best position to comment on these things you work for more or less a micro economy, if you will. You guys are the lead investor and a group of 60 or 70 Companies tell us what your point of view is and what’s happening within your company.

Kunaal 17:06

Well, Scott, certainly, you know, surreal, scary panic are all things that I think that are going on right now. You know, we, I certainly echo any company in the comments around staying safe and sound as we go through this. I’ll start with a quick story. And then we’ll kind of rotate it to, you know, the three areas where we see most of our conversations, but I actually live on a horse farm. And my favorite horse ever was was this midnight loop around the spectacular race in 2007. And he started dead last, but he ended up smoking the field and they were going to originally scratch him because of bad, bad weather conditions. And I think it’s a good analogy because we start work, we our response overall, has been slow that you see Like a stronger and stronger sense of response and more organized, a more organized response. And I think we’ll come out much stronger out of it. The three areas of focus where most of our conversations are one, you know, the health and safety of folks and making sure when they’re comfortable working and can get to work from home and in an efficient way. There’s, if you look at just the basic, there’s actually no monitors left to order. If you go and try to order one, some of these basics just don’t exist. There’s a lot of questions around how do you how do we get transparency? How do we ensure effectiveness? How do we ensure teams are motivated? One really interesting fact that we’re seeing from kind of a shared sales development perspective is that connect rates on calls have never been higher, they’re like orders of magnitude higher. So, so people are answering the phones right then and uhm ou do see people taking calls and scheduling meetings. So those things are still working. But But you know, that’s just health and safety and getting people to work remotely are probably one area. The second one that that we’re spending a lot of time on is just ensuring financial resilience, which is working with companies around cost discipline and cash and liquidity scenario planning. And the scenarios, you know, depend on the level of severity that we potentially see here. With with the two with the COVID in the oil crisis, I think that he mentioned in terms of business strength, if you watch the news, there’s some really bad numbers out there. The best quote I heard which is from one of the leaders at VMware is like this is gonna pass. It’s gonna pass like a kidney stone. So anytime you see you know, the other lesson the other kind of takeaway that we’re providing You know, the portfolio is anytime you see a massive constraint on a system, it opens up the opportunity to be massively creative as well. And you’re seeing tons of that in the portfolio right now with, with how quickly they’re going virtual, how they’re driving themselves. They’re continuing to be productive with how they go about getting business in a challenging environment.

Scott Santucci 20:28

Excellent. Thank you Kunaal. So, here’s, basically I’m going to, I’m going to restate what I heard and replay what I did. I’m going to put words in your mouth, spit out what doesn’t fit. What you’re seeing in terms of TCB in terms of the port among the portfolio companies, so a sample set of about 60 companies, you’re seeing in general, a lot of anxiety and concern and in terms of guidance of what your company is telling them to focus are these three things, one, make sure the health and safety and mental well being of your employees is a priority. Two make sure that the liquidity of your business and the financials, you have financial resiliency, and, you know, taking care of those things. And then the third thing is, once you get over the hump on those things, any kind of stress to the system creates opportunities, please look for them.

Kunaal 21:31

Yeah, I think I think that’s a good way to put it. Scott. I mean, if you look at the, the financial crisis of past the best companies have been able to gain a lot of market share in that time period. So So how do you quickly focus, you know, instrument your go to market to focus on on really one or two things that get the company moving in that direction, and on a dime?

Scott Santucci 21:55

Yeah, I got to tell you. For those of you listening, it’s hard for me to follow daily, so I talked to Konami every other day. And it’s a avalanche of data. So, it’s hard to, it’s hard to sort out what’s happening. But that’s the speed at which things are occurring. And we need to be flexible and learn ways to process it, which is a great segment segue into Dr. Dover. So, Dr. Dover you’ve been involved in this and having both a background as an economist and in this field for some time. What is your assessment about what’s going on? And what are you hearing?

Howard Dover 22:33

Well, I think, I think a couple of coming back to your, your moment, you know, oil and gas is, is if we just took oil and gas. If we just took the shot from oil and gas, we’d have we’d be having some discussions about the economy. So, I mean, you look at this, you’ve got the Fed that’s in unprecedented territories. You’ve got the stock market. You’ve got pretty much the shutdown of the SMB market, as you’ve already defined. And then you’ve got this is you describe to this movement of work to home. But I want to throw in a couple of data points that probably everybody hasn’t been thinking about. Excellent. So SDR growth. So, the sales development rep growth, according to a LinkedIn report, they have the data they know they know how many people have an SDR role. 2018 report showed 580% increase in the number of SDRs in the United States. I actually did an analysis over the last two years with LinkedIn data looking at the economic graph, while we’ve had a headcount reduction in 20 of the major cities over the last two years, we’ve only grown 5% in the sales role, but we’ve grown 78% in the sales development role. If you take the 580 and you ad, 78% on top of that, you’re looking at a 10-fold increase in the number of people who are trying to do outreach right now. Then you add to that the amount of tools and the automation through sales engagement platforms, which are now becoming the new rave to automate the motions and the flow of those SDRs. We’ve never been at a higher capacity to communicate at a magnitude to the, to the mind community. And so, some observations I’ve been hearing. So those are interesting things that we’ll get back to, to realize that we have just staffed up to a level to amplify and communicate like we’ve never been before. And we’ve actually reduced the amount of salespeople but increase the number of people trying to communicate to us. Sounds like we’re plowing the field with mechanized machinery, right? Mm hmm. What hearing from the field right now his conversations and meetings just like almost saying that the conversations are going up. Here’s the interesting question, though, are the conversations going and are is their revenue flowing? There’s a difference between having conversations with people who are trying to figure out how to stay busy conversion, and actual revenue because I think anybody who is at a strategic level doesn’t have if they’re having a conversation with you, you’re in their critical path. Otherwise, you’re talking to people who may be trying to find a reason to be valuable. And so, while conversations may be going up, I’m worried we may be all getting busy doing the doing things that make us feel like we’re accomplishing something, but actually just keeping us busy. Instead of really looking at the issue.

Scott Santucci 25:52

I think that’s really insightful, and I want to connect a few dots. So, I’m going to put words now in your mouth. Just like I did Kunal spit out what doesn’t fit. So, here’s what I heard, I heard a massive increase into our outbound communication capabilities that that you’ve observed over a period of time. Number two is the question is, has that been productive to driving revenue growth? That was a question before the downturn. I think your question that people should ask is, is it, how’s that going to translate now that we’re in a downturn and what happens next? Is that is that fair? Sure. Okay, and and then the next thing that that you mentioned, was the plow. So not everybody knows your analogy, which is an amazing one. What’s great about having economists and academics is they get to study things and study trends. And being a never say anything derogatory about Texas around Dr. Dover or his his wife, who did that? Eli session at the last oh my gosh, that was Oh, it was the Alamo was you, Brian? It was me. Yeah.

Brian Lambert 27:14

I did apologize profusely. And then I went and visited.

Scott Santucci 27:19

He did. Yes. made him go to the Alamo with us. Made him learn the history. But any rate being, being a Texan, that Dustbowl really hit Texas and if you know about the story, what happened is we over the agricultural people over Mecca, mechanized, and they overplay cloud and they didn’t do crop rotation are some of the things that we all know and take for granted today. And that led to disastrous economic conditions. Howard has used that I’ve heard him It’s amazing. Maybe we need to get you on here and just sort of walk through that story for our listeners sometime. To say you know what, this looks eerily Similar are what we’re doing in sales and marketing. And we should heed this. But here we are in the Dust Bowl. So, what, now we want to make sure what were some of the causes that that happened and how can we get out of it. And I think that’s a it’s a heck of an analogy and kunaal it’s sort of maps to some of the things that we’re seeing about marketing, spending money on demand generation, sales groups building up their own BDR groups. And then for an investor, it’s like, oh, my gosh, you guys are double spending to get leads, but you’re not closing business. Is that right?

Kunaal 28:33

That’s 100%. Everybody, every silo has got their own views things with their own lens and is trying to try to accomplish the goal their own way with kind of cohesively working together.

Scott Santucci 28:49

So, what I want to do is I want to call out and share a couple of my observations, then we’ll move on to our next topic about what we’ll predict is going to happen. So, both Where kunaal and where I’m alike with maybe this is probably why we’re so close. I’m very much a systems thinker like kunaal. And I can go in and maybe it’s because we both have sort of an engineer’s perspective, like to look at the mechanics and the data, etc. And where I’m where I could talk for hours, and we have with Dr. Dover about history and lessons learned there. So, I think we have we have a colliding for so here’s one thing that I’ve done over the past, there’s a history of recessions that we’ve got, and each one has their own different characteristics. And what I tried to do is plot out what are the driving forces behind our characteristics, and unfortunately, it looks like we have two variables that that are going on. So, in a lot of ways the responses to the economy are similar to 2000 or 2001. The 2001 recession brought on by 911. Massive news. Massive, massive fear that is safety related safety and security related caused by a massive shut down in terms of in terms of travel. And what happened in that economy is a lot of cost takeouts and some micro bailouts. But we actually got out of that way quicker, except it never felt like that because people were too scared. So that’s one thing that that I’m seeing these patterns look very similar. Now, the other variable that is more concerning is we had two economic crisis in the 70s that were driven by energy. And those were much more volatile. So, we didn’t have we didn’t have OPEC taking oil prices up 400% like they did in the mid set mid 70s. But we have uncertainty and to have those things together in an economy. That’s more interconnected than it’s ever been before, are things to cause concern and to take a step back and review what what these variables are. So, I think these are these are the factors that we’ve got before we close out and move on to our next topic. Lindsay as a salesperson who’s stuck in the middle, my opinion you’re off your future, right? If it’s not for salespeople have to carry the economy moving forward, you’ve got to get spending happening. Right. So, as you putting the entire weight of our future on your shoulders, what do you see that’s happening and connect with us, for us of what’s being discussed?

Lindsey Gore 31:40

Yeah, I know, that was you guys had some some really great interesting points. I would say, you know, at my customers right now, they either fallen in a couple different categories, one, which the category that they’re in is grocery. So, their business is getting hammered right now in terms of just busy and activity and they’re just trying to you know, sustain the increased level of activity that they’ve needed to operate within.

Scott Santucci 32:05

So, for clarification when you say hammered, are they being hammered financially? Or are they making money?

Lindsey Gore 32:10

They’re making money. So, they’re trying to keep up with the demand. And I don’t know that, honestly, it’ll be interesting to see where they go over time. Because I don’t know that their supply chain in their systems are in place to ultimately operate at this at this level for a sustained amount of time. So, I think for them, you know, there might be some interesting opportunities to be creative, emerging out of this to build more resilient systems. For my other customers, I’d say they’re very much on the forefront of some of the things that I mentioned. So, you know, the remote remote work and then trying to figure out what the cash preservation strategy is going to be and how they’re actually going to cut costs. So those are the conversations that I’m in right now. But But really, you know, they haven’t gotten to this point of what’s the opportunity that’s coming out of it. It’s a very tight knit group of leadership that’s trying to figure out what is the corporate direction to, you know, keep the lights on and be able to, you know, mitigate all this uncertainty that we don’t know how long it’s going on for. So, I would say those are the things that I’m seeing across my customers at the high level, and then absolutely agree in in the increasing conversations with people who are just curious to learn. And I’m also concerned about actually engaging in conversations that’s going to drive to revenue. And a lot of the areas that we’re starting to focus on messaging around is really, you know, are there things that we could do in the short term that’s going to save or money and enable operations?

Scott Santucci 33:42

That’s awesome. So, what I’d like to do is, from your own perspective, right, you’re a human being, right? So, I hate to put you on the spot. You know, you’re the only one that’s being asked to say you personally, how are you reacting, but you represent your human being right. So, you represent what’s on the money, you’re on sales? How do you balance the anxiety? And how do you get up in the morning and get prepared? And what do you think your job is for your customers and for your company?

Lindsey Gore 34:12

Yeah, I think, right now, a lot of it is just about showing up and trying to, you know, meet people where they actually are, you know, and be sensitive and figuring out, you know, what are the what are the key projects that are critical to business and being driven by leadership that are short term, and, you know, those are the things that we’re focused on, you know, aligning resources to support our customers around and then what are just some of the general sort of ongoing relationship type conversations with folks who do want to continue to educate themselves but who knows what they’ll be able to actually execute in the near term. So, trying to juggle across both of those things and then of course, being concerned for myself and my family and and managing you know, the the new reality of sitting at a desk you know all day on nonstop calls and looking forward to the weekends to be able to catch up and figure out what’s going on and all this uncertainty for myself personally so.

Scott Santucci 35:12

So, one of the things hopefully those people who are listening are going gosh I wish all our salespeople were like Lindsey, I hope you can all you’re going wow how the heck do we get into into into other companies maybe we can create a bidding war for you between Microsoft and other folks. But I think the thing that to highlight here is think about that Menzies just one salesperson. I’ll tell you one thing that about Lindsey. Lindsey really loves to learn about strategy and and tactics because she wants to align with her executives. She believes that if she can help influence that that’s going to help create a lot of downstream purchases. And I think this is what’s what’s important it’s very easy to get lost in terms of the tactics and the details. Going back to a point our brought up earlier on it’s you know hey, we’re doing a lot of things. But are we doing the right things? And it is very much about Am I doing balancing between? Am I doing the right things and I doing things right? And I think this is a really important wake up call for all of us is to balance that. So, Brian, let’s take us out on this topic. We’ve got two more topics. What does it mean for our listeners have just what’s going on?

Brian Lambert 36:27

Yeah, great conversation so far. I would say, you cannot argue with the data. I know.

Scott Santucci 36:36

They want to, right?

Brian Lambert 36:39

And, you know, if there is there’s a difference between being positive and being realistic. And I think it’s helpful to to understand, you know, what is reality here, and you can’t argue with the data. And when you talk about moving forward and being valuable in your company. You know, what I’m hearing from everybody is you gotta focus. Focus on what in the conversation I’m hearing you know, let’s let’s focus on the valuable conversations that we need to have. Let’s make sure that we’re allocating costs the right way. And having the conversations around are we overstaffed in one area and understaffed and another? And, and, you know, thirdly, what what does it mean to add value to our customers? And if you’re in sales enablement, if you’re not having those kinds of conversations, you have to ask yourself, you know, what, what are you doing staying busy or staying productive? And that’s, you know, Episode 25. If you want to re listen to that, great plug, thanks. And I would say, you know, finally, what I’m hearing is fine tactics at work, understand how you link to strategy, like Kunaal said, instrument and understand your role and instrument and go to market and like Howard said, you know, move, move faster, and move more precisely. And what are you doing to help revenue flow? Not not just have conversations but the revenue flow. And you have to be able to answer that. And that’s what this this first section should mean to us. Excellent.

Nick Merinkers 38:21

Thanks for joining us. To Become an insider and amplify your journey. Make sure you’ve subscribed to our show. If you have an idea for what Scott and Brian can cover in a future podcast, or have a story to share, please email them at engage@insidese.com. You can also connect with him online by going to insidese.com following them on Twitter or sending them a LinkedIn request.