Ep20 The Purpose of Sales Enablement & The US Securities Act

Welcome to the Inside Sales Enablement Podcast, Episode 20

Since starting the podcast, the guys have received a lot of feedback from listeners who’ve built more advanced functions. These listeners have one thing in common… they all are using the “old Forrester sales enablement” definition Scott authored in 2008 and peer-reviewed by Brian and published for Forrester clients in 2010.

In 2017, acting as the President of the Sales Enablement Society, Scott sponsored work by enablement professionals to bring together: analysts, academics, practitioners, and vendors to create a common definition that was published and shared at the first annual sales enablement society conference.

Yet, here we are in 2019 and Forrester has not only a new definition of what sales enablement is – but also Sirius Decisions’ definition to rationalize.  Gartner is talking about “buyer enablement” and “sense-making” while CSO insights have narrowed the focus to be about enabling the sales force.  Meanwhile, marketing has moved into their own versions of helping “sales” by advocating: content marketing, account-based marketing, and growth marketing.

The guys think this has gotten out of hand and have decided to become far more definitive.  In this episode the guys:

1) Highlight the key enabler that propelled accounting into the finance department and the rise of the CFO

2) Contrast the similarities between finance and the sales enablement space

3) Outline the drivers that exist in the economy that point to a huge gap between strategy and execution

4) Discuss the purpose of sales enablement is to bridge that gap

5) Observe the only way to solve that problem is to do it cross-functionally

6) Review the basic pillars of what should be in the scope of a department tackling the strategy/execution gap

Join us at https://www.OrchestrateSales.com/podcast/ to let us know what you think, collaborate with peers and sign up to be notified of new releases, updates, and news.

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 00:35

I’m Brian Lambert and we are our sales enablement insiders. Our podcast is for sales enablement. Leaders looking to elevate their function, expand their sphere of influence and increase the span of control within their companies.

Scott Santucci 00:47

Together, Brian and I have worked on over 100 different kinds of sales enablement, initiatives as analysts, consultants or practitioners. We’ve learned the hard way, underlined the hard way, what works and what doesn’t.

Brian Lambert 01:01

Our podcast is different. We use a conversational format to help share the experiences that only people who’ve been there and done that can provide, as we’ve been pushing the envelope on the profession for over a decade. And today on this show, we’re going to discuss sales enablement defined. And as usual, we’re going to start with a centering story to give our episode a theme. Scott, take it away.

Scott Santucci 01:27

Thank you, Brian. And I think you’re gonna like this, Brian. This is a very, very modern story for some of the stories that we’ve been talking about.

Brian Lambert 01:34

Oh, really? Yeah. Move up. Do we move up a different century yet?

Scott Santucci 01:40

This story starts in 1933. Oh, wow. Yes.

Brian Lambert 01:46

We moved out of the 18 hundreds nice.

Scott Santucci 01:48

Yes, how about that for modernization in 1933. The United States Congress passed the Securities Act. And what I’d like you to do is go back in the wave wayback machine and have some context. This is the time of the Great Depression. If you remember what happened, one of the starting points of the Great Depression was the stock market decline of 1929. And one of the things that was happening is that those stocks that people were buying weren’t really regulated. So, you didn’t really know whether the information was accurate or not. So, the 1933 Securities Act put down a an established the SEC, the securities exchange commission, which also empowered them to audit and oversee and even send people to jail for fraud on the stock market. So that’s what led to it. The next thing that happened in 1939 General Accounting Principles started so basically we’re generally accounting principles are is that the rules of which you organize or store finance data that gets logged into your business report, the business reporting, the financial reports, the the balance sheet, the income statement, all of those things started back in 19 standard got standardized back in 1933, with this sec act, but then the rules to make sure that you follow them and standardize all that that started in 1939. So, to bring that all to fruition today, in were 1939. The idea of a chief financial officer was not very common. Today, the idea of a chief financial officer is almost it’s it’s almost, you can’t even separate the idea of not having them. So, one of the things that has led to the powerful rise of a CFO, is they actually have this, this construct this these rules to follow more or less like a lingua franca, and if it weren’t for that, it’d be hard to say that The CFO wouldn’t have evolved, because that role was just a bookkeeping function.

Brian Lambert 04:06

Yeah, that’s a good point on the history of that evolution to think from bookkeeper to CFO, but, again, oh, what the heck does that have to do with sales enablement?

Scott Santucci 04:20

So, insider nation, I hope we hope you’re getting the gist that we always have some sort of weird or interesting plugin. And the reason that this matters, is because you’ve heard Brian and I talk a lot about a charter. You’ve heard us talking about that. But you don’t have a core foundation to stand on. It’s really hard to elevate your role. And that’s really what we’re what we’re talking about here is we there are a lot of discussions about definitions and wire defining things. Our lens when we set out to defining sales enablement was really more foundational. It’s not does it sound the right way because I get it, I can guarantee you if you go and read the SEC definition of what revenue is, it’s not a good read. It’s not simple or elegant or beautiful or accessible or explains what an accountants job does. It’s a very utility or utilitarian definition, to set a foundation to provide standards.

Brian Lambert 05:25

It’s hard to blog that I’m sure to that deposition.

Scott Santucci 05:29

It is a tough blog, began it because it’s an incredibly tough read. But the reason that that exists that way is because it must be precise. So that’s really the the essence of how we started about defining sales enablement, when we when we were at Forrester, and the foundation for everything that we worked on, was that definition and it has a lot of principles behind it with the idea of building as a foundation to build a function of up on top of it.

Brian Lambert 05:57

Yeah, and I remember you know, you can say that the key here is to get it right. And we’re going to talk about how we did it. And yes, we’re going to go over that definition on here. But, you know, I need to, I feel like right now, this is a bit of a, let me challenge you on this, right? Like one, we said we weren’t gonna necessarily redefine it. And on the show, and two, we’ve said, Listen, it’s not about a definitional debate. We’re not going to engage in that. And now now here we are, right. So, um, and the reason why I wanted to bring that up is it’s interesting to me that over the course of the last two conferences that I was at that that’s the definition that we put together in 2008 has shown up on you know, the mainstage screen and you know, even even your name is enforced or have been used as this is the definition that I like, etc. But why why are we on this podcast doing this? Why do you think it’s important to restate when we’ve already stated 10 years ago?

Scott Santucci 07:01

Well, I think there’s a bunch of reasons why there are many definitions out there. It’s very confusing. And the reason that we’re doing it for insider nation it’s it’s actually kind of interesting. Brian, you and I started this podcast because we saw a big giant hole in sales enablement conversations for more so from a more strategic lens, and as we started this, more people have been reaching out and a lot of people have been reaching out saying, Hey, you know, I’m glad you guys are doing this. I’ve been really leveraging that old sales enablement definition. And I was actually in Chicago at a meeting and the executive team had this definition and they had it had it written up. We haven’t built on this thing in a long time. And the company that owned it had owned this intellectual property has now quote, discarded it and replacement of another one that’s made to be more better sounding or, you know, more well written, Uh huh. But really the goal here is it’s not an issue to debate definitions. And it’s it’s a, it’s a conversation to say, we tried to lay foundations with this. And we want to talk about those foundations, because those foundations are what separate most of the people who are running sales enablement as units of one. And the sales enablement leaders who have strategic departments. So, what we thought we would do is say it just as if you are interested in promoting and elevating your role. Let’s follow the game plan that accounting went through to become CFOs. They had a foundation that they built from, so we wanted to talk we wanted to lay that foundation. We think that’s relevant here for inside sales enablement and insider nation.

Brian Lambert 08:57

Yeah, and let me let me stay obvious You know, we’re sticking to the definition that we wrote in 2008. You know, we’re not changing it, we’re not redefining it, we’re sticking with it. And we think it’s even more relevant today than it was back then. And we’re going to state it again. And here we go. You know, let’s talk about why we did it, how we went about it, what the actual definition is and who it’s for. So, let’s start with why why we defined it.

Scott Santucci 09:24

Alright, so why do we Why do we find it? So, the first the first lens is, we made an observation that there is a gap between the go to market strategy or even the business strategy of a company and how it executes. So that was the observation that we laid. Then when we looked at that when we looked at an examine that business problem, what did we do is based on that, based on that gap, we tried to define what should be in the middle there to bridge that gap. And that’s really where we came up with the idea of sales enablement. The idea being go to market is about interacting with customers. We were thinking about sales, aka meaning revenue or bookings, not sales, the Salesforce and enablement is to make sure we’re enabling the execution of that strategy and profitable growth. That was the lens that we had. So that’s why we created it and we didn’t see any work in that space. And we, you know, frankly, Brian, and I still haven’t been seen any work in that space.

Brian Lambert 10:33

Yeah. And also, to piggyback on that with the why drill drill a little bit deeper on that I actually think the gap is getting bigger, that the gap between go to market and the expectations that customers have continues to widen.

Scott Santucci 10:51

I agree with you. And I think the reason that it’s widening is really because of the whole digital economy that we’re in what you know, you’ve got business we’ve talked about some of this before, but we’ve got businesses who were office furniture companies, and they are now becoming space optimization businesses, because of this whole digital world. But I think that that is one of the driving forces that is illuminating or accelerating that gap between strategy and execution. And most companies don’t have what Brian and I like to call an execution fabric to tie all those those pieces together.

Brian Lambert 11:27

And, and to that end, execution is extremely problematic, right? So, we’re not going to get into that. But, you know, what I would say is, we can’t let the idea of product marketing or messaging or demand Gen, or even sales enablement, trumped the idea of execution. Right, you know, executions, the most important thing here, that’s when let’s figure out back then we have this debate what means to fill that gap because silos are not getting us there. And sales conversations are suffering, what might that look like? How might we go about defining that? So, let’s let’s pivot there, you know how explain explain how we went about defining that? Did we lock ourselves in a conference room and write it?

Scott Santucci 12:13

So, the sequence of events were, and this is where the, you know, sort of the discipline of research and why I would recommend all of you before you pick a definition that you use, go and find out what’s behind it. Just because it sounds good, doesn’t mean it is good. So, the way that we went about doing it is we first shot this observation, right? So, I’m sorry if I’m going to sound like dusting off past memories of high school, but if the scientific method is you start with an observation, so we had the observation of a gap between strategy and execution. And then what you do before you develop a hypothesis is you get some reviews. So, we interviewed executives based on that observation from company like Accenture BMC computer associates or CA, Citrix, CSC Dell, HP, IBM NetApp, Oracle, SIP and Semantic. And what we did there is say is this is this phenomenon that we’re observing something that you’re observing too? So, we went and confirmed that hypothesis. So, the, the the confirmation was yes, that occurred. Then we went and looked at financial reports and pulled out some trends of other businesses that were happening. So, we pulled out examples of CEOs and from annual reports that highlight that provide proof points of this gap. So, we saw that executives are focusing on pragmatic, profitable growth, continuing to retool the sales engine, eliminating waste, trying to drive differentiated support at the point of sale, transforming rep seller behavior outside of their comfort zone. Were all trends that we saw way back in 2008. Do they sound familiar today? Brian?

Brian Lambert 14:06

Yes, they definitely do sound the same, they’re actually getting more heightened, and new business models are actually emerging to tackle those things. And then to when you rattled off the list those companies, those companies have evolved, and they’re still around, and some have been on the ropes, you know, but but they’ve all gone through some sort of evolution. And I think that was a good sample set there. To to use, right, you 10 years later, these companies are still still respected, and they’ve gone through their own evolutionary change.

Scott Santucci 14:39

So, the second thing that we did to confirm the observation was, maybe it makes sense to get a buyer’s viewpoint of the gaps between execution. This is all before defining it. This is the work that we did before that. So, what we did is because we’re Forrester, well, geez, we already have access to buyers. So, I just interviewed some actually many and here’s some of the trends that we observed. Buyers are stratifying their suppliers into a caste system. We saw many, many, many efforts underway. Actually, there were many people forced her to do vendor analysis and the like, and saw a lot of vendor consolidations, actually real strategic programs to move people into procurement. Another one is that buyers are differentiating among vendors based largely on their engagement strategy. In other words, what we found is that buyers prefer to work with work with the companies based on the way that the sellers engage with them, not what their products and services are. That’s a myth. That was we found that to be a myth that the branding is the preference, or the price point was the preference. Another thing that the third observation that we found in engaging with those buyers is that they rarely find value from conversations that they have with vendor salespeople, as a matter of fact, the data that we have at the time was less than 15% of executives found that their inner interactions with sellers was valuable. So, what that held us to to make ask the question is if these are if these things are going on, that buyers aren’t really valuing it, companies are spending a tremendous amount of money something’s something’s gotta give.

Brian Lambert 16:23

So when you and when you look at that, on the buyer side that you mentioned the caste system that we’re going to differentiate based on how people engage with us and this idea of relevant conversations and what that looks like, I think there’s been fuel put on that that fire on the buyer side, you know, you hear you’ve got challenger sale now challenger buyer, but, you know, more importantly you have this idea that buyers and the people involved are really having a hard time making decisions, you know, 6.2 people are involved. This idea of a caste system is becoming You know, bipolar, if you will, or or, you know, two groups now instead of multiple groups, you there’s either that you’re in a transactional sales pattern or buying pattern and you’re, or you’re in a highly consultative one and in the middle ground is hard to occupy.

Scott Santucci 17:15

So, I think you’re right. So, you know, going back to the scientific method of where we were right, it was, we have this observation about a gap between strategy and execution. Then we did the did the research to see whether it’s true. So, we talked to people if that was a valid thing, then we looked at financial reports and, and earnings calls to get some data there. We collected data from buyers, and then we went back into into inside the resident companies and made observations there. And those observations really came up with this observation of random acts of sales support underlying the underlying the ability to execute. So, we found that companies are spending 15.9% of their SGA on stuff to enable sales conversations, we found that the fragmentation of these efforts confused customers. We found that because of that, because that information is all over the place, it creates an organizational drag. I’m wondering if all of the different definitions of sales enablement that haven’t been thoughtful, are those that are is that’s what’s driving a lot of this activity that we’re being so focused on getting something out the door and not worrying about making it making it coordinated, that that’s creating more of the problem. I don’t know.

Brian Lambert 18:43

Well, if you again, if you look at today, worker productivity continues to go down and the United States sgma we haven’t done the analysis. I don’t know if you have Scott in other areas but sgma invest either are holding or they’re continuing to increase is my guess. I don’t know if you’ve done any of that research on the current as sgma trends, but you know, still seeing money being thrown at the the the idea here to drive revenue. So, I think that that guy continues to be a challenge.

Scott Santucci 19:19

Well, here’s the thing that that’s most shocking to me. So, we calculated based on a model that we use to assess what spending is and sales enablement. And keep in mind our point of view of sales enablement spending is anything that’s meant to go to support sellers. So, it just because I’m not saying this isn’t, if your sales enablement budget is the sales training and the sales kickoff, I’m not counting I’m not counting you but I’m also counting all the content assets. I’m also counting the demand generation there’s many many, many things that to me, if it’s money, that’s sales, pacing, that’s A sales enablement period. Now given that back at the time, we calculated that $135,000 per rep per year, well, I actually have developed a methodology. You’ve you’ve seen it, Brian in the hidden cost of sales support methodology. When I ran that with companies, I’ve seen that number be as high as $650,000, a sales enablement support each year for sellers. That includes all the overlays that people put on top of things or the bureaucracy that that they do every time you make it where salespeople aren’t spending time selling these costs pick up and add up at a huge level.

Brian Lambert 20:39

Yeah, and that’s per rep per year. So erratic frontier, 35,000 per rep per year.

Scott Santucci 20:44

Per rep per year.

Brian Lambert 20:46

Yeah, that can add up. I think if there are any sales managers listening, they’d like to get their hands on that money and spend it spend it perhaps a little bit differently.

Scott Santucci 20:54

Right exactly at $600,000 or even $135,000, which are our analysis was, how much of that should be going to giving raises to sales managers? How much of that, you know, what would a top rep say, you know what, I’ll take zero enablement and the hundred and 35,000 bucks and pocket it. Tell you what, I’ll take 100 grand pocket it, I’ll give you the 35 back, and I’ll build on my stuff.

Brian Lambert 21:20

Cuz, I go on five rings, they’ll do what I want.

Scott Santucci 21:23

Right? Exactly. I’ll take the $35,000 to build it on Fiverr. Right, and then I’ll pocket the hundred and 35 myself.

Brian Lambert 21:31

Oh, that’s awesome. Yeah. Well, I also, again, a little queasy here, because, you know, that’s a little bit sickening. Because these things have well intentioned people are well intentioned. They want to help sales sell they just don’t know what they don’t know and we’re pouring money into it. It’s kind of back to our Brooklyn Bridge analogy where you threw head we threw headcount at the Brooklyn Bridge, to try to figure out how to overcome the band’s. This one is let’s keep throwing money at it.

Scott Santucci 21:57

That’s right. So, let’s talk about how we defined it then. So how are we going to find it is we did all that research, we posted all that information together. So, you imagine that putting together in a briefing, and we invited executives, half were CMOS half were VPS of sales. And we we gave them that that overview. Of course, they’re like, yep, this is a problem. We haven’t addressed it because we can’t get sales and marketing, we don’t have any context. We’re trying to focus on how to align. You’re asking us to fix a problem. The big difference, a big psychological difference between aligning departments and actually fixing this invisible problem. Here’s the definition that we arrived at. So, the point being no, we didn’t sit in a conference room and pontificate a definition. This is how that’s the work that went into how we did it. So here it is. Sales enablement is a strategic, ongoing process that equips all clients Facing employees with the ability to consistently and systematically have a valuable conversation with the right set of customer stakeholders at each stage of the customers problem solving lifecycle to optimize the return of investment of the selling system. That was our definition.

Brian Lambert 23:22

Yeah, and we’ll have this in the write up in the notes. But, you know, just if you’re listening, sales enablement is its strategic, it’s ongoing. It equips all client facing employees. It’s consistently and systematically having a conversation with the right set of stakeholders, against or with or at each stage of the customers problem solving cycle not not their buying process, but how they solve problems in order to return you know, drive a return, optimize the return on investment of this overall selling system, which does exist thing and that’s the definition and we’re going to break it down here and walk through it.

Scott Santucci 24:00

Well, before we break it down, there’s another part to this that is often not factored in.

Brian Lambert 24:07

That’s because I think it’s six pages later might be why? Well, but Right, right, right, let’s let’s do that. Let’s because there’s an implication if you if you’re going to tackle it, of what’s required. So, what’s what’s required to accomplish this?

Scott Santucci 24:21

Right. So, the reason that we broke it down this way is because in working with our executives, there’s sort of a sequence of events that goes to it goes into it. So, sequence of events number one, define for me the business problem, take into events number two, show me the work that led up to it. So that was the the buyer research the the finance research. Sequence of events number three, highlight the business problem for me, what is this costing us? That’s point number three random acts of sales enablement and a cost per. Sequence of event number four, define the scope of what it is that you’re doing. Tell me what it is. Tell me what this process is that we must do in order to solve that problem. Sequence of events number five, what should we do? So, here’s the next part of that definition. To accomplish this goal, portfolio, marketing and sales teams must work cross functionally, to create effective sales content and programs that map to a holistic customer model that are delivered on a common platform. Those are the two parts.

Brian Lambert 25:26

Those are the two parts. And I would say, if you are listening to this, and you’re like, Ah, that is too much. It’s too heavy. No, nobody will ever go out go, you know, go for that. I would encourage you to go back and relist into the front end of this because the goal the goal of this definition is to not make it super digestible into a tagline. The goal of the definition, remember is this idea of work moving from bookkeeping to CFO, we have to define sequence of events what the problem is, and given an identity so that it can be tackled. This is a, indeed a complicated problem. And it is, indeed, you know, massive business impact.

Scott Santucci 26:12

You know, let me add to that, Brian, to add to that point. The question is, what are you going to use a definition for? If you’re going to use a definition, because you want to put it up to your boss to make a quick decision about what your role should be? Well, yeah, that’s, first of all, the reason that this isn’t written for that you wouldn’t use it for that. This is we think that’s a piss poor strategy. If you’re trying to just say, Hey, I’m going to go throw something to you to give you to, you know, to help you understand what I’m doing. The only way anybody’s going to be able to understand it is through a very narrow scope. So, guess what your remit is going to be build a sales playbook manage the sales training program, and you’re always going to be stuck in that tactical box, you’re always gonna be a plumber. If you treat your role like a plumber, you’re gonna be a plumber.

Brian Lambert 27:10

And plumbers are highly technical. And they put a lot of work into that. But the idea of Hey, I want to be an architect is it’s a bridge too far once you’re a plumber. That’s really good. Yeah. And I think the other piece of that is important is we’re asking our sellers to sell a vision. We’re asking our sellers to transform how companies work. We’re asking our sellers to sell business results and business outcomes. If in sales enablement, we back off because this is a little bit complicated. That’s hypocritical to me.

Scott Santucci 27:37

Yeah, that’s a good point.

Brian Lambert 27:39

I mean I must tell it like it is. This is that’s a bit ridiculous. And, you know, are we enabling sales execution or not? And you know what, this definition you didn’t make it? You know, it’s not like we sat around and said, how do we make this more complicated? This is too short. Let’s make it longer.

Scott Santucci 27:56

 Let’s show everyone how smart we can be. Yeah, that is your job to do is to show how smart you are. It’s a lot of words.

Brian Lambert 28:04

Yeah. And, you know, we’re getting a little bit emotional on this because the the challenge at the time and it continues to be is we’re reflecting reality. We’re not the ones that made it complicated. This is this is the, you know, the companies, organizations going through a transformation to try to close the gap to customers. There’s a lot of money being spent $70 billion on training development 62 billion on technology. That’s just two buckets. Right? You know, we’re talking about, you know, competitiveness of countries in GDP of countries at some point. What do you think?

Scott Santucci 28:40

Exactly, exactly. And you’re also you’re not picking up the headcount that goes with it, and you’re not picking up the content that the money that’s been a driver.

Brian Lambert 28:52

So, you know, rant over, you know, take a deep breath, but I think, you know, if if folks are hanging with us, you know, and I wanted to get people to resist the urge to punch out of this discussion. Because now let’s get a little bit more real. around. You know what, what to do next? Because this is not a definition for definition’s sake.

Scott Santucci 29:15

Exactly, exactly. And I think the other point there is, what problem is it that you’re trying to solve? The definition that we’re trying to solve for is the gap between strategy and execution. And the poor performance associated with that. That’s the problem that we’re addressing. That’s the problem that we see in pretty much every company that doesn’t have a role like this because execution requires cross functional, it because it requires it to be done well cross functionally. And there is not a role that exists inside companies that look at this cross functionally. So that’s why we’re why we’re so insistent on perspective. So where do you want to take this next, Brian?

Brian Lambert 30:05

You know, I think, let’s talk about what the upside is here. Let’s go optimistic. And let’s say, you know, for the, you know, one for those that have adopted this definition, what’s happened to them in their careers? And then to the companies that have embraced this type of thinking, what’s happened to them? Do you have any couple stories that you can share on either the individual?

Scott Santucci 30:27

Let’s talk about, specifically roles. So, in terms of roles of the people who have been, you know, there’s, there’s always the type of folks who dive into something and want to understand it. And there’s types of people who read something on the surface, the people who have taken this definition and really dove in and focused on the meaning. Well, we typically find them at VP levels, and many are now reporting to CEOs because this problem is becoming bigger and bigger and bigger. companies that have adapted It scale I’m thinking of one in particular, you remember this company, Brian, one particular company adopted it so well all the way up to the CEO for their growth strategy, they would select a hand number of accounts, and then say to the rest of the industry, if you’re not one of these accounts, were not going after you. Like that’s how, that’s how aggressive they were about it, they always hit the hit the number and their profitability, and overall revenue growth was always just through there through the roof. So, the the issue and the statistics behind the execution of this are all really great. The difficulty is there isn’t an environment to talk like this. Because we’re in the sales enablement world in a lot of ways is in a we’re in a bit of an echo chamber.

Brian Lambert 32:00

Yeah, operational go do it. Anyways in doing

Scott Santucci 32:03

its activity activity activity, not what can we do to bend the needle?

Brian Lambert 32:07

Yeah. So, for the insider nation, you know, we want to talk to you. So, what inside your organization might be difficult to have your surgeons here on this podcast, it’s not. So come join us over here, we’ll talk about it and we’ll bottle it up and, and we’ll be that voice for closing the gap to customers. Not not because it’s cool, sexy, and we want to be VPS. But because by you know, by golly, salespeople need help. And that’s why Scott and I do what we do. And, you know, you might think this is a glamorous thing, but it’s not sometimes and you know, we get we get the arrows a lot of times for what we’re doing, but the why behind what we do is to help sales salespeople be successful and help sales managers really take back what’s the as around being custodians of that sales team, right? You know, that’s a critical need in companies today. And we want to continue those conversations.

Scott Santucci 33:10

So how do you get how you get started in thinking like this, let me give you some three, three ideas, right idea number one is take this definition, think about it, and break it down. So, for example, strategic, what is strategic mean? To me, it definitely means having part of the remit about bridging the gap between strategy and execution. So, it’s as simple as like connecting the dots. This is, this is like, this is like Legos. So, if that’s going to be your remit, then you need to ask yourself, well, who, where what roles are touching that right now? Where is there room for you to fill in, without being confrontational, insane Well, I want I want product marketing’s budget I want this that’s not a good strategy on getting started on this path. A good strategy would be to take inventory of the different parts, figure out the remits, and then find where the gray area is, then propose you’ll fill in the gray area. I like to start as small as possible because once you start finding those linkages and start doing start, start collecting the data, you’re going to be able to really, really highlight lots of challenges. Step number three, make the CFO or somebody in finance who can help you do the analysis your friend, make it quantifiable. That’s why we created the hidden cost analysis. That’s why we have these these these, these these tools and these metrics, it is extremely important to calculate what the cost of random acts enablement are. If you’re gonna want this kind of roll. We spent a lot of time talking about stakeholder management. But one of the things that we’re not talking about is so, okay stakeholder management, how do we quantify the problem? So, three things would be take the debit, you know, take the definition to heart, break it down, but really understand what the with the scope of, of sales enablement, being a bridge between the strategy and execution, and envision what that would look like come up with frameworks to talk about it. Step number two, take an inventory of the different gaps in different groups and connect the dots and step number three, make a friend and finance quantify it.

Brian Lambert 35:43

There you go. And great advice. And so, let’s let’s wrap it up. As always, enlightening conversation, Scott. I enjoyed it. I got I got a little bit heated there for a second around the why but it’s his passion and I think we both have that passion and so much to talk about this and I want to encourage our listeners to reach out and continue this conversation will be at the sales enablement society conference where we can talk about some of these things. And, you know, for the for the those that are out there fighting that fight in this battle, we’d love to hear from you. We’d love to hear your stories and examples and also, you know, quite frankly, challenge us on the ability to execute against this. And that’s, that’s how we learn and that’s how the rising tide lifts all boats. So, thanks so much. We’ll talk to you guys later. Take care.

Nick Merinkers 36:36

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. sending them a LinkedIn request.