0:01

Welcome to the Sales Enablement Society

0:03

Stories from the Trenches , where enablement

0:05

practitioners share their real-world experiences

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. Get the scoop on what's happening inside

0:11

Sales Enablement teams across the global

0:13

SES member community . Each

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segment of Stories from the Trenches share the

0:17

good , the bad and the ugly

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practices of corporate sales . Enablement

0:22

initiatives learned what worked , what

0:24

didn't work and how obstacles were

0:26

eliminated by corporate teams and leadership

0:28

. Get back , grab a cold one and join host

0:31

Paul Butterfield for casual conversations

0:33

about the wide and varied profession of

0:35

sales enablement , where there is never a fits

0:37

all solution .

0:39

Hello and welcome back to another episode

0:41

of the Sales Enablement Society Podcast

0:43

, stories from the Trenches the

0:46

only for us bias podcast

0:48

that I'm aware of where we

0:50

bring practitioners from all over the world and

0:53

we talk about things that we

0:55

often encounter that are similar . In fact , it's interesting

0:57

, even across different cultures . Enablement chases

0:59

some very similar challenges

1:01

. So we bring together these practitioners

1:04

, we talk about what's working , we talk about innovative

1:06

ways they're finding things and sometimes we even talk

1:08

about face plants , because you can

1:11

learn a lot from making

1:13

a mistake and backing up and figuring it out

1:15

. So I want

1:17

to introduce you to today's guest . Her name

1:19

is Megan Davis . Megan is

1:22

the Director of Sales Enablement

1:24

at Hunters and I'll let

1:26

you fill in some more about yourself .

1:27

Awesome . Yeah , thank you , paul , and thanks for having me

1:29

on . Like you said , I'm

1:31

the Director of Sales Enablement

1:34

at Hunters , and Hunters

1:37

for a quick sound bite is

1:39

a cybersecurity software startup

1:41

and we help

1:43

security operations teams mitigate

1:46

real threats faster and more reliably

1:48

with other or than other SIM

1:50

solutions . So my

1:53

role within that is to

1:55

equip and educate all

1:57

of our customer-facing employees really to

2:00

have valuable conversations with our prospects

2:02

and sometimes customers , so

2:04

they can all realize the value that our solution

2:07

brings and ultimately to help

2:09

grow and keep

2:12

business .

2:13

That's what we're here to do grow and keep business

2:16

. Yes , especially focus on the grow . All

2:18

right , well , thanks for spending some time with us today

2:20

. I want to

2:22

start off with well , it's my favorite question

2:25

because I get to ask it every episode which

2:27

is Jimmy Kimmel Challenge . So

2:30

he steps down , retires and

2:33

you're offered his show

2:35

Number one I'd love to know how you got that

2:37

. But number two , who

2:39

is your very first guest and

2:41

why did you bring them onto the show ?

2:44

Yes , so first I think I'd have to

2:46

have a very sharp haircut

2:48

. I feel like you have to have that look if

2:51

you're going into that role . And after that

2:53

, first guest , because I

2:55

am obsessed with optimizing

2:57

performance and how much capability

3:00

or capacity we have to really learn

3:03

and grow , and

3:05

I think that that goes

3:07

across different

3:10

functions and different activities . So the

3:12

person that I would interview is

3:14

Elliot Kipchogi . He

3:18

is the current marathon world

3:20

record holder and I'm

3:23

a runner myself , so he really is inspiring

3:25

and in that aspect as well . But

3:28

I'd ask him about his mindset , like what

3:30

he went through , what

3:32

mental hurdles that he overcame to

3:35

break a record and do something

3:37

that no human has ever done before

3:39

. Right , I think that'd just

3:41

be fascinating to learn about , and

3:43

I also would want to ask him what

3:46

he's planning to do next , right After

3:49

you've already accomplished this . What's next on his agenda

3:52

Exactly ?

3:52

Exactly what a Disneyland . Besides

3:55

that , yeah , relax

3:57

. Maybe , who knows , so do you have any

4:00

imminent races that you're preparing for

4:02

?

4:04

I am actually . I'm running a half

4:07

marathon over in

4:09

Martha's Vineyard in a couple months .

4:12

That sounds really pretty . Yeah , it should

4:14

be All right . Good luck with that

4:16

. So there's

4:18

a lot of debate

4:21

conversation going

4:23

on around

4:25

who is the target

4:28

audience for sales enablement . So

4:31

when you say the term sales enablement , that maybe limits

4:33

it a little bit , and so there's some other terms

4:35

that you're starting to hear people throw around . But

4:37

what's your take on it ?

4:39

My take on this , and I

4:41

think this really goes back to kind

4:43

of the root of sales enablement

4:45

and it being a program

4:47

and not a series of activities or kind

4:49

of random asks of

4:53

different departments . And

4:55

I think traditionally your

4:57

audience is sales , so account executives

5:00

, different levels of sellers from

5:02

BDRs , sdrs to

5:04

managers , etc . Can

5:08

experience . That gets

5:10

broadened , which is a good thing , but

5:13

we're thinking about so

5:16

that can include the go

5:18

to market team or all your

5:20

customer facing employees , so

5:23

marketing , customer success

5:25

, sales engineers that

5:29

can also be broader . In some cases

5:31

I've had trainings that

5:33

all employees at the company took . Right

5:36

, if it's your elevator

5:38

pitch for your company that everyone should

5:40

know or something

5:42

.

5:42

I wish all companies believed that . Sorry

5:44

, Because

5:46

my experience they don't . People

5:49

think the elevator pitch is just for sales . But

5:51

you're so right . Everybody

5:54

really should be able to understand and talk about

5:56

it , because you never know .

5:57

Yeah , no , it's , I completely agree

6:00

, and everyone at your company could

6:02

bump into one of your prospects at

6:04

in line for lunch or

6:07

at the car wash , whatever it is .

6:08

I kind of have to go on vacation .

6:09

Yep .

6:11

Like not even in the same country . Right Is normal

6:13

and run into customers . So yep , you never know

6:15

.

6:16

Absolutely . But yeah

6:18

, I think that's a you

6:21

know , thinking about who at your company

6:23

you should be enabling , and thinking

6:25

about that while you're designing your program

6:28

or your curriculum , really sets you

6:30

up for success and even

6:32

going beyond that , which is something

6:34

I've been thinking about lately , and

6:37

maybe that's a product of being at a startup

6:39

where I have kind of more lateral

6:41

, you know , flexibility in terms

6:44

of what my role is . But what

6:46

about your customers ? Right , because

6:48

your customers , who become

6:50

champions , really do that

6:52

by being able to articulate the value

6:55

of your solution and you know how

6:57

it's bringing them success of their role

6:59

. So I think it's an

7:01

interesting topic to kind of open up and

7:03

learn what enablers are

7:06

experiencing , who they're actually

7:08

enabling and their day to day .

7:10

When you're trying to because I like what you

7:12

said about you know decide who

7:14

your target is or who you're

7:16

. Who's in your charter , you know , before

7:19

designing your program , so that you're thinking

7:21

about everyone . They don't all need

7:23

the exact same kind of enablement . You need to allow

7:26

for that . Who have you

7:28

found the right

7:30

stakeholders to be to

7:33

help an enablement leader figure that out

7:35

? If it's , you know , because if the conversation's

7:37

beyond sales which

7:39

is what a lot of people are hired for , right

7:41

, who should they be talking to ? Or

7:43

how do they start that conversation ?

7:45

Good question , and I think I'll

7:48

preface that by saying it's

7:50

still a journey Like

7:53

don't forget your core audience , you know

7:55

, make sure you have your , your building blocks in

7:57

place and your , your sellers , are enabled . I

8:00

think , beyond that , though , you

8:02

know if you're doing your job well

8:04

, other departments will reach out to you and ask

8:07

what you're doing right or ask for

8:09

access for your team , so you can use that

8:11

as kind of a hint about you

8:14

know which team you should ask and and

8:16

talk to you next . So

8:19

I think , kind of listening to those requests

8:21

and really being proactive , about talking

8:24

to very different teams when they reach out . As key , and

8:27

two teams that I

8:29

found maybe could use more love sometimes

8:32

from enablement and it's not always built

8:34

in from the start are like the HR

8:36

team and your customer success team . Hr

8:42

, because it's very closely tied into

8:44

onboarding , and

8:46

customer success because it's

8:49

not just a . If

8:51

you're just enabling your sales

8:53

team to sell and close the deal and not

8:55

thinking about how it impacts the entire

8:57

, you know , life cycle of your

8:59

customer , then that's a mistake

9:01

. So I think going in learning

9:03

from your customer success team about

9:06

you know what their

9:08

understanding of your solution is

9:10

and how our customers are experiencing

9:12

. It is really important .

9:14

The challenge might

9:16

be for someone in enablement

9:19

to really . I mean , there's no natural

9:21

way that they typically talk to customers

9:24

. Maybe it's the user conference , if there's like an

9:26

A user conference . But do you have

9:28

any recommendations or just

9:31

ideas that have worked for you ? How does

9:33

an enablement person get that

9:35

voice of the customer ?

9:37

In my experience I took kind

9:39

of the approach I outlined and ended

9:41

up talking a lot with our

9:43

customer experience team and

9:46

what the conversation

9:48

kind of gravitated to was our

9:50

customer onboarding and

9:53

I learned what the current state

9:55

for that was , how it was being done and

9:59

you know , being a startup , you're

10:01

always kind of building the plane while you're flying

10:03

it per se , and

10:05

so I got the opportunity to

10:07

work with the customer success team and create

10:10

a customer certification . So

10:13

I think a lot of benefits that

10:15

will derive from that . But

10:18

that's how you know we get that customer

10:20

access because we'll have beta customers

10:22

go through it right , they want to onboard faster

10:25

and get feedback

10:27

from those early customers and so on

10:29

. So that's just one way that I've

10:31

had success doing that .

10:34

That's ideal , I would

10:36

think right , because then you have that

10:38

you can interact , you can ask follow up questions

10:41

and you know it's just better to have

10:43

a live conversation . But I'll

10:45

also mention because I'm sure some of the folks that

10:47

are listening right now have chorus

10:50

or gong or you know there's

10:52

more and more of them coming on all line all the time

10:55

and one of the things that I found at Instructure was

10:57

our product teams and our demand gen

10:59

teams and others were so

11:01

hungry for access to those

11:04

sales call recordings , not

11:06

because they wanted to inspect how

11:08

good the sales person was , they

11:11

wanted to hear how customers react

11:13

to our , you know , when they're talking

11:15

about product and they want to see that physical

11:18

, they want to hear , and

11:20

so that was another potential . You

11:23

know , if anyone listening has that

11:25

kind of tech , you probably have a whole bunch of customer

11:27

conversations that you can go and

11:29

search and find just what sort

11:31

of conversation you're interested in hearing .

11:34

Yeah , that's a great point , that's

11:36

a great point .

11:38

How does this approach address

11:40

some of the common sales and

11:42

nailman problems in your experience ?

11:44

Yeah , so one that I kind of alluded

11:47

to earlier is the buyer

11:49

journey or the revenue cycle

11:51

, kind of however you want to refer to

11:53

it . And

11:55

I think one kind of example

11:59

of a problematic approach to that

12:01

again , like I referred to earlier

12:04

, is that you know your sales team

12:06

may be maybe over promising

12:08

. The customer success

12:10

team is kind of saddled with delivering

12:12

what you've promised right and

12:14

maybe struggling with that if there isn't good

12:16

alignment . And then worst

12:19

case is your customers aren't happy and

12:21

they churn right . That's what you

12:23

don't want to happen , and

12:25

I think you know plugging

12:28

in something like a customer certification

12:30

not going to , you know , solve all

12:32

problems in the world but I think it

12:34

does help by

12:36

building empathy on your go-to-market

12:39

team , because

12:42

you know what we're doing is having our

12:44

whole go-to-market team , as

12:46

well as some beta customers , go through

12:48

this certification , which

12:51

I think will bring a lot of clarity

12:53

to our sales team about

12:55

. You know we're not just telling

12:57

them what the ROI that our customers will

13:00

experience will be , they're kind of experiencing

13:02

it right by going through this . So

13:05

creating that empathy , that shared

13:07

experience . And then

13:10

you know the direct end

13:12

customer , your actual customers , are

13:14

getting the value of getting

13:17

up to speed faster by having a

13:19

program in place .

13:21

Something else that I've seen when

13:24

, when you're doing that with a good methodology

13:26

and you know we can have a whole episode

13:29

on what the right things are in a good sales

13:31

methodology , but one of the things

13:33

that I have seen is any any

13:35

of them should have the

13:37

teaching or enabling the sales people

13:40

to uncover Business

13:43

outcomes and object you know things

13:45

they can't do . Now , right , so nobody talks

13:47

to sales people for a hobby nobody , I know at least , and

13:49

so if they're , if they're choosing to talk

13:52

to a sales person , there's something , something's

13:54

broken , there's something that they can't do

13:56

, so it's up to the sales person to figure

13:58

that out , but in the process

14:01

of collecting what are the outcomes

14:03

and the things that you're looking for , I

14:06

don't have sales people realize this , but they're also

14:08

collecting success metrics . It's

14:10

just two sides of the same coin , but

14:13

how often does , though

14:15

, do those notes get transferred

14:18

over to the CS team ? That's

14:20

just . Another thing I've seen is , if you know , look at when people

14:22

are looking at their sales methodology and making

14:24

sure that that those that , whatever

14:26

you're teaching your reps make sure they're collecting those

14:29

kinds of business case inputs

14:31

, and then how are you going to get those over to

14:33

CS as metrics so

14:35

they can measure and know if a customer

14:37

is is getting what they wanted out of it .

14:40

Absolutely , absolutely .

14:44

There's I want to pivot to to another topic

14:46

here . Is anything else on

14:48

in that area that that you wanted to to

14:51

discuss before we change topic a little bit ?

14:53

I think that covered it . I love what you added to

14:55

about that . I

14:58

kind of taking those pain points and

15:00

using that to . I've experienced

15:02

that as a customer right when I've had a great

15:04

customer success rep take my

15:06

, my pain points verbatim

15:08

and then each quarter in our quarterly

15:11

meetings and ongoing , we're kind of

15:13

checking the boxes and I'm

15:15

seeing the value I'm getting from the product . So

15:17

yeah , I love how you added that .

15:19

I think that there's also a lot of talk

15:21

right now and I suspect by the time this airs

15:23

it'll still be going on About

15:26

companies in the current economic environment

15:29

feeling like that

15:31

they just can't afford budget for enablement . We've

15:35

just been talking about some more comprehensive

15:37

types of enablement . How

15:40

would that apply in

15:43

this challenge that some teams , or a lot of teams

15:45

, are having , which is showing that

15:48

it's not a cost center , that

15:51

it's an investment ? The money

15:53

for the enablement is what I meant . Yeah , how can

15:56

they be better at addressing

15:58

that with this model ?

15:59

Yeah , so

16:02

I think it's , it's

16:04

one more kind of tool in the toolkit or one more story that you

16:06

can use and it's there's a really clear tie to your ROI . So

16:09

in the case of like customer

16:11

onboarding or customer service , you

16:13

have that very clear leading indicator

16:16

that you have with most training right of you know the customers

16:18

that are going through it , the

16:22

percent completion of training . You know

16:24

if you have well worded or hands on kind

16:26

of exam questions you get insights

16:29

on . You know what what customers are doing

16:31

well in your platform and maybe some

16:33

challenge areas . But

16:35

beyond that , this would be

16:37

specific to whatever company

16:40

you're at , but it's your your

16:42

net promoter score . Right , if your

16:44

customers are more satisfied , hopefully after after

16:46

going through this training , because they're getting more

16:49

value out of your product , that's

16:51

a really clear metric that you can deliver to the business

16:53

. And

16:58

same with you know it's a really clear metric

17:00

that you can deliver to the business and

17:03

same with you know if

17:06

you're having customers

17:08

churn or maybe customers that are requiring

17:11

a lot of hand holding by your customer

17:13

success team . Both of those have different

17:16

you know operational efficiency

17:19

metrics and ROI

17:21

metrics if you're . If it's a difference between keeping

17:23

or losing a customer . That's huge . Yeah

17:27

, I think it just opens up like a lot

17:29

of new stories that you can you can

17:31

deliver to the business about the value of enablement .

17:34

When you came into your

17:37

role or maybe it was even in a previous

17:39

role was , was the mandate

17:41

always to be

17:43

looking across customer success and

17:45

the other PS teams and customers , or is that an

17:47

expansion that you identified ? I think people

17:49

kind of be helpful if they

17:52

kind of knew your journey to where you're , you know got to what

17:54

you're doing .

17:56

Yeah , that's a that's a great question . So

17:59

no is the answer . You

18:03

know , my first pride been

18:05

at this company at Hunters for just

18:07

over a year and the first

18:10

initiative was sales onboarding

18:12

, content repository and ongoing sales training . Sounds

18:17

like , yeah , the whole novel programs

18:19

, right , yeah

18:24

, but no , I started there . But

18:26

I think that how I

18:28

got to this customer

18:31

certification project was by

18:33

going back to doing

18:35

a really good current state analysis

18:38

right of and I started

18:40

by doing that for which

18:42

led to the sales onboarding program

18:44

and the content repository and etc

18:46

. But

18:48

I think when you really kind of zoom out and

18:51

you think about that full you

18:53

know buying journey and revenue cycle

18:55

we talked about earlier and

18:58

you talk to more teams and get a clearer

19:00

picture , then you can pinpoint . You

19:02

know you're looking at

19:05

your company internally for different pain

19:07

points where you can improve right

19:09

. So by

19:11

really zooming out and taking a lot

19:13

of time on the current state analysis

19:16

is how I landed at the

19:19

customer certification .

19:20

So what recommendations

19:24

do you have for somebody

19:26

that thinks they should be exploring

19:28

that same thing for their company or their teams

19:31

?

19:31

I would think about the

19:34

skillset you have in sales enablement

19:36

first right , because it's called

19:39

sales enablement , but you

19:41

know things like the onboarding

19:43

program , effective content

19:46

management . Those can be applied

19:48

in areas broader than just sales

19:50

enablement . So really kind of think

19:53

through the broader value of

19:55

what you're delivering and then

19:57

, like we talked about I would

19:59

you know , talk to

20:01

and get time on the calendar with members

20:04

of your customer success team that are

20:06

having conversations with your customers

20:08

and ask

20:11

them about the things you know , like onboarding

20:13

, for example . What is the customer onboarding

20:16

experience like ? You know

20:18

, how much time are you spending

20:20

with these customers , what are they asking you

20:22

? What are some of the challenge areas

20:25

that we're having ? So it's kind of

20:27

doing the same thing that you would

20:29

do in setting up your sales

20:31

enablement program , but with your

20:33

customer success team .

20:35

How was your idea , you know , received when you

20:37

first started to socialize it with some of the other leaders

20:40

that probably weren't thinking about what you

20:42

do that much ?

20:43

Yeah , I will say

20:45

it was a very clear

20:48

need and kind of shared pain point

20:50

with the customer experience team

20:52

. And it's kind

20:55

of a good problem to have , right If you're

20:57

growing and you're scaling and you need

20:59

something like this for the customers

21:01

. So that piece

21:03

was in place and then I

21:06

had to kind of get the green

21:08

light from our management

21:11

team right , the executive management team

21:13

. So , really thinking through

21:15

, you know what were the operational benefits

21:18

for the company ? How

21:20

does this apply to like , why me , why

21:22

should someone in sales enablement take on

21:24

this training

21:26

? And then

21:29

how are you going to deliver it ? And

21:31

it wasn't a like a quick

21:33

win by any means . We went through a lot

21:36

of iterations of what

21:39

the actual training curriculum

21:41

should look like like , what the content level

21:43

is . You know how our customers

21:46

are actually going to be getting value from

21:48

it , from the modules , so

21:51

it really was a full you

21:54

know , presenting multiple versions

21:57

of what this final outcome would

21:59

be before landing on it . So I guess

22:01

that's my number two tip would be , after

22:03

you do have an idea about something , to

22:06

make sure the

22:08

pain point is clear and understood

22:10

and if that is a true pain to

22:13

the business , be agile

22:15

with how you're prescribing

22:17

your solution , because it's , you

22:19

know , in this case it was probably the third

22:21

solution that

22:23

we landed on , so don't be afraid

22:25

to kind of go back to the drawing board .

22:29

And I would think that when

22:31

a byproduct of you having those

22:33

conversations and initiating them was

22:36

that you were starting to be seen

22:38

as more of a strategy player

22:40

rather than just a

22:43

provider of training , Because you

22:45

know you'd be bringing like some thought leadership

22:47

that perhaps no one had really put two

22:50

and two together , like you know before , and now you're thinking

22:52

of some of these things , so I would think that

22:54

would help to elevate your whole program .

22:56

I hope so it's still . I'll come back

22:58

on and I'll let you know how that one goes .

23:00

Let's know how it goes . Okay , All right

23:02

. Well , before we let you go

23:05

, I would love to have

23:07

you just drop a little more knowledge

23:09

on everybody . And

23:11

it's the time travel

23:13

scenario . Right ? You're given the gift of going

23:15

back and having a one on one with any

23:17

younger version of yourself , but you can

23:20

only cover one topic . What's

23:22

that big thing that you wish you'd understood

23:24

earlier ?

23:25

When I was thinking about this question my

23:27

brain was in business mode

23:29

and enablement mode . So I kind of answered

23:31

with respect to career

23:33

path and kind of what choices

23:35

I would make with respect to that . And

23:38

for me I

23:41

thinking back to

23:43

when I was graduating high school

23:45

. I stressed out so

23:47

much about which college I

23:50

would go , to which degree , what

23:52

I would major in all

23:54

these decisions that in hindsight

23:56

they're just choices

23:59

. You make a million of them and

24:01

you're not defined by any . You're

24:04

really not defined by any one choice . It's kind

24:06

of a series of opportunities

24:09

that you get to experience . So

24:11

I guess that was my advice

24:14

is just keep going and experimenting

24:16

and trying new things and

24:19

you'll get into a sales

24:21

enablement role that you really enjoy .

24:24

All right . Thank you , appreciate that

24:26

, and thanks for spending time with us today . You're

24:29

busy . We really appreciate the time you put into

24:31

preparing and recording

24:33

. So , once you know , we appreciate that and

24:35

I'm sure everybody listening does as well . I

24:37

also want to say thank you to everybody who just

24:40

listened to our conversation . If

24:42

people are curious about any

24:45

of these topics that we've been talking about is

24:48

the best way to reach and connect with you LinkedIn

24:50

.

24:51

Yes , I'm usually on top of my LinkedIn

24:53

, so feel free to reach out

24:55

and I'm always happy to make

24:58

time to chat .

24:59

All right , so thanks . So there you go . If

25:02

you know , as you've been listening , you

25:04

want to continue the conversation . Megan would love

25:06

to hear from you . So thank you again for

25:08

investing your time and I hope you'll be back

25:11

here in two weeks , when we'll have a new guest

25:13

and a new topic .

25:14

Thanks for joining this episode of Stories

25:16

from the Trenches . For more sales enablement

25:18

resources , be sure to join the Sales Enablement

25:21

Society at sesocietyorg

25:23

. Let's sesocietyorg

25:27

.