162: A Journey from Zero to Sixty: Evolving Sales Enablement Capability and Maturity w/ Bill Mathias (ACI Learning)

Speaker A: Hello, this is Tom Pesello, the ROI guy. And welcome to the Evolvers podcast sponsored by sales enablement platform provider MediaFly. Our mission is to provide you with the independent insights, community advice and tools to guide your sales content and value enablement journeys and fuel your professional evolution. My guest today is Bill Mathias. He is the global head of sales enablement and revenue ops at AH ACI Learning and they are a training provider for leaders in auditing, cybersecurity information technology. Prior to his current role, Bill has held various sales, sales enablement and go to market leadership roles with the likes of the Online Learning Consortium, Hertzig University, Devry Education Group and Drexel Elearning, part of Drexel University. Welcome Bill.

Speaker B: Thanks Tom, Appreciate it. And uh, hey Tom, thanks again for accepting some random email from some random person you didn't know late at night, which, uh, kind of created, uh, the catalyst for the conversation today. I guess it did.

Speaker A: And for those sellers who don't think that LinkedIn can work for that, um, you know, Bill and I are a great example. Uh, we didn't know each other very, not too long ago and we're getting to know each other a lot better through emails and sharing articles and just being supporters of each other out there. And it all did start with an outreach basically via LinkedIn and I believe an in message. Right?

Speaker B: It did. It was part of my, uh, post Covid. I had to be grateful for Covid. One of my post Covid crazy ideas as I was going through some, some insomnia. We'll save that story for another time, Tom. Yeah, we can dive into that later.

Speaker A: But it does work. And what helped was, you know, Bill, in the outreach. It was a very value add outreach. It wasn't there to pitch anything. It was really there to connect, to get to know each other. Um, I think that there's still great opportunities for that. If you're going to outreach and sell, however, or want to schedule a demo, uh, I say don't resist that. I know you're under quota pressures a lot of times and um, kind of KPI pressures to go and do outreaches, just make sure they're value add. And you know, Bill and I are proof that when there is a value added connection between two people, they will connect. Uh, we all want to connect, we want to socialize, we want to learn from each other, we want to advance each other's careers and in the space. So this is proof positive that it does work if you do it right. And you always think about, hey, how Can I help the other person? And then I was more than willing to, you know, Bill said, hey, I got a story to share. And he said it could make a great story for your revolvers. And I'm like, come on, join us, join us. And Bill's getting, you know, I'm sure, Bill, you're looking to practice your podcasting and practice your speaking and kind of get the group story out there too. Yeah, uh, really looking forward to our conversation as a result.

Speaker B: Definitely it is very much about the group. And I don't remember how many possible related terms might have been in that, uh, that first subject line, but, uh, some of the things I just want to add to add some clarity and context around my background, because I know we touched on a number of kind of learning organizations first. Um, higher education institution, any way you slice it, or dice is our sales organization. So, um, you know, uh, their job is there to develop individuals and help individuals grow. But at the end of the day, um, if they don't have students in school, it's going to be really difficult for them to achieve their mission. My background, even if I span back several, uh, years prior to some of those organizations, includes things like retail management, includes luxury goods, consumer banking, and Tom, probably a story for another day, but consumer banking was kind of. I was in that at the onset of online banking and during my marketing internship. Um, that was one of my first experiences with crisis management and change management due to 911 and me leading the charge, trying to open up two branches in Manhattan that were originally scheduled for that week. So we'll again, 22 years old, trying to figure that out. And then whoever was the genius that sent me into Manhattan several weeks later in a giant white van with the word wow on it through, uh, the tunnel. Um, you know, hey, I'm still here to say, um, but that we'll save that story too. We're have a lot to talk about. Yeah, Um, I am definitely part of this xennial micro generation. And for many of you that might not be familiar with it, it's the last cohort that graduated college before social media. So think bleeding between sort of analog and digital. And I think that impacts sort of my, um, style and process as we go. I have had the honor to win president's awards in luxury goods as well as in higher education from sales and operations standpoint. Um, and then I really started in sales enablement, even though it wasn't called enablement back in 2009, 2010, um, and then subsequently got involved in other things in terms of marketing, digital marketing, things like that. So again, we uh, may think of kind of jack of old trades, um, we miss the other half of it. My COO reminded me the other day, but that's a little bit more about the background of me that maybe we don't see on LinkedIn, uh, that maybe people aren't aware of. And frankly I haven't stopped and looked at in a long time.

Speaker A: Yeah. Now what I want to hone in on, Bill, is this past year where you took on the sales enablement rev ops role@ Ah, ACI learning and you started from scratch. I mean was there any sales enablement there prior? I don't know. There wasn't a formal group. Right.

Speaker B: There was. You're right, Tom, there was not a formal group. Um, and um, there were some portions that existed as we've kind of went through the year and explored and did some audits and we'll touch on that. Um, but theoretically, uh, no, there was no sales enablement. Um, there was a revenue operations group that was part of an acquisition that we had. Um, and we'll touch on that too. My role, uh, in joining January of last year, um, and I'm honored to really head enablement and now revenue operations as well is um, to serve the enterprise wide globally. Um, and enterprise wide for us might be a little bit different than some other organizations. Uh, this includes consumer B2C enterprise B2B channel and partnerships. Um, it includes and incorporates things like sales operations, sales enablement, revenue operations, sort of full gamut, um, and tech stacks included. Right. So kind of a little caveat we might say. Batteries not included. Well, tech stacks are certainly included, um, in the role here. Um, from a team member standpoint, um, it encompasses over 85 plus sales reps and sales leaders, geographically dispersed across the US, the UK, some consultants in Southeast Asia, and we're looking at sales professionals that are from anything from SDRs to BDRs to full cycle reps as well as customer and partner success. So all that falls within the spectrum of enablement as it relates to ACI learning. I report directly to our coo, which I think is a great place for enablement to be. Um, to gain vantage and insights as to what's happening in the organization. Um, and what's fun is that I get to be sort of this little bit mad scientists as some people have called me. And certainly I've had the hair at times to prove that a little bit of kind of this DJ, I'm again product of the mid to late 90s, don't judge, um, big electronic music fan and I did DJ at some raves and probably another story for another day. Um, and this part of a jack of all trades as well. Um, from the standpoint of the often times part. So oftentimes you need people that are more than just a specialist in a particular role. Um, so that's what kind of enablement and revops looks like here in terms of ACI learning itself and the organization. And thank you for sharing, uh, kind of the space we're in. We look to define our markets. We're not looking to be the lead, we're looking to define it like head above everybody else, shoot for the stars. Um, we have a purpose. And I know Tom, before this call, you and I were talking about kind of your new endeavor, moving into this purpose thing. We have a real clear purpose and that's that we create meaningful outcomes that impact lives. And that is for our learners, for the organizations we work with, as well as for the people that are here. And we focus again on people. So individuals, organizations seeking to develop their talent benches all the way through augmenting learning portfolios, and certainly our crew that makes it happen. Day in and day out, we live and breathe a multimodal lifelong learning learning outcome. Uh, career readiness in audit, cybersecurity. And it as you touched on and multimodal, um, for us is everything from in person learning to virtual in person learning to on demand subscription based, uh, cinematic experiences. I mean again, we are market defining, which is very exciting. Um, our learners are everything from career launchers and starters to advancers and continuers. Um, believe it or not, we serve over 500,000 learners or people amongst six continents, 170 countries. Um, and one quick highlight just, uh, and we shared it on LinkedIn last week is last year alone we helped over 2.1 thousand alumni land it and cybersecurity careers in their field of study. Like, that's incredible when you think about the pandemic alone and this big discussion right now about mass exodus and things like that. Great resignation. Um, that we're helping connect learners to employment opportunities. Now, ACI learning itself focused on growth in really two ways. Um, we are in accelerated growth. We're private equity funded, but we grow organically and through acquisition. So amongst everything that enablement encompasses, let's just throw the kitchen sink at it, right, Tom? Um, we're looking over the last 18 months, we integrated four brands globally. Um, and frankly I don't imagine that to change anytime soon. Um, as we shoot for the kind of beyond the Stars. And I don't know that it would be exciting without that happening. Um, in the last 12 months alone, we grew from 70 employees to 275 crew members. We launched four new subscription models, a cinematic series. We collaborated with AWS, Restart and their mission on helping unemployed and underemployed folks gain careers in the cloud space. An interesting note, when you think of subscription in many industries, just one subscription product alone might take six to 12 months. From development to launching. We did four, um, amongst. Just trying to do everything else that we're doing amongst the four different brands. So, um, when we look at it, um, there was a lot of things happening. And I remember back to starting in January and I met with our coo Tom, and our CEO Brett Shively. Um, and they reminded me and said, hey, are you up to the task? Are you ready to put your rocket shoes on? And boy, they weren't kidding, Tom. They certainly weren't. They also shared that I'd be like a kid in a candy store, which I am. Um, there's a lot to work on and again, we're dealing with people. There's a lot of purpose in that. Um, so, also true 100%. Um, the goal that we set out for and will continue to strive for is to um, really drive enterprise value and scalability across the board. Um, and just as important, and I think this stems from C suite down, which I love here, um, is that doing well by doing good and an idea that when we do the right things, consistency, that revenue will follow, um, which I think is remarkable when we think about everything we're attempting to accomplish, the space that we're in and um, things like that. But most importantly, and I get reminded by Tom every single day, um, to stay committed and remain focused, um, in the midst of everything. So again, we have a whirlwind, but we have to stay focused in that.

Speaker A: Let's talk about the focus of the group. Um, the key challenges that you faced. Obviously you come in and there hadn't been a lot of formal enablement prior. You've got a big mission. What were some of the key challenges you recognized and you wanted to address?

Speaker B: First, second, um, that's a heavy question, Tom. Um, and I've been in a number of organizations where new leaders come in and change is inevitable within the first five days. The approach that I took is knowing coming in that there's going to be hyper growth, knowing that you need rocket shoes, uh, knowing that things may or may not exist. Number one is learn. Uh, number one, um, no changes immediately. So um, that, that was sort of the first part. The second part that I felt was really, really important is to define what sales enablement would be here at ACI Learning, if not just for me as a team of one coming in. Right. Um, but as we work with the organization, um, that has multiple layers, multiple things, um, that is frankly and continuing to do smash targets, hold world class win rates, like you don't want to come in and break something. Right. That would be one thing is if the organization is completely disarray, right. And you come in and you're trying to fix things. Another thing, when they're doing exceptionally well, right. And we have to take those team members and we have to elevate them. So um, the definition that I scribed for ourselves in terms of enablement, again, team of one, when I joined in January, was to set the team up for success and then not fail them. Right. That was it. And then somebody said, can you boil it down into one word? And as you'll learn Tom, as we continue to have conversations, I'm at times be long winded. So one word, um, and when they asked me that one word jumped right in the mind. Confidence. And that is the confidence amongst the team members up and the tools, resources, skills, uh, that we develop all the way up and from leadership, from board leadership down in terms of the abilities of the team members, can we achieve these, can we do this more faster please? Right. Um, so I think that's an important part.

Speaker A: I love how you were able to boil it down to the one word and then kind of set up a mission statement the way that you did, which I think is really important. A lot of times we want to jump into fixing whatever is broken first and foremost. But the organization, if they haven't had a sales enablement role or revenue ops role, revenue enablement role needs to understand what the heck it is, what's the charter for the group and everything else. So I think learning what the organization needed and then defining exactly what they needed out of your group and putting it into a charter, awesome. And then the ability to market it with one word of confidence is brilliant.

Speaker B: Yeah, well, I appreciate that because I surprised myself on that one too. And I think there's a couple other folks that were like, wow, Bill came up with one word quick. Um, but I think to your point, Tom, you know, like many professionals in this space, you know, sales enablement perhaps is conceived and filled post when it's really needed. I mean that's what often happened, which creates some interesting Variables along the way. Um, and it led me to kind of this notion in my head and again, just talking with Brett Shively earlier last week, um, as well as Tom, this idea that last year was very, our first year of enablement was very much about the idea of self leveling concrete. We've got all this bits and pieces, but if that foundation isn't strong, we're not able to build and scale off of that. So last year, very much self leveling concrete. If I could paint a picture in my head of what that looks like. So initially as we set out, we went out to do kind of the small wins while building frameworks and building some of those foundation a bit heavier emphasis on the tactical, as you can imagine. So the big question is, amongst everything, which fire do we work to extinguish? Which one do we let burn a little bit? Which one do we let burn till it smolders? Um, and as you probably can imagine, we quickly realized that the lift couldn't be done alone. So I'm happy to say, may of last year, five months in, um, we invited and happily accepted. Uh, Alexis came in and joined our team in terms of the vision and the dream that we had. And her primary focus amongst all of it was on B2C so that we could continue to drive some of the other components. Um, and I think one of the most important things to do as she joined, I recognize from my years of experience and from the leaders that I've come across in my career is 150% trust in them from the get go. Um, they had earned, I had to earn their trust. But 150% trust in her. And I think that allowed us to build a fantastic initial relationship so that we could scale fast, um, as we progressed through.

Speaker A: Yeah. So what were some of the, you talked about some of the tactical things that you did, Reel off a few of the ones that you decided, hey, this is, this needs the work or this is foundational. And we really move on beyond it. Kind of what the current prior state was and kind of what you did.

Speaker B: Sure, yeah. One of the things that I love that you touched on earlier when we're just getting started in the conversation was this idea of community and sharing ideas. Right. And so part of how we approach some of the challenges, if you will, in there was to leverage insights from the sales enablement community. Um, and you know, the idea of why invent just to invent when we can craft something from success kind of popped into my head. Um, I think it's something that's super unique to sales enablement. Um, again, being in higher ed learning HR space for nearly 18 years, uh, there might be some wavering from that original idea in some of those other spectrums. But here in sales Enablement, it is very much a community of share. Um, so what do we do? Um, by quarter, we built out a number of sales enable what we call sales enablement capabilities. Over last year, that turned out to be kind of like 13 different items at various iterations. Um, we had enablement. We bucketed out another group called enablement Services, Um, and that was about 30 plus items that we achieved. Trainings, um, tools, resources, different things. We set MBOs, um, now some of them were probably a little bit lofty. Um, but we did them overall. We did them by B2C group and by B2B group, um, to achieve over 20, 21, along with targets for kind of where we should be on the sales enablement maturity model as outlined by Miller Hyman Group. Um, and that was really to move towards scalable. Right. Um, so consider us extremely random. Let's get into scalable. Let's at least cross that line there. Um, so if you're not familiar with that model, maybe folks are, maybe they're not. There's about seven different categories there and a number of subgroups. But again, our goal was to move on that path into more of a, uh, organized. I also love the fact that they use informal and organized together as kind of calling that, that group. And then kind of a stretch for us was could we get some into scalable? We had any in scalable last year. Not really. Did we get them at least across the line, uh, in those various categories? Yeah. So looking back, um, we were attempting to accomplish this in theoretically seven months. Right. So Alexa started in May. She needed some time to ramp up. We're now a team of two. We're all still learning. So it's basically seven months to accomplish, uh, building and flying a plane at the same time and maintaining levels of success that are extraordinary in some ways. Um, we looked at sales language process stages. Um, key to note at the time, we're also running two different instances of Salesforce, uh, amongst the teams. Um, right now with our latest acquisition, we're now up to three different instances of Salesforce. Um, so again, through acquisition, we also have to take. Language is really important. Sales process is really. Are we all talking the same thing? So that if we go down the line of starting to measure it or develop training, we kind of all have an idea what we're talking about. So that was one of the big areas. Um, we did a materials audit, you know, what, where, when what, you know, uh, who was using what and that led to kind of platforms too. Right. So even within those instances we're using different Tech stack platforms. So on one we're using something like spec and on something we're using like screen steps. And there's advantages and disadvantages probably to both. Um, and we'll be looking at what scalability of those platforms looks like in the future. Required, um, training. So you know I mentioned we launched four subscription products so we had a number of go to markets that we needed to do. Maybe enablement was evolved a little bit later on than it needed to be. Um, in some of those. So we're looking at that um, onboarding. Onboarding is an interesting one because if we're not really onboarding a heck of a lot of people, um, or onboarding happens very rapidly. Like where does that fit into the mix? On the B2C side we had some PDF training materials and what we did is we worked to move and put that into more of an engaging format. Ah, in an lms which, which reduced it being random. Right now you have a plan for somebody to go in this M year we'll be taking a look at onboarding experience enterprise wide, um, from a sales standpoint. And this would be something that would kind of overlay with traditional HR onboarding, um, and then communications. So we built out a communications matrix. So what would we do if we had significant changes, learnings, processes. Um and then one of the things that we wanted to do is to invite the sales community in to hold dialogue. So we started something called an Enable nugget. We hashtag it um, and it allows us to curate things. And so every Thursday we make a post on our team's channel something related to sales. Either it's a training that somebody went to or it's a resource or what have you, something related to sales to help bring in kind of the dialogue. And we're going to continue to do that. And as we went on over the year we also launched some bonus Enable nuggets. They were like more random and sporadic. Um, but that was a way to kind of bring it together. So those were some of the first things that we set out to do to ensure that the dialogue was happening and that we're all talking same language.

Speaker A: Yeah, no, I love it. And there's a lot that people can go back and re listen to that because there's a lot. You mentioned Bill of Roadmap items that I think people should pay attention to. What were some of the big hurdles that you faced in launching some of these elements, whether it be, you know, the sales language, the process, the stages, the materials audit, the different tech stacks, I'm sure represented a, uh, pretty significant problem. Where did you kind of stumble a little bit or have to maybe go back and revisit it or even got wrong initially and had to redo or. Or would like to do differently today? Yeah.

Speaker B: So from a biggest hurdle standpoint, I think what's interesting is that going in, we knew it was going to be sort of crazy. Right. I, um, think that's one of the first things that's really important is when you go in that Kevin Monroe shared with me, have high anticipation, low expectations. Right. So what are the possibilities that could potentially be out there, um, and then not go in necessarily with some expectations so that, um, you can be there and listen and learn and things like that. But from a hurdle standpoint, you know, we could talk multiple organizations and cultures, multiple systems, multiple priorities, learning as you fly, you know, sales, tech platforms, balance, speed. Like, there's a ton going in there. But if I were to look back, right, because at the time, you're just in the midst of it. If I were to look back, um, while in it, I would say maintaining focus and excitement m amongst all of that is probably, um, one of the things that we really need to make sure that we're paying attention to us. So for us as a small team, myself and Alexis, last year alone, um, I needed to make sure that she felt supported, that she felt trusted. Right. Because she was leading a large charge just on the B2C component. Um, and we needed to be collaborative at least with the dynamic in our own team. So, again, we were in a whirlwind. A fun world win, but a whirlwind nonetheless. And so, you know, I don't necessarily look at it that they were hurdles. There were things that we needed to address. But I think also by the first things we took a look at, language, communication, those type of things, it allowed us to do that. The emphasis on learning and not changing quickly allowed us to build some credibility. Um, and I think at the bottom of that, if we can build credibility or trust and start to move towards that confidence marker that we outlined earlier, that allowed us to move through some of these other hurdles. And sure, I mean, I can't. There were enough of them. Um, but, um, we really wanted to listen to the folks here. Again, I look at it that as an org, we've got 275 customers internally. From a sales standpoint, uh, we've got 85 plus customers internally, not to mention the external customers. Right. And then if you're looking at something like channel or partnerships, there's probably intermediate group. And so I think one of the interesting things here within enablement is we have to think about all of the customers across it that at the end of the day employee experience has a direct correlation impact on customer experience, um, and making sure that we're able to build those things, um, as we go through. I mean one of the areas was we just didn't have documentation in a central repository or a hub and we're still working towards that but we at least started to use OneDrive, um, and SharePoint to consolidate that and then we had our two knowledge based components sort of filter back into it.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think that you're hitting on the culture, the importance of culture to kind of get you through some of the challenges and, and making sure you have that growth mindset so that you can have the high anticipation, low expectations or what I should say, kind of incremental expectations. Not going to be all of a sudden, uh, hey, you launched this thing and it's a huge win and here's the winner's circle and here's the big trophy. No, it's going to take some time and you better have excitement in the journey and not just thinking about the excitement in that destination.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think you're right. I mean it is about the journey and the easiest way I can explain that kind of the expectation thing you're talking on. I mean you often have this conversation with marketing teams. Right. You know, um, you know, sales comes, I need leads. Right. And there's this belief, kind m of magical belief that if you drop X dollars today on this, you're going to get something today. The reality is that's not, that's not necessarily the case. There's not, there's not really many instances where you can drop today and gain today. Um, it is about building. I um, also think to that end it's also important that you know, there's words like change and there's words like adapt and there's words like evolve. Um, adapting is what we need to do. I don't necessarily need you to forget everything that you did before. Right. And go completely left. What I need you to do is incrementally, as you had suggested, to make adaptations along the way. Adaptations, let's say for 30 days now. It's a habit that habit you continue to grow on now you're, now you're kind of evolving and going there. Um, so it's an interesting dynamic that happens within that, within that space.

Speaker A: So I know that you've got different systems which make it probably really difficult to do some of the measurement that you might need to do to measure the success. But what have been some of the impacts of delivering the capability maturity improvements that you've made?

Speaker B: I would say that I'm going to preface this by saying we set out for some really lofty, ambitious targets. Looking back, who would have thought we're trying to get into scalable in 12 months with one person. Um, and again we were in a period of that self leveling concrete. So some of those metrics and I think it's often the case a lot of it becomes correlations too. Right. Um, I think there are some new things out there that I'm excited exploring with some other experts out there in the human capital space of trying to get real valuation on it. So you know, who knows, conversation we may have in the future might actually be able to get to an actual business dollar. Right. Um, but we set out to impact the following things. One was roadmap milestones. So you know, um, come, you know, come as we go, you know, as we are in kind of year one. So what do we build? Did we deliver? Um, are they in action? Yes. Um, did we move on the maturity model? Yes, we moved from um, random, very low random to some space within informal or organized. Did we get to scalable?

Speaker A: No.

Speaker B: Um, is that okay? Absolutely. Um, reduced ramp time. Um, so when we look at that again from a new hire standpoint on the B2C side specifically, we went from kind of random, sporadic to more of a defined approach. Um, through, through the utilization of the lms. Distribution of quota is one that I am really interested in, I continue to be interested in in 2022. Um, because it does give insight to the health of the business. Um, and so again the, those that have achieved is, is increasing.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: So again got a number of people smashing targets. Um, maybe carrying the weight of the team, health of the organization would be to have more helping carry the weight of the team. So um, we are moving in there I think trust, rapport, confidence I would say anecdotally. Um, all up. Uh, how do we know? Our crew are certainly more curious. They're sharing kudos with our team and different things that we've been working on how it's been making an impact. Um, they're accessing information Faster. They're doing peer to peer sharing on calls. Um, if we flashed back to the beginning of last year hesitancy as we look towards the end of last year and I just had the conversation with Alexis, she was so excited to get off the call where people were sharing insights and information and how they approach something together. Um, I think that's a correlated impact, uh, or a correlation to the work that Alexis has been doing. So I think we're seeing those that happen from a sales enablement and revops crew. Um, we're also anticipated to grow. So at the end of 2021 we restructured as following our fourth acquisition, um, and revenue operations joined the team. So now we're a mighty team of three including myself. We've got Alexis and we've got Julie. Um, I'm so proud of both of them. Um, they've taken things on and so leaders have shared that we've knocked it out of the park last year. So I think that's great insight. Um, and last January I was asked what success would look like at the end of 2021. And while I understand metrics are important, um, I shared the following and that is if all the sales crew are on a stage looking ahead, getting cheered on by family, friends, the rest of the organization. Um, while I or and or team right at the beginning when I said it was just me, if we were off to the side, off that side side curtain stage and just one of those individuals looked back, smiled or winked, we did our job. Right. And so um, I'm confident that that happened more than once last year. Um, and uh, again I understand metrics are important but you know, from a feeling standpoint and from a human connection standpoint and things like that, I think that's a tremendous marker for us to take a look at year one again looking back and saying theoretically you really had seven months to make this happen.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I think that purpose, uh, based story is one that'll help the team and the other people that are responsible for helping you achieve these goals kind of drive forward. Right. So let's not forget how important purposes Simon Sinek's why, why you do things is that one salesperson who's standing up there proudly in front of family and the winner and may winner circle when they did last year and they can wink back at you because you're the one that helped them to do it, that gives that person that chance uh, to be excited. So I do think that we tend to be very metrics driven today and I think that sometimes you can get hyper focused on that and forget what really m motivates people. And it's not a metric that motivates people. It's that story and that purpose that motivates people. So kudos for making sure that's core to the performance metrics that you're doing. And then the other ones just to revisit them, you had kind of the roadmap milestones. So your projects that you had set up, uh, did you achieve them or not? The capability maturity model, I think is something everyone should really consider to have a model that you're measuring yourself against so you can track your advancements and you kind of know what's next and then pick a couple of those really salient metrics that you know make a difference. If it's ramp up time, win rates, deal size, you had quota distribution, which is one I love because it shows that there's not just a small group of a players that are carrying the whole team, which too many sales teams are afflicted with in a good way because you've got some a players that are doing it, but a bad way in that you can't scale an organization like that. And I really do like the purpose driven kind of confidence metrics that your uh, that your confidence measures that you're putting in there. That it's not just about you enabling, it's the sellers contributing and feeling like they're a part of enablement. Because I really think that the community aspect of what you created, that you're creating your program from the success of the sellers and the sellers sharing that success and then you're just there to try to figure out how to better scale what the good sellers are already doing and they're identifying. I love that aspect of it.

Speaker B: Yeah. I think part of that stems from, well, it's our current CEO. I happened just by happenstance, happened to work with him a decade previously, uh, and he saw something in me that maybe I didn't see in myself. And as I shared with him the other week, um, I am trying to find the right ways to pay that forward. Um, and um, so again, helping the team members be successful, setting them up to be successful is very much a testament to the learnings that I had over a decade ago underneath his leadership. Um, just so happened to be at the same organization. Like worlds collided at the right time.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's great to see that you're back with them. I always love, uh, kind of meeting people in your career and then being able to get to work with them again. Especially when they've had such a big influence. What are you looking to accomplish? I mean you've accomplished so much over the first 12 months. I know you're adding another team member and growing the team. What are some of the other big goals and initiatives you have for the next 12?

Speaker B: So I guess I'll frame it like this because we set out kind of a vision for this year, um, which is strategy, service and support through business partner and a data analytics approach. Um, it's essentially Rocket Shoes 2.022 which just happens to be 2022. Um, but what does that look like? What does it mean for sales enablement and revenue operations crew? Um, we envision essentially helping the organization reach the Ritz Carlton plus and yes plus sort of approach, um, in this highly competitive landscape. So we're trying to set the bar really, really high. Um, from a goal standpoint, what are we looking at? Um, things like, uh, prioritization matrix and an intake process so that we can get really, really clear on what we're going to be working on. Um, as you can imagine, um, the number of organizations we serve, the number of leaders, all the priorities. What makes sense, what's the difference between a request and a case. Right. And how do we teach people sort of deficient that um, sales process and stages, what I like to call again 2.022. So the infusion of some new ideas and some additional clarity, um, things like above and below the line selling by Skip Miller, um, are influencing some of that consolidated, um, tech stacks enterprise wide. So how do we become better, faster, smarter? Um, as I talked with some um, uh, chief customer officers, um, data analytics is interesting because at the end of the day it's about the people that interpret the data that's really important. So making sure that we're able to do that in a very important, succinct way, um, knowledge, product knowledge to what I like to call value matrix. And this is in part thanks to your book Evolved Selling. Um, unbeknownst to you, not necessarily a plug, but happens to be a plug. But uh, in particular what I really liked in that book was the value matrix and how clear and succinct that can be for team members. And so again the customers we serve features and benefits. Okay, but helping them imagine either how does that, uh, help me avoid the mistakes from the past three to six months or how does it make the next three to six months smooth sailing for me? Really impactful and I think it's going to make for some really exciting conversations and help Us get more and deeper into the discovery. That's often a missed opportunity for orgs. Um, metrics. Metrics, Metrics. Um, so leading versus lagging, uh, or leading, what I like to call leading over lagging. Um, a lot of the metrics we look at today are lagging measures. Right. Historical reference points. How do we understand what helps us move forward? So how do we slice and dice it? How do we interpret it? How do we advise our business partners? Employee experience is something I'm really passionate about too. At the end of the day, that experience impacts the. The customer experience. So making sure that our team members have really good experiences, skillset development, things like that. BHAG or lofty aspirations. Yes, we have those. I have something called the Ode to Karate Kid, um, which is essentially some sort of sales dojo where we can practice, practice, practice, build muscle memory in hopes that we never have to use it in some of those tough situations. Um, evolution from sales enablement to sales empowerment and move revenue operations to revenue enablement. So putting more emphasis onto the customer, be less heavily reliant on process. That'll give us a little bit of freedom for more scalability there. And then the last kind of big aspiration is move towards becoming a direct revenue generator. So not just through others, but as we grow and we develop and we craft things, are there things that we could bring the market to help other organizations? Um, so how can we do that in terms of being, uh, that in the space as well? Again, back to the overall goal of the organization to be defining our markets. Um, and how can we do that in this space?

Speaker A: I'm just imagining, as you said, rocket shoes that you have a new award that you give out, and literally they're rocket shoes either to your group or to the sellers that are using sales enablement. Empower success, man. Just a visual that popped up. I don't know if you've done that

Speaker B: already, but we have not. But Tom, I'm kind of excited that you talked about that. Um, you never know who you meet in the world, right? I have a neighbor who, coincidentally I just met who actually designs custom shoes. He's done it. He's done them for Kanye or Yee or whatever his name is now. Um, he's done them for some WWE Superstars. I almost said WWF again. Product of the 80s. Um, but, uh, we were talking about collaborating on an actual pair of rocket shoes.

Speaker A: Um, you gotta do that, brother. Uh, definitely, Bill. That just. It's there. I visualized it. I visualized the wings and the little rocket out. And I think that is definitely something that is in the cards for ACI Learning Awards coming year. So good luck on that collaboration. So what's the piece of advice you'd like to leave the Evolvers community with today? Beyond Rocket Shoes?

Speaker B: Yeah, I sat and I thinking about this because a lot of people ask about the advice.

Speaker A: Um,

Speaker B: I think it is really important to be curious and invite feedback. The good, bad or the indifferent? And be authentically and passionately about both. Everything is a learning opportunity. It's a marker for us to learn, grow and to evolve always. And I firmly believe that. Um, maybe that's because I grew up with a mom that was a teacher for 30 years. Maybe it's that I grew up with an engineer and global sales individual in my household. Maybe it's the people that I've come across that challenged me to think different. But I really firmly believe that, that we have a opportunity every single part and way. And even John C. Maxwell talks about it. You know, challenges and failures and successes. We need to all learn from them. Um, and so yeah, for me it's be curious and invite feedback.

Speaker A: Now, Bill, you reached out to me online. How can people find and reach out to you online to get some m. More m wisdom and to find out how to get a pair of those rocket shoes?

Speaker B: Well, it's going to sound funny in the world of all the social media channels. I've made a concerted effort to pick LinkedIn as my exclusive place to be. Um, so they can find me on LinkedIn. Ah, W Mathias Jr. Um, all sort of collaborated together. They could also do enablenugget. So this year, um, we're moving Enable Nuggets not only internal, but we're taking it external. So there are some things that we share externally, we bring it back in. There'll be some things when we're able to do it, we'll share from internal, external, um, and that's really where people can find me on LinkedIn.

Speaker A: I love that and I love that you're taking some of your learnings out. Um, because I do think that, you know, that part of the evolvers community, we created it so we could learn from each other and not repeat the same mistakes. Learn from those and all grow together. So thank you for sharing that.

Speaker B: So if you want to steal Enable Nugget, steal it, use it internally, drive the conversation.

Speaker A: Sounds great. Bill Mann, thank you for joining us and participating to make the evolvers a great and growing community.

Speaker B: Thank you very much, Tom. It's been a pleasure. And again, an honor and thank you for taking a random out of the blue, uh, email, uh, in message and, uh, allowing that to turn into something like today.

Speaker A: Thanks for reaching out. Until next time. Evolvers keep evolving.