Episode 2 - Why every sales training program you've built has failed (and what finally works) with Greg Smith

Speaker A: And all I can start to think is how you could take all of that fantastic rich data that one step further and start to almost build the ideal seller, uh, profile. Like what are uh, all of those data points that make someone successful and different? That sort of messy middle we always have. You're always going to have low, always going to have top. But uh, if you can move that messy middle up the scale ever so slightly, the amount of data you have access to at that point allows you to really target some initiatives in that space where you sort of recognize that.

Speaker B: Welcome back everyone to the Enablement Optimization podcast. Designed just for you enablement leaders. This show is less about tactics and more about the strategic decisions and programs behind high impact enablement and how leaders actually drive results at scale. Uh, Chris and I are here today with Greg Smith of Janic Performance Group. We're going to be talking today about the current state of enablement tech, the current state of sales skills or lack thereof, and this whole idea of just in time enablement and embedding enablement in the flow of work. All right, today we have with us Greg uh, Smith, who is the EVP of um, Technology and Innovation at Janic Performance Group where he focuses um, on bringing together sales training and technology to help organizations reinforce sales methodology directly in the flow of work. Over the past 15 years he's worked at the intersection of um, enablement learning and tech to help teams turn training into consistent frontline execution. So that is definitely speaking our language in the enablement space. So I'm personally super excited to dive into this chat with you Greg, alongside you Chris. Um, and so let's just get it started with, I um, would love to hear from you Greg, is just like, how would you explain the current state of enablement? Where are we?

Speaker C: Sure, that's a very broad big question. Um, firstly, thank you for having me on. Um, and obviously I'm looking at this stuff through the lens of the background you just described through training, uh, and tech mostly. Um, and we're an exciting point, right? So I look at my background and the sales training space and we're an industry that's made a lot of very well intended promises over the years of um, being able to deliver learning, uh, in the flow of work and the 70:2010 model of learning and experiential learning and all these kind of things just in time, just for me, whichever buzz phrase you want to pick. And I don't think we've exactly lived up to those promises. And again it's well meaning and everything I Just think there's various limitations that have stopped us achieving those things. Um, but we're at a really exciting time now because I think a lot of the previous or prior barriers are now being lowered. And, um, we've discussed before, I kind of look at those as tech is obviously one of them.

Speaker D: Um,

Speaker C: and it's not just AI, it's the way, uh, the proliferation of APIs, uh, it's voice to text, things like that. All of these things come together, uh, from a technological point of view. It's culturally, you know, a lot of, um, just the way we embrace tech, you know, AI itself. Right. Some people have been scared. Now people are embracing that. Even call recording and you know, a lot of you guys will be using call recording technologies. People a little bit weird about all of that now. I think especially because of COVID we're just all used to being on camera all the time. Everything, everything's just recorded. Right? Um, and then legislatively, um, you know, the ability to be able to record and certain types of AI and whatnot. So you've got all these different factors that I think have finally all come to this meeting point. And for someone like me who's in product, um, that's just really exciting, right? So we can build more powerful things quicker, ah, more cheaply, um, better, um, and the world is more, uh, receptive of them. And so from my standpoint, we're at this very exciting point. Um, it. Yeah, there's a, There's a risk of too much of all of that. So, um, you know, there's a little bit of overload, I think, going on and a bit of an AI frenzy. And I feel for people who have to make the buying decisions because there's so much to sift through. But, but, um, it's just, for me, it's. It's tremendous potential is what all that equals. Um, that. That's how I would describe the state of enablement, uh, finally fulfilling these promises, uh, and a lot of, um, enthusiasm for the, for the future.

Speaker A: I love that. And I think it touches so much on, hopefully a lot of the conversations that we're going to have throughout this podcast series. One question I would say though, um, Greg, is you mentioned that, uh, there's a lot of broken promises and we've been talking about some of these things for an awful long time. And we would have had these conversations with our stakeholders saying, don't worry, we're going to bring you learning in the flow of work. And then we don't deliver it or we deliver it Sort of in a fragmented way that isn't connected and doesn't show that return on investment. How are you helping businesses sort of approach that conversation in a different way now? How are you seeing those conversations have evolved from what was those early promises into actually things that we can tangibly show and demonstrate now?

Speaker C: That's a really good question. I mean I think everyone's done the best they can. Um, I won't name any platforms of course, but many of them have been great if they were used to capacity. Right. And if you used all the features, if you had a team of people operating them. Some of these big uh, sales enable content management platforms, especially even CRM. These things are great if you use them much like methodology. Right. Problem is when people don't use them, um, and you know a lot of the language is it's, it's senior people selling to senior people and then things are pushed down and there's not much input, there's, there's no involvement from, from people underneath. And so a lot of these things, even if you've got the right component, it's the way you're, you're approaching your team, the way you're rolling stuff out. Um, and so you know, when I'm working with uh, someone who's buying from us, yeah, my job is kind of, and I'm not on the sales team, obviously, I'm product. But I'm trying, my, the first thing I'm trying to do is alleviate that fear that an enablement leader has as part of a buying committee that they go and stick their neck out and say, look, we need to buy this thing. They implement it and nothing happens. Right. Um, and that's a legitimate fear, right? There's reputation, there's money, there's all sorts of stuff on the line. So I think I tried to make them feel at ease that it's okay just to take little bites off. Right. And we do a crawl walk run strategy where let's just focus like phase one on time to first value for an individual rep. Right. Let's focus on them, um, and fold them in. Um, when I do a roll up, we'll look at maybe just one team, we'll look at one part of the sales process, we'll look at one product line, maybe a business unit or something like that. Really narrow it down and do a bit of a nail it and scale it with them. And I think when you start to break it down that way they're just much more comfortable. And so I think, um, and they're comfortable with us because we'll also provide service with it. Right. Whereas we've come from the space of VC backed tech companies just wanting to lob seats, seats over a fence, keep the VC happy and show the growth and then get bought by Salesforce one day. That's kind of been the model with zero service. Um, they're not interested in that. And so I think the industry is maturing beyond those kind of companies to where that there's now an expectation that the as a service actually means something and there is some service. And so I've, I found that like it's the way we articulate that and alleviate those fears and show that we're actually kind of with them in the long, the long haul and we're going to prove that value before we scale. Um, that's been my way of getting around that.

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Speaker B: And I was thinking about what you said earlier, Greg, and the current state, you know, kind of pulling into the like, why now? Why are we delivering? And why can you all deliver what you think you can deliver? And um, you talked about the legislation changes and tech changes, but you really hit on the remote environment now being what we all expect. And traditional sales, there were always your outside sellers, but we also had inside sales teams. And so when I think about how our world as enablement leaders has changed and how we're trying to keep up, uh, I can tap into when it wasn't rare to expect people to show up in a conference room for an hour plus a week and you could train them all in the same place and remove the distractions of their computers and phones and then you could give them a physical takeaway that they took to their desk. And not only is that all completely changed, but the expectations of the seller have changed and they're trying to get a lot more done. And like, expecting them to spend an hour on a training call is, is a lot to expect now compared to where, you know, where most of us came from, even five, five years from five years ago. So that's led us to this point where we still have the same expectations as an enablement department. Sellers still have the same or more expectations, but learning has changed and content,

Speaker C: um,

Speaker B: reinforcement has changed. And that's where I think we're still struggling to catch up. Because the first phase of this was, yeah, build an asynchronous learning management system and utilize zoom and get people on, on video calls. And like now we're in this phase of like, no, no, no, that doesn't even work anymore. You got to get it to them in the line of work where they can learn as they're trying to apply it. So, you know, tell me a little bit more about the why now for you and why. Why are we in a good position to deliver on these? Um, yeah, on this more asynchronous learning.

Speaker C: Yeah, good question. Yeah. The asynchronous thing has not worked. I mean it's a leader horse to water thing. Right. It's all very well having an lms, like packed full of courses and stuff. But like, you know, going back to my time to first value thing, if I'm a salesperson, I log in during onboarding. I just see a bunch of like courses I have to take. It's not really what I'm looking for. Um, but, and we've tried to like coaching and stuff is hard and it's, it's an involved thing. You know, leaders and managers, enablers have to, they actually have to do something. And I think over the years we've tried to try to make it easy purely for scale. So it's like, oh, just put together some digital stuff and chuck it online or whatever. Right. Um, and it hasn't, it hasn't really worked. And you know, we've kind of got away from true skill development, which is crazy. It's like we've got more and more tech and more and more resources than ever, but we're actually neglecting skills. Um, and as we've discussed in the past, like a lot of these companies have, have really been like, just because they're just pumped up with, with capital and all this money that their product led growth, their marketing, their growth, the sales people have been taking orders and that's kind of come crashing down.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker C: We've had a few years where it's been a bit weird. It's been a lot of layoffs in tech and stuff like that. Um, and so the market is flooded with people who, who had been taking orders, getting paid very, very well and, but didn't actually ever really develop skills. They weren't necessarily good at selling. They've been taking orders and now we find ourselves where, you know, the skills are required again. Um, and so it's going to take time, you know, an involvement from, from people. You know, I'm supposed to be the tech guy, right? But I'm skeptical that tech can do it all. I think that there's just as much uh, involvement, you know, from, from, from actual humans now than ever. But tech can help enhance that and help scale that. Um, and so we can get away from purely async, just content led, um, or you know like videos and all that kind of stuff based learning and really leverage AI. Um, and what we teach it to provide the coaching in the moment because I think the best learning happens when you don't know you're learning. Right. Um, and, and, and so if, if you're told, oh go, go and do some course in, in our lms, like you've kind of lost them already because that they, they mentally they're switching to this new different mode. This is a learning mode. I don't see that as productive as a salesperson, I see that as busy work, checking a box. I want to do something that's productive. So you need to get the learning in there. And you know, learning should happen while doing this. It shouldn't be the stage gated thing. You know, a lot of clients I talk to, you know, they, they're used to a model where it's you know, pre hire hire, then onboarding and then there's like assessment, knowledge transfer, reinforcement, analyze and it's stage gated. And I was like that's just, of course that doesn't work. You know, in a year they change vendor because they nothing's happened. So um, our job is to bulldoze through those, those barriers and get to a world where we're, we're using tech to provide um, guidance and learning in the flow of work, but including the manager in the most valuable way. Right. And the coaches and bringing them into the experience, um, along the way.

Speaker A: I love that you just mentioned the manager there, Greg, and I didn't mean to cut in, I think. So if I could just summarize what we just talked through because we Covered a lot of ground in that last answer and I absolutely love it. But we almost from the idea that there is this gap in skill acquisition or there's this, this atrophy of basic sales skills that exist out there and a lot of this cookie cutter approach to education and enablement just isn't cutting it now really. And almost that ah, the managers have a responsibility to coach, to be more visible, to be more um, present. And as Leanne mentioned, this remote working that the coach m. The manager may not always have the opportunity to have that time in the car or be next to the customer, be next to the seller in the moment or point of the sale. Does this all sort of come together in this concept that I know that you, you loved and patented and I use were patented, but you put out there and you brought a domain under the guise of sort of self enablement and how this works because the way that you've spoken about this previously, I think this sort of brings together a lot of these challenges quite succinctly in this concept of self enablement that you've talked about.

Speaker C: Yeah, I mean the self enablement thing,

Speaker A: um,

Speaker C: it came out of uh, of the failure, right? So it's like people weren't getting what they needed. You know, I've been, I've worked with some, some very successful and great companies that haven't provided very good training. And uh, I'd be sat there kind of looking around and seeing, well, there's people, you know, reading, you know, a Jeffrey Gitma book here or watching zig Ziglar on YouTube or you know, leaning over and talking to a desk mate. Right. They're kind of already doing these things. Um, so this, the self enablement thing came out of just a need. I think, you know, people use what they choose as well. So you know, I think, I think our job as enablers is to create an environment where we may have some guardrails put up, but let them figure things out as well. Different methodologies work for different people. There's different personalities, different ways of running a meeting, whatever they're doing, um, they need more involvement in that. I think the days of IBM style, I'm more confident saying that because I, that's where I started out. Right, but where they're trying to make you cookie cutter, everyone should be the same, right? There's a sort of clone salespeople. I just think the world's a bit more diverse now. It's a bit a bigger world and there should be more onus uh, on the individual. I Think. I think when you go out and you choose to learn something, you're just much more likely to remember it, to adopt whatever you've learned. It's probably, you've probably gone out to do that because you've been absolutely burnt in this situation. Do you know what I mean? And that's been the catalyst versus I'm doing it because someone's making me. Um, so, you know, it's a hard thing, self enablement. I wrote a book about it because it's quite a hard thing to define. But um, I think it's something to be encouraged, um, with, with the appropriate guardrails, of course.

Speaker A: And actually that's what I was just, that was the question at the tip of my tongue was around guardrails because everything you mentioned there might sort of send enablers into a bit of a tailspin. You could use whatever methodology you want. You could use this bit of education or this sales process or I mean within the sales op, sales enablement space. These are terms that could absolutely trigger fear. And how do you encourage that detachment from the process to allow or still retain an element of control within the process, but give the space for those learners to really find their own path?

Speaker C: Yeah, it's a, it's a really tricky one because it's cultural and culture is by, by sort of definition isn't something you, you kind of design necessarily. Um, it, it should be organic. Um, so there's certainly a balance in there. I'm still trying to find that myself and how you get there. But um, you know, it's interesting. AI is a very. Because it's so fluid and unstructured, um, it's perfect for self enablement. Right. But like if, if your AI strategy was let's get everyone the Chat GPT license and let them go off, um, it would probably be a disaster. It might start off all right, but then people, the way you interact with Chat GPT is teaching it, um, and it's teaching you about you and the way you interact and it's very, um, there's a lot of confirmation bias. You can really lead it. Um, and so the way I would talk about our products and would sell them and the way Chris would, would start to deviate and it would get more and more exponential and so it'd just be complete chaos. So you can't go completely like that way. You've got to put up this guardrail. So in our world, you know, we use AI like there's the teaching of, of the, the skills, methodologies that we provide the Client provides all the content, all uh, the product information, all the, all the relevant context. So it's very much, there's the sort of AI madness in here, but it happens within these walls, um, that we put up. And so you're letting them use these tools and explore for themselves and express themselves. But ultimately the system around is designed to keep them on track. There's a centralized language, the way we talk about our services and offerings, but also a decent system would be um, kind of coding the, the unstructured mess back to a common framework. Right. It should be smart enough to identify. Okay, you're saying something in this way. Chris is saying it in this way. But they're both really saying this thing, this is this skill. So they're therefore Leanne knows how to coach them both. Right. Um, so that comes down to platform design really. But um, yeah, it takes some. Well like I said at start, the tech is now at the place where we can do this. You can allow people to self enable but still put up the guardrails and still provide a common coaching framework.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think that the tech is definitely at a place where it can do what we, like you said years ago were saying we could do, embed enablement in the flow of work that prior to now was um, here's another website that you can go search things up when they come up in conversation. And we've moved on past that and I want to get into the point where we're getting a little bit tactical about what are we swimming around here, what does it actually look like. But I think you hit on some things that you know from the enablement practitioner seat are really important. Like skills are more widely um, expressed than ever before. I think you got someone that is more senior and knows all of the old school methodologies all the way down to people that are coming in one to two years and they're not learning like that and so establishing ways for them to learn. I think we still definitely owe our team resources and uh, best practices. You know, we want to still develop good salespeople all the while like letting them be agile in the way that they execute. Um, but I'll always lean back to people appreciate clarity and best practices. They want to know what good looks like, but they don't necessarily want that to come in the classroom. They want it to come from actual successes. Um, and it's relevant when it's relevant. I think that's the biggest thing that has changed is like you can't learn something and then expect it to be on the forefront of your brain months later when it's time to apply it. So yes, you can expose people to things, but really you need to make it easy for them to relearn it when it's relevant. So taking all of that, Greg, let's be a little bit tactical. And obviously we know that you represent, um, an enablement tech company, but in general, like, what is the answer? What is a tactical solution? You know, maybe give us a couple of examples of where we're at and how we can actually do just in time. Enablement.

Speaker C: Yeah. Um, that's another big question. Um, so the way we do it, right, is as a trainer we have three parts of business. One being the training and content business, which is our legacy business. Um, you know, we teach salespeople how to use various tools in workshops, right. This is not a unique thing. A lot every sales training company teaches some sort of tool. And it could be a, uh, negotiation worksheet, call planner, account planner, mutual, um, action plan. There's all these tools, right? And then back in the day they'd be paper based, right? And then they'd get left in the workshop and never seen again. Um, and then we started building these. You know, I started out m my career like building these things as digital assets in Salesforce. Good intention, but it was just form filling. Um, but like at Janic, we were tempted to do that, you know, when, when my relationship began with them. But then we're like, well, you know, look at the way AI is now and the way you can talk to these things. Let's turn that would be paper asset into a coaching experience and drop that into the way of working. And so um, what, what we do is, is provide all of these tools that are just agents, um, in the place of work. So Salesforce for example, and we reinforce, um, like we have lots of different models but ah, the primary one we're going with right now is this, is this 4P concept where the salesperson is encouraged to prepare. That's the first P. So that would be using these tools. So like a call planner for example. Um, and you know, the system is smart enough to know, oh, you've got a call coming up, trigger this thing. You need to, you know, it's coaching, it's proactive. It's like you need to, you need to fill this thing out. Um, it's not duplicative because it's looking at Salesforce. It's looking at everything it knows about the situation. So it kind of fills it for you. So it gives you an Opportunity to prepare there with doing very little, literally a few clicks of a mouse, uh, and it can really structure that call for you. So rather, you know, in your example, you said that you learned something months ago and you've probably forgotten how to do it now, so you probably just wouldn't do it. In this case, where we're not letting that learning die, we're reaching back and grabbing it and applying it again, right? So I'm being guided through planning my call for everything from like, the opening to how I'm going to build rapport, um, traps to look out for objections to anticipate, um, all that kind of stuff, right? So I'm sort of relearning was the word used. I'm sort of relearning those concepts again without knowing that's a learning experience. I think I'm just shortcutting my way to a call planner by hitting one button, right? But actually I'm learning there. It's not scripting it for me. That's not. We haven't. We've deliberately designed it not to script my call. Um, so that's the first pm Preparing the next P is practice. So in our platform, for example, um, there's a. I could build that call planner in Salesforce, um, and I hit one button and turn that call planner into a roleplay experience. Could be voice, could be video avatar, which are getting scary realistic now. It's bizarre. But, um, so I can, I can practice the call. And it's, It's a really good experience. Even when it's. Even when like your wi fi dips and it kind of conks out. Um, you're still practicing in a safe environment where I'm, you know, you can screw up without losing the deal. Um, and so you have. And it's not about being graded either. You're having an actual practice, not a. Not an assigned role play. Unless we can do assigned roleplays too. But that's the second P. Then there's the perform, right? So I've got my tools. I go and do the job, right? So I'm encouraged to take some of that learning the call planner into the experience. And, you know, if the call's recorded, we can actually put that into a call evaluation tool, um, again, built in there, connected to gong or whatever. Um, and. And then it's, uh, progress, um, progress. It's. It's going back and debriefing from a call, right? It's planning the next steps. It's looking at the things you agreed to. And so we've got, uh, other tools that are associated with, with actioning those things. And so that 4Pmodel is a very simple way of, you know, taking, uh, a client's much wider learning strategy and enablement strategy. And look at all the noise and everything and saying, right, we've got all of this stuff, but let's just boil it down to that little cycle there, because that's something your salespeople can do every day, multiple times. Because, uh, as they go through their year, they're going to be met with situations where they're required to recall skills that they haven't been exposed to possibly for a while. This process is going to bring that back in in a way that isn't, oh, go take a course. Because it doesn't work. Um, so they're practical doing motions. Right? The learning and doing aren't separate anymore. They're the same thing. Right. To sell is to AI, if that's a verb, um, that they're not separate things anymore. Right. That's the doing of the job and the learning's just coming along for the ride. I think that was an answer to your question.

Speaker A: No, I love it. And all I can start to think is how you could take all of that fantastic rich data that one step further and start to almost build the ideal seller, uh, profile. Like, what are, uh, all of those data points that make someone successful and different? That sort of messy middle we always have. You're always going to have low, you're always going to have top. If you can move that messy middle up the scale ever so slightly, the amount of data that you have access to at that point allows you to really target some initiatives in that space where you sort of recognize that, um, I love that example and I'm sure there's other examples that are out there, but the concepts that you talk through is absolutely fantastic. And as you say, this goes back to the point that we're at a time where there's a level of readiness across sales organizations now, in organizations in general, to have this level of depth of data capture, uh, to allow us to be so much more intentional with it. I think it's fantastic. Thank you for sharing that. That was brilliant, Greg.

Speaker B: Yeah. And jumping in on that. Um, I think what this does is from a seller profile perspective, makes the need for agility and resourcefulness to be the important piece for the seller. They don't have to have all the knowledge, they don't have to have all the experience, but they have to be really good at being agile in their execution and Utilizing the resources that we give them. Um, Greg, I love the way you positioned the four P's, um, and obviously I've seen your application and I see the value in it. But what I love is that from the enablement perspective, we can provide consistent resources to our team, but leave it up to them for how they want to use those. What I mean by that is we might have someone that wants to take that call planner and spend an hour and a half preparing for every conversation and going start to finish and completing the role play exercises and feeling really good about it. But we might have that senior seller that's like, oh, uh, I got this on the fly. But at least we can give them that guide that they can look at a couple times, maybe even just while they're on the call. Maybe they didn't prepare at all. But what we did as an enablement team is we delivered consistent execution, reinforcement, resources to the team and like, that's a really big win, um, for us. And I think the relearning piece, like I always tell people that are coming, especially through onboarding, like, you're not going to learn everything in these first two weeks to retain it. You're going to learn it to go back to it and know where it is. And so that frees up your brain to focus on, you know, being agile and being resourceful. And I think if we can get all these things together, like, it'll be really amazing. Um, but that leads us to. Sorry, go ahead.

Speaker C: No, I was right. I wrote that down. I really liked that because, um, I think historically there's a sort of anxiety that we've invested in all this training, got this three days or whatever at sko in a workshop. We're going to do all this learning and it's like, oh, crap, what if they don't remember it all? You don't need to. And I think we can almost lean into that. And just like, you don't need to remember everything and nor does every salesperson have to suddenly be the best, right? The incremental gains as we go and I think it removes that stress. It's a bit like reading. I, uh, read a lot of business books and I kind of like, I'm getting loads of good stuff here. I'm not going to remember any of this. But if you accept that you don't need to, if you just take a little bit out of it, right, you can improve and you can always go back and read. It's all about like that, uh, again, that first value. I think it all comes down to that time, the time to first value bit. But anyway. Sorry I interrupted.

Speaker B: No, that's okay. Greg, you mentioned earlier that you feel for those who are holding the enablement budget and trying to figure out how to spend the money and staff the team teams. And I appreciate that you empathize on that. And one of the things that's really interesting is enablement team headcount. You know, half of us and me personally in the last couple of years were laid off completely and now we're getting kind of back into this. Like, okay, companies are seeing the value and we're building teams. But I don't know, I kind of think that like we have to balance the headcount with the tools and potentially. What would you say to that question of enablement headcount moving forward?

Speaker C: Yeah, it's a, it's a really difficult one. Then I realize you're enablers and I'm not. Um, so I'll tread lightly. Um, we're producing tech, but our goal is not to get people out of it. Right. I guess, you know, genius would most closely replace a sales manager if it were to be replacing someone. And that is not in any way, any way our ambition. It's more about scaling the manager. Right. The role play bit, it's very difficult to do role play on mass. It's also difficult to do role play. You have to be good at actually being the buyer. But, um, so we're actually helping them there. So there's no intention of that. And I don't think that would even be a side effect. So I think it's the same thing. I think it's not about like, oh, let's shrink the team. It's like, let's do more. Um, I think it will go that way. Um, I think the role may change and if you look at um, rev ops and sales ops and those kind of roles, that there might just be a little bit of a merging, meshing kind of a function perhaps. It's a bit like, you know, the SDR role is, I think will be changing. You know, you don't need so many. And I think. I can't remember the guy's name. He's a silicon slopes guy. Talked about how they'll be replaced by sales development operators. I think is what they call them M, where it'll be kind of 10 to 1 ratio. Yeah. And they're just there like command center of screens, you know, doing, using all these tools, doing that for a bunch of AES. Right. And it could be, I think It's a similar kind of thing where, like, you know, the requirements for you guys might change, um, to where you have to really master these tools and AI and all that kind of stuff. Um, so your requirements might change, but I don't think the head count will necessarily. Um, I think it'll just get. Get more out of everyone.

Speaker B: Yeah. More impact. Yeah. And hopefully enablers aren't sitting around thinking, oh, gosh, this is coming from my job. To me, this is. I can offer more to my company as the leader of this performance enhancement function. Um, and yet potentially that means with a smaller amount of people on our teams. But, yeah, someone has to be the orchestrator in all the functional areas of the business.

Speaker A: And it's also a chance for enablers to upskill themselves as well. Define those skill gaps. All of these new tools that are available. Sorry, Greg, excuse my ignorance. You mentioned Genius, and I can see it on your shirt there, halfway through that chat. That is a Yannick product that is out there and available.

Speaker C: I suppose it is. And it's Janic. It's a hard channel Janik.

Speaker A: Oh, there you go.

Speaker C: Everyone says Yannick, Um, and Genius is the tech part of that. So, yeah, that's what that is. Well, I'm trying not to plug that too hard, but.

Speaker A: No, no, no, no, it was great. It was just. It was just for those who weren't aware, because it was a new term on me. It's all good. Uh, we're coming towards the end of our time and it's been brilliant having you on, Greg. Let's finish with, uh, a bit of a different question then. So your career has been in and around building enablement technology, but what tech would you love to be able to build if it wasn't in the enablement space?

Speaker C: Yeah, it's a really tough one. So, firstly, I don't think I was. I grew up thinking I want to design sales tech. That wasn't it. Uh, and then when I think I was in college, I always used to think about what you want to do. And I remember saying to. I think it was a friend of my dad's. I was like, yeah, I just want to do something I'm passionate about. And he made the point that you, you can be passionate about, like, the subject matter, the topic, the industry or the function you don't need to be passionate about. It was an interesting way of putting it because a lot of people say, don't do your passion as a job. Like, if you're an artist, just do something else and do the Art on the side. Um, and so I found that quite interesting. It really stuck with me, um, to no real end, but it just stuck with me. But, um, so I love creating things is the point, right? I just, I happened to get into, you know, I can't. I just fell into this industry. Um, and I. I speak in university classes quite a lot these days, and one of the. I talk about all sorts of things, but I encourage them to build their domain knowledge, right? Be that expert. And when it comes to that intersection of sales, training, sales tech, that is my realm, right? Like, it's become my thing. And so that's. That's why I'm in it. But doesn't mean I'm like debt, you know, just, you know, getting tattoos of genius on my arm or anything. Um, but, um. So I don't know if it'd been sales or tech at all. If I was. I think I'd be designing products and building something, maybe tangible, um, something and a consumer good or something like that, but I would 100% be creating something. I like the whole process of going from just a little idea to something that you can then hold, um, or see, you know, my world, you know, digitally. But, um, yeah, I would. I would absolutely be building something. I wouldn't be doing a different function, is probably the way I'd answer that. Even if it was brewing beer or something, you know, something fun like, it would be creating something from the ground up. Uh, I absolutely love your idea to paying customer is. Is just so awesome when you see that happening. And if you've got, um, the, uh, imposter syndrome like I do, it's a rocky road when you're like, wow, someone just paid for something I built and conceived. But it's a real buzz. Um, yeah, so that's as precise as I think I can give you.

Speaker A: Well, listen, Greg, finally, on behalf of Leanne and I, thank you so much for joining us on the enablement Optimization podcast. It's been brilliant having you here. Thank you.

Speaker C: Absolutely. Thank you for having me.

Speaker B: Well, Chris, I don't know about you, but that was an awesome, uh, conversation. And I think if you're listening to this, a couple specific takeaways. The first is that now's our time. Now's our time as enablers to deliver on these promises that we set out to do years ago, where we said, uh, just in tab. Enablement and enablement in the flow of work. You know, we've been running into barriers around technology, culture, legislation, and I think now is really the time to act on delivering on that promise. It's what our team is looking for.

Speaker A: Completely, completely agree, Leanne. I think there's also the thing that I heard coming through from Greg was really about how we have to approach enablement in a different way by giving the sellers and the leaders the opportunity to use what they want to. So use what they choose during that flow of work, but do it with, uh, this open mindset that actually we can still have a level of parameters around that in order to make sure they still stay within, uh, the level of expectation that's there from the business.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's one thing I heard where utilizing just a broad chatgpt and everyone going on their own paths isn't the answer. The answer is giving them that execution freedom within the guardrails, uh, of your brand, your message, you know what good looks like. And I think that's really what sellers are looking for. And again, what we're in a position to deliver to our organizations.

Speaker A: Brilliant. Well, what a great opportunity to chat with Greg today. And we know that Greg is out there on LinkedIn, so if you do want to connect with him and continue the conversation, please go and look him up because he'll be more than happy to, to have that chat with you offline. But let us know in the comments below if you agree or disagree. Was there some questions that you wished we asked? Do you think that the perspective we took was slightly skewed? We'd love to hear your feedback, uh, continually as we continue to build and evolve on this podcast. And if that conversation sparked something with you today, make sure you share it, post it out to your network. Share with one person who you think needs to hear this conversation and how it can really help them. Um, and the door is still open. If you do want to be part of this podcast and join us as a guest, please feel free to email the Sales Enablement Collective because we're always looking for practitioners who have something real to say. And don't forget, we're not just here on LinkedIn or on YouTube. We have various different platforms where you can find us. So make sure you check out the notes in the show today and you can find links to all of those other fantastic resources.

Speaker B: Awesome, Chris. What a fun time together. Audience, thanks for tuning in and we'll see you on the next Enablement Optimization podcast.