Episode 3 - Your sellers are wasting 4 hours a month. Here's the fix. With Andrew Zinger

Speaker A: A lot of my job is going around convincing people of, uh, changing their behavior. And at the end of the day, that is what Enablement M is to me is behavior modification. Whether it's to cross functional teams to our audience, to, you know, the leadership, whatever it is. Like, at the end of the day, we're making people think and act differently. And it's the long game. Like, what we do today will not show results tomorrow. And you cannot waver from it because then you show, you know, lack of confidence in what you're doing. It's a difficult gig. You should be carving out time to practice the craft of selling of what we do. We don't do that enough. We run home and we practice pickleball and piano, and I still play hockey. None of this is paying the bills, by the way. We rarely practice what brings in the dough.

Speaker B: Welcome back to the Enablement Optimization podcast, the show that is less about tactics and more about the strategic decisions and programs behind high impact enablement and how leaders actually drive results at scale. And today, Leanne, uh, and I are, uh, joined by the fantastic Andrew Zinger, who leads revenue enablement at Ironclad. He's passionate about helping go to market teams, build confidence, simplify how they sell, and ultimately deliver, uh, more value to their customers, especially as AI continues to reshape the way we work.

Speaker C: That's right. Originally from Toronto, Andrew now lives in the Bay area and spent 10 years in Paris, France. He has two boys that are in their 20s who work and go to school in France and recently spent time over in France watching them play hockey. Um, his signature concepts, which he'll be discussing with us today, are distraction, free selling and golden selling time. Offering a distinctive philosophical lens that should lead to a really energizing conversation that will get you all thinking about things you can bring back to your company today.

Speaker B: Andrew, welcome to the Enablement Optimization podcast. It's fantastic to have you here. And as always, Leanne and I do our due diligence. We build a dossier of, uh, our, um, guests that are coming on, and we found an article back in 2014 from Inc. Magazine that described you as easily the most animated presence in the room at the Salesforce boot camps. But it was running over 200 new hires every week and you had wore a silver suit and a shell necklace. If I'm honest, I'm a little bit disappointed you didn't dress up for us today in that outfit, Andrew. But it's not all the normal image most people have when they think about enablement. So let's get us started and perhaps, uh, ask you this. Is that energy, that showmanship that you bring, something that you see as a genuine enablement, skill, or is there a risk that we must m. Take great delivery for being great at, uh, enablement?

Speaker A: Well, how vain am I? That is the article right there.

Speaker B: There we go.

Speaker A: You love yourself more than I do. Um, so, you know, I think it's a bit of, it's a bit of both, I think, um, enablement. You have to grab the attention of your audience, whether it's live or, uh, on demand or some kind of video or podcast or whatever. And I think if you come out a little sluggish or a little, you know, slow or, or not that enthused, then people aren't going to buy into what you're, you're kind of selling them. Uh, so I think if, you know, I always, um, that's why I love working for companies where we use our own product. You drink your own champagne, you come up and you would believe what you were saying. And I firmly believed at that time, and I have with each organization that what we're doing has impact and, you know, I believe in it. So, yeah, so I, I've got, it's conviction as opposed to maybe showmanship, I would say. But how many times have we sat through a presentation, whether at university or work, where it just was just draining? And when you have these, these programs, you have people from all over the world, so you have people fighting, you know, uh, time zones. If you can kind of get them excited about what we're going to be talking about, I think it's beneficial for everyone.

Speaker B: I couldn't agree more. And I think even more so at the moment when you think about adult learning, a lot of adults haven't actually spent that much time in a classroom and let alone face to face in our current environment right now. I know. Leanne, you're joining us today for his podcast from Brazil, which is fantastic. Spending time face to face with colleagues and you can't put a price on that. And I think the fact that you bring that energy and that enthusiasm as a presenter, as a facilitator, uh, I think it's critical to kick things off in the right way. So I love that, Andrew. Definitely. Let's dive in to a few other bits. Leanne.

Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. I totally agree with you. I wouldn't have wanted to come down here to Brazil and had, um, bland speakers. So that energy and enthusiasm is important. Um, yeah. So, Andrew, your. You have two specific philosophies the distraction, free selling and golden selling time. So um, uh, what, what better way to share those with our audience than this podcast? And if we start with the distraction free selling principle, which as I understand it is really being super intentional about how information actually gets into the field, um, um, it's definitely something that a lot of us struggle with as enablement leaders, but we fear not being seen as a barrier. So would love to hear more about that principle, but also like, how did you implement that in your orgs without being seen as a barrier to communication?

Speaker A: Yeah, well, I'll cover that one first. I think that the underlying message to any team that creates content for our audience is reminding them that nothing sucks more than spending time creating content that isn't consumed. Um, and we should know what our audience uh, wants and, and finds value in more than they, they should. Uh, and that's not a knock on, on them, it's just because we should be much closer to the business than they likely will be. And I think that's important. So it's almost like you're coming in there to say, look, we're going to help you put all that effort into a place that is going to land more effectively with folks. But it really started with the um, just the cutting down of noise. And I think if you go to any sales leader or revenue leader and say, look, one of my main tenants is to protect the amount of time of uh, your sellers where we are taking them away from what they are meant to be doing or hired to be doing. You're going to get a seat at the table and you're going to get their respect and you're going to get at least their, you know, who's going to say no to that or not buy into that. But it's really not enablement to me. It is us getting together to create a program that uh, that focuses the information, the initiatives, the launches, uh, and gives it in a repeatable fashion that, and builds up the confidence that between those calls or those meetings or those newsletter, you're not having to waste your time looking for updates. We're going to deliver these on a silver platter at the time that it makes sense to you, um, in the most effective way. Um, so that's, you know, sellers are spending four hours a month in some of my orgs looking for information. They hear that something was sent out. They search Slack, they search email, they search the intranet, they search the cms. That's time away from what they're, they're brought on to do. Um, and I think if you can give them that four hours back, you're going to see that impact in the business, whether it's partners or prospects or customers. Um, and what we're providing them is just the headlines, the greatest hits. They can get the rest of the album later on and we'll point them to it. But they need to know the greatest hits in order to be effective at their role. And that's what that is all about.

Speaker B: I was just going to say. So how have you practically done that though, Andrew? And I get that the four hours is a critical bit. It sounds like there is. Are we encroaching on the area of communications of comms team? Should they be supporting in that area? I don't know.

Speaker A: Yeah. So it's a fine line.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker A: But yeah, we what the way that we set it up is we have an intake form. We basically say if you have any update or program or something that you want to get in front of the revenue work, put uh, an intake form request through us. And you know, it's a process and yes it's a little annoying but it holds our team accountable and make sure that we're going to follow up with you. We can track it and by the end of the month or the quarter. It also provides us another reporting or metric that uh, we can provide. Um, uh, you know we're always looking for ways to report on impact. This is just another number that we can use. Uh, and basically we have a 15 minute discovery call with the individual that puts in the intake form and they'll say look, we need one hour to get in front of the team to update them on this. And they're like oh yeah, well what's the compelling event? Why now? Who's the audience? What does success look like? 9 times out of 10 it becomes, it goes from 1 hour to either a 10 minute update or a line item, uh, in a newsletter and you've just saved a bunch of time. Um, and people also don't, they don't learn nine to five today. So that's the idea. But well, let's trim down the update to a couple of lines, the headline the greatest hit and send them off when the feeling hits them in the evening or when they're walking to go deeper in the information that you're wanting to provide them. And by the way, we can then track the consumption uh, of that content as opposed to you just sending it on slack. You can't really tell who's consuming that. But if you put it into a CMS you can track it. So those are all the kind of benefits to the cross functional teams and once they go through it a couple of times they see it and they see the benefit and we're standardizing, we're templatizing it and I think their updates land better. So that's kind of the process, it's changing hearts and minds. You go around and I've talk to each of those leaders to say this is what I want to do, the why behind it, sell them on it. Um, and you do it a couple of times and most will come around. Um, so that's what I've found uh, as a way to kind of earn the trust of the org that we support, get our cross functional teams m bought into the benefit of doing it that way and then iterating of course, uh, if needed throughout.

Speaker C: Yeah, I think your idea of let's try it once or twice and see what the feedback is is probably the way to go. When you're in an org that might be a little bit averse to what could be seen as gatekeeping or being a barrier. But you know, you said it's not enablement and tactically you're probably right. But it's one of those things where we're here to remove distractions and all of the things that go on in Slack, you know, it's like we've made this massive shift from everybody shows up in office on a Monday morning to go through a 30 minute conversation. So people were used to holding things and now we're in this super remote, dynamic agile world where everybody thinks that they can throw the thought from their head into a Slack message in the moment and we think we're moving fast. And so I think a lot of us owe it to our org, myself included, to like balance that and say let's get to a happy medium where we're thinking like the seller, we're thinking like the sales leader and we're removing those distractions but we're still giving people the information that they need but in more of the format that um, that they need it in. And Even if that's 30 minutes a week that they spend consuming the materials, they're probably saving themselves. Like you said, you know, four hours minimum of how it would have been previously.

Speaker A: Yeah, and look, a lot of the updates are things that aren't something they can action right away or it's a product that they can't sell. Right. It's like, well why are we doing that? Yeah, we should only be giving them things that they can action or sell or is applicable to their role immediately. The rest is, is noise in a sense.

Speaker B: And I think that goes back to the thing you said right at the top of the call is, you know, you need to know their job and what they do better than they do and what they need so that when you are having those intake calls, you're able to provide uh, those other teams with a better insight into ensure that they show up in the right way. They have the most success with their message. But I bet it hasn't always worked.

Speaker C: You have to have been in sales to be effective in enablement.

Speaker A: There are two questions that we want to be able to answer in order to get in front of the sales that I think are important to every salesperson. One is what's in it for me? Why should I pay attention as a rep? Which is basically why or how can I make money? And the second question is what's in it for your customer? Which is, uh, quite frankly another way of saying how you can make money. And if you cannot answer those two questions, I'm not going to put you in front of the sales team. That means it's not important enough.

Speaker B: But I bet this hasn't always worked though. Andrew.

Speaker A: True.

Speaker B: And I know we're talking like this and I love that we're giving this story of how effective it's been thing. But have you had like, people don't like it when they're told no and they have is their shiny baby. You're calling their baby ugly in that moment or perhaps you're saying that their baby isn't quite ready for to go out into the world just now. It needs an easy. But how, what's been the impact of that though? Because we, we've seen examples of shadow enablement, of people circumnavigating enablement and going out there. Uh, what's happened, what sort of experiences have you had of that and how do you approach those sort?

Speaker A: Yeah, 100. So definitely you're going to get rogue folks or folks that don't buy into it. There's two scenarios like what happens in between the two weeks of those calls. We can't, you can't, uh, schedule every product launch that's going to fall within your, your timetable. So what do you do then? Well then to me that's where you rely on the managers to help disseminate that information. And we, we may talk on, on that a little bit later on. So we'll kind of table how we can utilize that channel, uh, for reinforcement and for help. Um, but my hope in honesty and what I've seen happen when folks either don't buy in or they go rogue is that their update, their initiative, their launch doesn't land in the most effective way because they are missing some of the things and the templates and the ways that we are presenting the information to the team that's in. So I hope that there's a kind of a failure along that line where they realize, you know what, if it's going to land the best, I'm going to go through that team because I see that they are getting the reactions, the call to actions, the whatever we're asking of folks because we're doing it in a more thoughtful manner. That's seriously how I've seen it. More than failures, it's more like I come to salvation moment and they kind of see the value later on just really quickly.

Speaker B: You could only do that when you get data.

Speaker A: Um, for sure. Yeah, yeah. Um, and look, that's why it's also important that why send it out via email or like just link it into a CMS M. We can do so many things. If I can see who has read or consumed that way. Somebody, you know, we have all these fundamental courses that we release on things like dealdesk or product where they get hammered on slack with the same questions all the time. Now we've created these fundamental courses that are the answer to a lot of those questions. And it's like we can track. You cannot talk to our teams or you cannot submit a request until you go through a fundamentals training that covers 90% of those questions in all likelihood. And we hold you accountable. And these teams are now able to zoom out of that day to day minutia, be able to do more kind of transformational things for the business because they're not bogged down with the same old questions all the time. And this is so data and visibility and consumption are massive help, uh, to any enablement story that you're looking to tell.

Speaker C: Yeah, I think you're not proactively hoping that other initiatives fail, but I can see the behavior shift pretty quickly. I would imagine after a couple of iterations of this reps really start to expect understand like I can kind of just sit here and wait and I don't have to worry about all this stuff. So they, they tone it out and they learn super quickly to wait for your information because it takes one or two iterations for them to see the value and then all the content is tailored towards them. Um, what would you Say Andrew, to the alternative view, which is like let everybody throw whatever in and let's just use like a glean or a AI search that grabs it all. So I can just ask the question when I need to. Why do we have to put it into a CMS and why do we have to run it through this, this engine for it to be effective?

Speaker A: Well, I still, you know, it's garbage in, garbage out. So any, any AI that is pulling from repositories, you need to make sure that it is pulling the most relevant up to date, well formatted, um, you know, content. So I, I don't think it's just a AI answer to this problem. I think it is a, a benefit or something that can certainly speed things up. Um, but I don't want content in five different repositories. Think from a content creator perspective. We are pushing individuals to ensure that the confidence in the sales team so that they don't do things like download content to their desktop because then governance is out the window. You don't know what version they're giving to their customers.

Speaker C: I'm gonna hire you to come tell my team I get an ask probably once every two weeks. Why can't we download out of seismic?

Speaker A: Yeah. And you just say look, it makes sure that you are singing from the most up to date hymn book. The people that we task to go in and do the updates don't want to be searching for different places. It's like we have to start. You know, a lot of my job is going around convincing people of uh, changing their behavior. And at the end of the day that is what enablement is to, to me is, is behavior modification. Whether it's to cross functional teams to our audience, to you know, the leadership, whatever it is. Like at the end of the day we're making people think and act differently. And it's the long game. Like what we do today will not show results tomorrow. And you cannot waver from it because then you show, you know, lack of, of, of confidence in what you're doing. It's, it's a difficult gig, you know, but um, but that's, that's why.

Speaker B: So moving m on from this ever so slightly is you, you've created that distraction free selling environment. You have this space where that there is really clear channels of communication. The data is all in the right places. The sellers can find everything that they're looking for at uh, their fingertips. But if you give them that information and they're in the midst of a heavy negotiation and a piece of Communication pops up. That one distraction. I saw some research that says it take M20 minutes to get back into that activity because their brain is going off and they're processing something else or they're trying to do some other update. So you came up with another strategy around the idea of distraction free selling. And it sounds again a little bit utopian and amazing. And we can create this distraction free environment but you focus on that for the second 45 days of the quarter. Uh, would you be able to share some like some thoughts around how you've done that, how you've created it and hopefully some of the positive impacts you've seen from it?

Speaker A: Yeah, you kind of go from distraction free selling into golden selling time. Right. And golden selling time consists of ah, two things. One is front loading, real enablement. Like I said, the communications to me isn't real enablement, it's us giving teams a ah, platform to communicate to our audience. But real enablement, the change, the behavior modification changes, um, that we do front load in the first 45 days of the quarter. Um, and that again to your point is so that the second half typically is where the more um, you know, focused, uh, deal, uh, you know moments are, you're, you're closing deals, you're meeting with partners, you've got prospects like that really should be where we, we are giving them the additional Runway to get that stuff done. Um, and what we're doing on that enablement platform is really a lot of the show and tell of the people that are doing some of those behaviors today. And at the end of the day no one will care if I say this is how you do something. Um, but if we go in there and say this is Jill and she's being successful doing these top of the funnel activities to find the right people to talk to, put her in front of the team to share her approach and framework and content and then practice those. By the way, we have breakouts, uh, so you can start to either craft an outreach sequence with your SD or sb, sbdr, uh, cohort or work on a pitch uh, with your mid market teams. That's important stuff. And that skill setting is what we do. Front load in the first 45 days of the quarter to allow them that deal and uh, focus in the second half which again from an ex seller's point of view, that was always my busiest time and hated to be kind of taken away from those negotiations as you mentioned, grits or you know, take it away from something that I couldn't automatically immediately kind of utilize. Uh, uh, to my benefit.

Speaker C: Yeah. So you're breaking out the skill enhancement, practice type of traditional, uh, enablement, front loading that in the first half of the quarter, continuing to share the updates and newsletters because it's, it's ever changing. But then, um, you're hoping that in the last 45 days of the corner, not only will they be more focused, but then they'll also be able to execute on those initiatives that you focused on. Um, I'd love to understand how you go about ensuring that you're aligning on the material that matters in those sessions.

Speaker A: Yeah, well, you mentioned, um, you know, shadow enablement and you, you know, the fact that they're doing it is a good thing. Right. I guess that's a good problem to have. And when I say they, it's typically manager, which is, which is important. Um, and to kind of combat that, but to also double click into the benefits of what they're doing. Um, we did create a certification program called License to Lead. And this is really for every manager that comes in to understand, for them to understand their role in providing good coaching and feedback. You know, feedback is fuel. Uh, it should always be timely. You should not find out about something six months after you've done it. Say what, like, why did you, why am I getting in trouble now? Um, and so we, we instill that importance to them, but we also instill the, the reinforcement aspect of what we do. Again, no one will care if I get in front of them and say, this is how you sell. Because in their eyes, I may not have credibility. I may not have walked in their shoes at that organization and sold. I, I carried a bag years ago at a different company. Um, but they will listen to their manager. If it's important to your manager, typically, unless you are, you know, not the best employee, it should be important to you. And they often look up to their manager. They want to be them, they have respect, their subject matter expertise. So team selling is a big thing. You know, if you have four team meetings a month, not every one of them needs to be pipeline. You know, close your ears CROs. But you know, that's, that's, ah, you should be carving out time to practice the craft of selling of what we do. We don't do that enough. We run home and we practice pickleball and piano and I still play hockey. None of this is paying the bills, by the way. We rarely practice what brings in the dough. Um, so we instill the importance that, look, we're going to do some front loaded 45 days of the quarter, skill development stuff, you have tons of time with your teams, tons of additional influence. Carve out time to practice that together. If you make the time leaders, we will provide you the guides, the templates, the tools to facilitate those, those workshops. But you need to make sure that you're carving up the time. I think that's important.

Speaker B: I think it's such a good way to position it. And as like a previous sales leader, I think the way in which you look at it and go focus on this element for the first 45 days and you've got the rest of the time. You've got a full on 45 days where we're going to minimize the noise. We're going to only provide you the key information that you need in those moments that matter. As a sales leader historically, that would be a really refreshing approach, I think, because I think so often there's this perception that people just pile on more and more and more. And what you're saying is, give me your time here and I'll give you the space to go and do your job of a second time. And I think that's a really fair approach.

Speaker A: Yeah. And you know, look at, we historically have not armed sales leaders to be able to be good coaches and uh, you know, guides for their teams. Like, it's, it's not, it's almost like it's not their fault. It's like you've just closed the biggest deal. We're not going to promote, uh, you to be a manager here ourselves. Seven of your old colleagues that report to you, Best of luck. And we haven't armed them very well. Um, you see more corporate type of programming now, but leading and things like that. But where's the sales spin on that? Um, you know, we take the corporate grow and SBI models, but we put it into a context that a sales leader can kind of get and I think that's important. So we're trying to make up for, you know, past, uh, uh, you know, um, gaps in doing so. And I think that it's refreshing they want to help. You know, there's not many managers out there that don't give a hoot about their team. Like, it's, it's, it's uh, we have to give them credit. We just need to give them the tools in order to do it. And, and that's where the partnership comes in.

Speaker C: Yeah. So is there some sort of negotiation at the beginning of the quarter where you align on the topics and the materials to bring the manager through, you know, as A as a stakeholder from the beginning.

Speaker A: Yeah, well you know it's, there are typically unless m. You know sales orgs don't differ in terms of their challenges too too much. In my experience there's top of funnel challenges and that uh, is typically around finding the right people to talk to and what do we do when we talk to them. And we've been, we've been uh, crossing this chasm of feature function vendor like approach to sales which isn't working anymore to a much more. I need to justify the price by, by providing you value and understanding your business and differentiating myself from the 50 other people that are reaching out to that contact.

Speaker C: So Andrew, let's double down a little bit more on the manager piece because I think that's another area where you've been successful in um, putting frameworks in place that balance what's expected from enablement versus what's expected from the frontline leader. And you talked you know the well known promoting the most successful rep to seller hoping that they had seen what good looks like along the way. And I think the stat is about 30% of companies actually invest in leadership development. Most of those are corporations. Um, so there's definitely a missed opportunity there. So want to understand more about that but would be really curious if you could frame it in the standpoint of like how the heck do you get these managers to buy in to the time that these programs take when. Part of, to me part of why the leaders aren't developed is because they're encouraged to just focus on you know, the bottom of the funnel forecast and what's closing this quarter.

Speaker A: Well yeah, and I think you have to certainly start from, from the top. Um, so you know the, the the CRO is a powerful voice, uh, or the sales leader is a powerful voice within the, the sales organ. Again if the message is always coming from me in any fashion they'll I think they get less tone deaf to the big dog in that CRO type uh, of role where he or she has their attention a lot of the time. So working with that individual is paramount. Getting them to buy into the program is paramount. And you mentioned carving out more time. The beauty of this whole program is they already had that time booked. It's a reframing of the team meetings that they have. Um, and the only thing that we add to their uh, uh plate rules is this on demand certification called License to Lead that goes over the expectations um, that lives then with all the material, the guides and templates in a manager only place. Um within uh, uh, you know, whatever cms, uh, we're using at the time. Um, so they have their, their kind of, they feel special that they have their own place to get content. And then we add a one hour monthly call which is, we call it a manager forum call which is again peer to peer sharing. You know, why don't have all the answers. Why don't you put a manager who's, who's using A.I. by the way, to do great feedback to their, to their teams. That was one that we, we saw recently which was mind blowing. And I guarantee you that uh, a manager in a different region or maybe even next door is thinking that's awesome. I'm going to take that. And you see it, that framework is going to work for somebody else. If it's worked for you, I guarantee it, even if it's 75% is going to give you one heck of a start. So you start to see some organic learning and sharing and people do want to learn from the best at every level. Um, so that's, that's, we're just, we're facilitating that conversation more than anything else.

Speaker B: And I love the way in which you um, you created like a certification around that. And you mentioned a couple of models that you use, SBIW and Grow, which are two fantastic models around feedback and coaching. And having implemented those models in other companies, one of the biggest things I find, um, was a really big barrier to those actually being really effective is one of it takes uh, a while. You're not going to change a behavior by coaching in an instant. It takes time. You have to build up that muscle and to really learn that muscle. The other part was really around changing the mindset of the actual seller as well to understand that the leader was going to come in with a coaching mindset rather than just going and telling them the answer.

Speaker A: Ah.

Speaker B: And there's often, I've seen it quite a lot. There is a big disparity between. You do an employee survey and you say how many times have you been coached or how much coaching do you feel you received? And they'll say they receive 30% coaching. A leader will say they coach 80% of the time. And you've got to try and balance that up to try and find a way in which that everyone feels like they're all gaining and learning at the same time and trying to really make sure that's really transparent. And the way in which we did it was put actually into the CRM tool. So we actually had an area within CRM that allowed Us to break down some of the behavior change that was being done using that Grow coaching framework. When you were doing this and when you introduced that license to lead model and particularly Grow or sbi, how did you know they were doing it?

Speaker A: Yeah, well there are lots of apps now that you can track, which is great. I think there's anecdotal evidence. We have one on ones. We have a sales advisory council as well that gives us feedback directly from the frontline, uh, sellers. So there's, there's a number of ways you see it. There's. You're right. There are sometimes you know, number uh, disparities. People think that they're giving feedback or coaching when it's, you know, not received. Uh, as such. I think there's a couple of things that we, that are paramount to any of these programs. One is to sit down with your team member to ask them how do they like to receive feedback and coaching? Um, is it immediately after a call that they just listened to or is there a 24 hour rule where you, where you maybe calm down a little bit or whatever it is like have that conversation with that with your team first? I think because look at all those, you know, surveys that you do or the, the personality tests, you know, oranges and reds and people again, just like they learn differently, they also get feedback or, or take that feedback in a different way. So that I think is number one. Um, make it part of each one on one. Whether you're tracking it in lattice or somewhere like have a place to be able to provide. Again feedback is fueled and that should be how it's positioned. You know, I'm the best interest of mine for my team members. Like why wouldn't I want them to be successful in order to get there? Sometimes I'm going to give them feedback. But it comes from a place of look, this is positive stuff is when

Speaker B: you say feedback is a gift and the first bit of the G is given with permission.

Speaker A: Yeah, no, uh, yeah, I love that. Yeah. You know, position it as, as, as something like that or feedback is fuel, whatever, whatever. I like acronyms and things like that. So however you do it. But I think it's important that people see feedback not as a criticism or something you're doing wrong. It is coming from a place of uh, I want the best for you, I want the best for our customers, I want the best for our company. Maybe not in that order but you know, that's, it's, that's where it should be coming from. And uh, I think that's what we start off these certifications with is that type of thinking. You know, we ask them, have you ever worked for a manager that never gave you feedback? How did that feel? You know? Yeah, not so great. You know, what type of, you know, manager gave you great feedback? Okay, well then that's what we want you to be. So everyone's had an experience one way or the other here that they can rely on.

Speaker B: And just really quickly, I might actually ask you the question here, Leanne, if that's okay, because I know Andrew and I, we come from bigger, uh, larger, uh, corporate organizations where we have the investment. We might have an HR team that support with some of this conversation, a different L and D team. I know. And Andrew, I hope you don't mind me asking this question to Leanne, but I know you started off, you've done roles as a sole practitioner in smaller enablement organizations. Listening to this conversation, how do you relate that to where you are, uh, with the sort of teams that you work with?

Speaker C: Yeah, such a good point. I mean, you guys and what you've done is the North Star and it's what good looks like. And then it's my job, um, in a smaller company to reconcile what's feasible both from a resources and what is culturally expected. But it's also my job to advocate for what, what needs to happen. Right. And so what I take away from this is I was thinking about it, uh, while you guys were talking, just like the aligning with the top, it's got to start there. And so, you know, this is me expressing my sales skills to do an evaluation of current state and a gap analysis with future state with a combination of data on performance. I think a survey would be really great. As I'm thinking about getting more resources, not from a headcount perspective, but like getting people to agree that an hour a month is a beneficial way to spend their time getting manager development, getting people to agree that a, you know, regardless of what level of management you've been at in the past, let's teach them, here's our way. Let's get them resources. And I think most people want it. Um, but I think what's different in an org like mine is things move so fast and the front line leader is probably a little bit fearful of what else could I be doing with that time. And you know, I've got a forecast and I've got this. And so there's a cultural shift that needs to happen. And some, some ways that, um, I can advocate for that. And I think There's a lot of people in this position where you have your tactical things that you have to do, but ultimately like the success is going to be in how well the manager meets your initiatives in the field. So you kind of have to figure out a way to balance and get priority there.

Speaker A: Yeah. And look, um, I certainly don't want to come off making it sound like ours is perfect or that, you know, have nailed every challenge at every organization. There's, it's always a work in progress. And I think that's also something that our role, we need to, you know, I don't strive for perfection because that's impossible. I think innovation is key. Always looking and taking feedback ourselves and looking at what the impact of our programs are is key to shifting or modifying what we do. Um, all that I ask of my team is not perfection. It's mistakes are okay, let's not repeat them. But outside of that it's evolving. I don't want to have a program ever that has an end date. It, that's boring to me. You know, onboarding always, constantly in a state of uh, innovation and change as it should be. Our programs, same thing. Uh, one offs are not interesting to me at all.

Speaker B: Um, I think a lot of this as well is about organizational readiness to have these longer term, um, programs of change and development and growth of a leader organization in particular. But it goes back to something that we talk about quite a lot on this podcast is about how we continue to elevate and enablement to the right level within the organization so that we move away from the BME order takers so that we can have these sort of strategic conversations so that when you go Andrew, and you position the idea of a leadership license or license to lead, sorry, you have to have that uh, credibility with those senior leaders to say, actually we're going to put your teams through an accreditation in order to allow them to go and do their job effectively. How did you approach that? How was that sort of, how did you go ahead and take that?

Speaker A: Yeah. Isn't it fun that the shift that we're finally seeing that enablement isn't the pat on the head kid in there, uh, that you know, kind of an it's okay to have type thing. We're now we can be a necessary part of the go to market strategy for an organization, but it does come with embedding yourself within those teams and certainly within the data so that you can be less reactive and start to go to these teams, uh, and, and, and, and leadership to say this is A trend that I'm seeing either in the calls that I'm listening to or the people that I'm sitting with or the dashboards that I'm living in, whatever that is. But you need to be able to go to them to say, look, this is the reason why we're going to be doing this program. It's a trend or a, you know, whatever it is. But that's, that's how again you kind of elevate from a nice to have to a uh, business partner. And that's what really enablement should be, is, is you know, we don't do training like that's, that's, that's so 19 or 2005 or whatever. Like you know, this right now we are a revenue generating part of the business through behavior change. Um, and I think if you can position yourself as such and have, you know, I've got a, another Mr. Motto, I've got another one that is if we can't measure it, I don't want to do it. It because your impact or ask for resources or do anything like that. And it's not that all the measurements and metrics are positive. That's again, that's an unrealistic expectation. But it can tell you whether you should double down on what you're doing or change what you're doing based on what you're seeing. And yes, there are leading and lagging indicators and sometimes it takes a while to tell that story. But I want to be able to tell a story of influence at some point. There's lots of different elements that go into that that I want to make sure that we're tracking.

Speaker C: Absolutely. One of the biggest things you mentioned that, you know, one of the things that you mentioned, Andrew, that I really resonated with as well is this idea that enablement is not the quick wins, it's more of the long game. Um, and so I would sit on forecast calls when I was new here at Megaport and I would think like, what am I, like I'm not gonna jump in and help this one deal get over the goal line today to hit quota. It took me a while to realize like, okay, there are trends that we're spotting and if we can address those trends proactively, then we can minimize the amount of times we find ourselves in this situation. And so then being able to go to leadership with data and the experience of being on the calls and you can say, you know, here's what I'm seeing and I think if we do this thing, it'll make this impact, that's how we have to tell our story. Because they're always going to think about like that balance of short term wins with long term, um, long term things that, that require a little bit more time and energy than they may want their team to spend immediately.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think reframing enablement when you start at any organization is key. It's one of the first things that you should be looking to do is going on a roadshow, starting with leadership. This is what we are responsible for and this is what we are not responsible for anymore moving forward. So that I think is key. You got to start positioning yourself and you can say no. And again, I have this little, you know, cheesy line of uh, I'm not saying no to you, I'm saying yes to priorities. And you know that is, is um, is something that again can help you kind of just that the one offs, that's how I kind of deflect those, is, you know, we've got more important strategic things to do. We will be able to get to that. That's also what maybe those people requesting it could do in their own team meetings if they're kind of empowered to do so. But, and this is tough, uh, look to say that it's a long game and to remind people that what we do today will not show results tomorrow. But it's key that knee jerk reactions happen and you know, if the pipeline might be low the next quarter and all of a sudden they want to do a bunch of stuff differently. You're like, no, like we got to be very thoughtful. And I'm, and I am a, I'm the one guy in the room always raised my hand going but I don't. We got to think about like slow down to speed up later folks like, right, don't do this, this, you know, this pipeline gen meeting where people are just creating their own sales plays. I'm the one guy going, no, we need governance behind that. Let's get with PMM and create something that's scalable and repeatable and measurable. So yeah, a lot of that is, is selling yourself on, on these things. And sometimes again you have to be flexible, but you have to be thoughtful in that flexibility. And you can't always bend over and, and, and you uh, know, waver. Um, because again that's, that's a confidence thing.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: You have to be steadfast if you believe in it, have that conviction. M. For sure.

Speaker C: Um, that's awesome. So many mottos, so many great enablement nuggets from Andrew, um, let's, let's take us out in a little bit of a fun way. Uh, let's say you weren't in your role or really an enablement leadership role in general. Uh, what else might you be doing? What was your alternative career path?

Speaker A: I'd be a, um, uh, tent evangelist, you know, somewhere in the south with a. Yeah, I would have some kind of weird following or. I don't know, I love being in front of people, I think. So either a comedian or, or some kind of, you know, evangelical tense guy that, uh, that can convince people maybe to send them. Send me all their money for a jet that I need for something like that. But I think that's.

Speaker C: That.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's a whole other podcast. I feel like that's a whole other time to spend diving into some of, uh, that. Uh, Andrew, thank you so much for joining us today. We've actually loved the conversation. Um, so a big thank you from Leanne and I appreciate it.

Speaker A: Thank you for having me.

Speaker C: Good. Chris. Loved that conversation. I feel like we could talk with Andrew for hours about his concepts and really how he advocates for enablement in his org and listeners. If you take anything away from today's episode, let it be this. Remove distractions from your sellers by owning a central comm strategy that focuses on what's in it for the seller and customer. Protect the golden selling time in the last 45 days of the quarter by front loading enablement and coaching in the first half of the quarter, and really focus on ensuring your managers are equipped with the skills and guides that will allow them to enforce desired behaviors on the ground floor.

Speaker B: So as we wrap up this podcast, we want to ask you, do you agree with the conversation we've had today? Do you think we've got it wrong? Make sure you drop your thoughts and comments in the. In the link below. And if there's something you want us to really dig into more, tell us about it. It genuinely shapes the way in which we build the future episodes. So make sure whatever you do like and share. Subscribe to the podcast on whatever your preferred, uh, podcast platform is. And if you do want to join us on the podcast, please reach out to contentsalesenablementcollective.com and you will be a chance to come join us on the Enablement Optimization podcast.

Speaker C: Wonderful, Chris, as always. Thanks for spending some time with me today on the Enablement Optimization podcast.

Speaker B: Take care. See you later.

Speaker C: Bye.