Episode 4 - Why your next great enabler might already be sitting on your sales floor. With Varun Desai

Speaker A: That make enablement good. And that's why resources like the Enablement Collective are so helpful. Because when we find ourselves in this place and we love the work that we're doing, we should also try and make sure that we're applying best practices.

Speaker B: Buy the goodwill first. Try to change the culture. Have a lot of chats with those first line managers, the frontline managers who are in the deals, who are talking AES and essays every single day. They will give you time and then from those conversations, develop a point of view and take it to your main stakeholders. What I will say is it gets, it gets easier once you start that way because once you win a little bit of that trust and goodwill and as long as you, you do your job, you deliver good quality work based on the hot points. They don't have to feel like they have to keep telling you what's going on because you have this rhythm and pulse and you almost feel more of an owner and you want to, you own things, you own a lot more and you feel like your work is more valuable. I think it becomes easier. If you really want the truth, talk to an ae. You might be a little bit jaded and it's been here for a little while. They'll give you a very real scoop of what they want to see more of. Feedback is a gift. At the end of the day, um, there's a sales leader I work with who says that a lot. I admire that, puts things in a very positive perspective. Um, but feedback's a gift and it's going to help you operate at a better skill. So just get back to being as close to the deals as possible in whatever fashion, uh, the business you work in allows them to do so.

Speaker A: Welcome back everyone to the Enablement Optimization podcast where we talk less about tactics and more about the strategic decisions and programs behind high impact enablement and how leaders actually drive results at scale. Chris and I are ah, back today with Varun Desai, a senior sales enablement program manager at Databricks. And we'll be discussing all things field enablement today, including how Varun uses his background and as a seller to create and deliver meaningful programs and how he stays close to the pulse of the business, aligning with both sellers and executives.

Speaker C: So Viraen has spent over, ah, five years at Databricks across six different roles. Most of them have failed as an account executive, most recently selling into enterprise healthcare accounts. He's made president's club before making one of the more interesting pivots that you'll hear about trading his quota for a seat in sales enablement with where he now focuses on turning field teams into revenue machines off the clock. Varun is one of the more athletic guests we're going to have, a former internationally ranked competitive tennis player. And if you listen closely today, you'll hear exactly how an athlete thinks about performance, repetition, and what it actually takes to show up when the pressure is on.

Speaker A: All right, Varun, uh, let's jump into it. So tell us a little bit about your background in general and how you landed in your enablement role at databricks.

Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. Um, so I've been, I've been here for a databricks for a little bit over five years. Um, majority of that was on the sales side. Most recently I was an AE on our digital native business. So I was sent to some healthcare and life sciences companies. Um, but what I've. What I was doing for the last couple of years before making this transition is I think I was our go to enablement person who's still actively selling. So for me it was a big, it was a big plus for me to be looked at that way from my peers, to be the person who. He'll probably have the answers. You'll probably have a good way to go about, you know, how I should run my deal cycle, how I should pitch something, how I should do an executive alignment, whatever. It really was, um, and over time I realized I really enjoyed it, really wanted to make more of a career out of it. So I started having those conversations and got it, started getting involved in more actual projects with our boot camps and, um, wanted to see if there's more content I could deliver, uh, things of that nature really, over the next couple years. And then when I got the opportunity, um, to be on our field enablement team where I could be more of an enablement partner to an entire business unit, that was exciting for me. It felt like a big enough scope. It felt like something where I could really influence enablement for lots of sellers and, you know, even touching onto our field engineering side. So that was exciting for me. And you know, I've been doing this for just about a year now and feel like we've done a lot of things really quickly, obviously with the support of the stakeholders and, uh, the leadership that I work with. They're super great. Um, but yeah, that's a little bit on how I made that transition.

Speaker C: That's great, Drew. And one of the things that we talk about from time to time is whether or not you need to have that sales background to be successful in enablement. And I sort of pigeon like sort of think about it in two different ways. One is about having the credibility and clearly with your background in sales you've got that credibility in order to do that. But also there's a big capability, capability part of it as well. So how have you managed to ensure that you have the capability to be a great enabler?

Speaker B: First off, I mean it definitely helps, right? I'm, I think it helps you look at deals in a very different way. I'll try to answer what you asked me a little bit differently. Um, when I had an A, obviously out of quota, everything got filtered through one question for me which is is this going to help me hit my number? Is this going to help me sell bigger deals? Is this going to help me sell a longer term deal or just a one year deal? And that's all I'm thinking about because if it's not really helping that I'll be honest, I'm not paying as much attention. I'll do the training or I'll join the session because it's my job too and I have to. But that's just, you'll be that one

Speaker C: who clicks through the enablement. You'll be the one who clicks through the training and gets to the test as quick as you can.

Speaker B: I think we've all been there a couple of times. Um, and look, it is hard like if you get on the other side, you're not going to win everybody over. On every training you do. If you send out a survey you're not going to get perfect scores because um, somebody once told me, you know, you should try to move the middle a little. That's where you know you're not trying to get the A wrap to be unreal. They're probably going to do that by themselves to be honest. But can you get the really motivated AE who's probably a C player to move up and be a B player? Can we get each AE to sell maybe more multi year deals or can we get a few more AES sell a hundred thousand dollars more per year. That makes a massive impact on the uh, top line number for the business unit. So to go back, um, one thing is you have to know that you keep, you have to keep learning. Yes, I was a seller by profession but that doesn't mean I'm just going to be a really good enabler or really good enablement and delivering content or working cross functioning. There's a lot of different skills um, that I had to get good at pretty fast. Because you don't use them as much as an ae, uh, when you're in a. So a few, which I think I think about is one is just wrangling everyone together. You have to be a project manager. Some people say when you're in a, you kind of quarterback your deals. It's very similar. You have to quarterback every project over here. You have to pull in different people. You have to get everyone on the same page to agree, which isn't always the case. Um, but I think learning how people learn, um, has been a new, A new piece. Like some people are really good with just being left alone. You give them an E learning and they're off to the races. Some people love to talk through things live and want to get on a huddle or they want to, to get, get on a zoom call just to talk through it with you. And then some people just want to sit back and have someone run a training or maybe they'll watch recording later. Right. So you have to find the mix of that along with, along with. Is this tying to the problem in the biggest manner. So I'd say a lot of the context pieces, yes. Like, I try to keep that, that high bar for myself where whatever I deliver or whatever I'm working with, you know, the sales leaders or the FE leaders to deliver, it has to tie to a problem that is big enough that we care about or an initiative that's going to accelerate something we really care about. Um, but those other skills, it's always just going to be a work in progress. Uh, and I feel like some people could maybe just mail it in and say it's okay, I have the right context, but is it going to move the needle? So hopefully that gives some context. Maybe not the most direct answer, but that's how I think about it.

Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. I think when you make that transition, and my transition into enablement was similar from sales leader over to enablement, you think, oh, well, a lot of the things that made me successful as a seller, as a sales manager are enablement ish. Things like I was big on, uh, uh, clarity and best practices and telling people what good looks like, that's enablement. But this whole other skill set of like learning and development, I was doing it organically, so so similar to you. And then you have to go figure out like, well, what are the actual frameworks that make enablement good? And that's why resources like the Enablement Collective are so helpful. Because when we find ourselves in this place and we love the work that we're doing. We should also try and make sure that we're applying best practices. So I love that you're, you're mindful of, you know, the skills that needed to be applied on top of all the natural things that you brought into your role. Um, yeah, so I think the, the other thing we like to hit on is like the, the why into enablement. And you talked about that a little bit, but, um, you told us when we were chatting about this that you saw some gaps in the way that enablement was supporting you as a seller and you wanted to bring those into your approach from the enablement side, um, tell us a little bit more about what those things were and maybe how you, how you change things to, uh, serve your sellers better.

Speaker B: Yeah, so look, it's, it's a hard profession from the angle of, like I said on the previous one, you can't get it right every time as an enablement professional. So when I think of the gaps I had when I started at this company, we had probably like a thousand people, maybe 900 people, and now we have 11, 000 people globally. So that is something to say where you, you're never going to have enough. And you know, our product suite has tremendously grown, so I do want to call that out where there's a pretty insane amount of speed and scale, um, that has to be thought about. But when I'm the seller, it feels like there's a constant drinking from a fire hose situation where there's a lot of new information coming and it's just hard to prioritize that. Um, and at some point you just, again, you, you just stop caring as much about all the content. You're like, what deals do I have? And maybe I'll learn what I need to along my deals and I'll work with my sales leader. So what I was really hoping to do and to now answer your question, what the gap was is I just felt like I wanted to get things more programmatic. Right. How can I get involved and make things more programmatic, more scalable? And it's not an easy task to do because again, we're moving at such a high speed and scale even today. Um, but if I could have a centralized hub for resources, cool. That's one thing where I can check a box, but it's culturally getting people when they start and they onboard or when they ask questions to be like, have you checked here first? Um, we have a bunch of resources here, Take a look. They're on these topics and we got good feedback on that. That's why they're here. We're happy to help after that. Right, so then you're not doing quite as many ad hoc answers and just you just live in slack all day or you'll be in a million more meetings. Um, but I'll give you a few examples. So every quarter we try to do a quarter, we do a quarterly commit training. Um, just so it doesn't get stale like for AES who are running commit business, here's our best practice. For AES that are working on big upsells, multi year upsells, here's our best practice. We even have sessions on onboarding of here's the best way to work with your solutions Architect. These are two different roles that are supposed to work really close together. But we run it quarterly, monthly, depending on the session and we always tweak it to see what's changed since we ran it last time. And that doesn't take a lot of effort. I think when I was a little bit newer in seat I'd get an ask, I'd work on it, I'd act on it also. Because you knew to the role you want to do good work, you want to be proactive. But over time I've now seen that being proactive, the best way is giving leadership the peace of mind that we already have a lot of this, let's rerun it, let's make the tweaks. All of it is in the same place here and all the AES and all of the field knows that. So the big, the biggest way I can answer this question is how can I constantly strive to make it more programmatic and scalable so that we can get this across more teams and if it's good enough we can get it across global teams, get on our global boot camps and things like that.

Speaker C: So I love that answer. There was a lot in there that you spoke about about how you can, I think a lot of the time in enablement. Sometimes we can end up being busy fools and just being very reactive to the asks that come at us and without thinking about how we can really elevate it to a strategic conversation and how we can build more programmatic, scalable activities. Have you mentioned a couple of sort of things there? The um, sort of quarterly commit, quarterly upsell type activities. How do you know they're effective?

Speaker B: It's a great way to look at it. So I'm a big believer on you have to stay very close to the pulse and rhythm of the business. So before we even. So I'll take One small step back before we even ran that training. Let's take a, take a second to see why we ran that. Um, and the reason is we want to see where our gaps are. You know, let's say we have a big group of new hires and they're just not selling enough three year deals or they're not, you know, they're not starting really high up for their options or they're just trying to get the safe deal. Like that's not going to help them hit their number and that's not going to help us hit the overarching number right when you scale that out. So getting on, getting on as many forecast calls as I can, having close cadences with these sales leaders and FE leaders to see where the gaps are allows me to be proactive. That's the first thing. And then we, then I can recommend sessions. They obviously recommend sessions too. And we can work cleanly together to build out like an enablement calendar for what we should run. We prioritize it. But then to see how it really runs, there's a couple of different feedback mechanism. One is I've been here for over five years. I'll ping people who I know are more senior, be like, give me the true black and white. Where did we hit? What do we not hit? Um, because people aren't always going to ask questions, live on a call. So uncomfortable sometimes, right, to go off mute and ask a question. But as much as we try to empower people to do, it's not going to happen. So things like getting an NPS score, getting a feedback form out and making it anonymous, I think is, it's massive. Um, I just got back from an off site yesterday in California where we immediately sent out, um, you know, kind of the feedback form, the M survey to fill out to rate every session that we did on enablement and then an open text box on the bottom of what, what do you like? What do you want to see differently? Because we're here to serve you at the end of the day. So the tone of reminding the field that I'm on their side I think is so crucial for this, for them to be willing to give me feedback because they built, they trust that I will work with the leaders to actually get, to get content that they need in front of them or to get trainings that they need in front or get the right material in front of them. So I think that's an underrated piece. Whereas do people trust that you can act on what they're going to put in those feedback Forms, it's just another feedback form. Um, and then the other piece is we're going to track the uh, like if it's a commit business trip training for the next couple of months, we're going to track how many more multi year deals do we do if that's what we focused on. Right. If it's a specific product training, you know, whether you use Gong or use Kaya or whatever the call recording tool you use, like look at the transcripts and you know, put them into an AI tool and take a look at how many commonalities, how many times was that mentioned? Then look at the pipeline, um, the pipeline variety. So for Daybreak specifically we have tons of different products. We won't get into that but let's say you sell several different SKUs at a software company and we train on for the moment you do have to do product training sometimes so they know what they're saying. It's not always going to be discovery and executive alignment. But can we take a look for a moment here and see if we've talked about XYZ product. How many times have you seen an uptick and how many times that's even mentioned on a discovery call, on an intro call, an executive alignment call and demand planning call. Because if we see those optics and we can time box it from before and after, in my opinion that's good data. Is it perfect? It's not always going to be perfect but it gives us signals, it gives us a way to think about it and it points towards whether we're doing things the right way. Because if we're doing this and we can't see any of those changes, um, then we have to rethink how we're doing enablement and I need to work with the sales leaders and like hey, there could be a different style on how we do this. I have one example I can actually give you on something we pivoted here. We have this onboarding session um, that we run for new hires, right. And just for the business unit that I support. And the way we used to do it is we would just go through kind of just the slides and that's fine. There's a lot of trainings which just have slides, a lot of material which is just slides. And it is such an, it's such a crucial one because it talks through the software but it gets dry very fast. And something we changed which has made those NPS scores from let's say like a set early seven to a medium to high nine is we talk about a Few things and their product pieces. And then we take a pause. I have a technical counterpart on this training as well. They go into the platform and they actually show you what that is. And I think how people learn, like we talked about earlier, is so massive because some people are visual learners. They're looking into this complicated technology platform. They're not engineers, they don't have engineering backgrounds. And now they're seeing how it works and they can connect those dots of now when I speak about it to a customer, they're visualizing what it actually looks like. And they've also obviously seen the slide that has the three bullets and the key points you should say to a customer or prospect. So pivoting like that, being honest with yourself, um, and just remembering that your job is to serve the field, you know, your job is to serve the field, make people better, um, I think that's, that's really important.

Speaker A: I think from a serving perspective, you hit on something interesting related to credibility. Like, yes, you have the credibility of coming in as a seller. That's a plus. But the quicker you can prove to the business that you know their needs and the programs that will make impact and that you're not a transaction engine, the more alignment you'll get from them. Because they know, okay, the things that I get from enablement, the time that I spend with enablement, like, they know the things that I need, they deliver me the things that I need. And I think if anyone is looking to get that instant credibility, it's make it to where you're people aren't asking things of you because you're proactively identifying those areas. And I think that one of the things we talk about a lot with in the enablement community is how do you make sure that your team is not order takers? Well, if leaders and individuals don't trust that you know what they need, they're going to shoot you orders all the time. But if you embed that proactive piece in, you might reduce your request by 50% because they're just going to trust that you're going to bring them the things that they need and that will help you, like, reconcile your roadmap, um, but bringing that that credibility. So it's cool.

Speaker B: Such a good point, Leanne. And I think it's always an eb and flow on that. There's always going to be ask. But like, I, I love what you said. You're not going to eradicate it completely. It's just you're lowering the amount of ad hoc asks. You're going to get because they trust that you're probably already working on it. Um, and the easiest way, in my opinion, and I will say easy versus simple here, is you just, you're going to have to build relationships with the leaders that you support because you're there to make their life a little bit easier. Um, sometimes that line gets a little bit blurred on who owns what. But I think if the relationship is strong and you're both investing into definitely becomes a little bit easier and then you kind of spot check when you talk to them every week. This is what I have in mind. What feedback do you have? What would you add? What are you seeing from your specifically team? Because the other team is seeing this.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: And then we can coach to a broader audience and make sure we don't any.

Speaker C: And I think it's really interesting because as you've talked the thing that was coming into my head was sort of where the feedback that you were getting started off with some of that immediate reaction. That happy sheet, those NPS scores is where you're at. Ah. But what's really interesting is that you have enough, um, insight into the business where you can start to move up that Kirkpatrick model and look for impact when it comes to behavior and into results. And I think that's a really critical part and something where I think you perhaps have had the opportunity to do that because of your background. But if you were, uh, an enabler who is looking to break into those forecast meetings, those deal reviews, those pipeline events to really try and have the opportunity to move up the ladder in the scale of where you're having impact. What would be your advice to those enablers to try and get a seat at the table in some of these critical meetings that give us the insight to, as Leanne said, not just be, uh, another order taker?

Speaker B: I think the first thing is seeing how enablement is viewed in the organization. Right. Just transparently your goal should be to deliver things that move the needle. Um, so if enablement is not viewed as something that can do that, that is also okay. If enablement sometimes could be viewed as do the training, get them, check the onboarding box, run the program, pass them to sales leader. They'll do everything else they need to do. Um, but I think that's where one building the relationships early on is super, super important, but coming with a point of view and I think this is something which a lot of people don't do just because it's easy to do, so it's easy not to do. It's, it's like when you go and you, you're trying to sell a strategic deal, you have to have a point of view on how it's going to impact their business. You're going to look at not just ROI or cost saving, you're going to look at so many other points, um, as to how it's going to, I don't know, transform their business digitally. So same thing here is like you almost have to sell enablement internally before you can actually do it at a larger scale. Talk about the results, have data points behind it of if we can actually get involved in this, commit business. Here's a few pieces that I've heard from sales leaders. Um, I think we'd be able to make a way, massive, way bigger impact with less effort from the sales leaders. My ask is can we get on the forecast call section? I can actually in real time here. I don't even have to talk on them. I just want to be on the fly on the wall if that's what you prefer. I'd be able to hear where the gap points are and if they're common enough I can take that to our main stakeholders, talk about the pain points and have a plan of action on how I'm going to approach it. Because nobody is going to want to build something for you, um, but people love to give you feedback on something that you've already built. So come with some uh, like come with an idea, something you've that you think could be effective and have 2, 3 slides. It's so easy with AI tools to make slides today, right? Like uh, come with a couple of different slides. They don't have to be perfect just with hot talking points. What you've heard by talking to first line leaders because they'll give you time and then if you hear enough commonalities just say it'll be so much easier for me to do this faster and in a more scalable manner if I get added to these calls. But again that doesn't have a lot to do with being a seller. That has a lot to do with being proactive and trying to win goodwill and show the effort of I'm on your side. I'm here to make you folks be more successful, hit your numbers, promote your people, you know, grow the skillset of your people. Like that is my job. I'm here to be the glue for your org where if you need a little bit of extra sales leader support, sure. I could step in and have a conversation like that if you need me to be you know, more of a programmatic resource on the side and do something program wise. Sure I can, I can lead in and do that. You almost want to be viewed as someone who can do a little bit of everything in that sense. But to answer the question, buy the goodwill first, try to change the culture. Have a lot of chats with those first line managers, the, the frontline managers who are in the deals, who are talking to AES and essays every single day. They will give you time and then from those conversations, develop a point of view and take it to your main stakeholders.

Speaker A: Mhm. Yeah. I think the, the biggest thing you said there was like coming with ideas for solutions rather than problems. Yeah.

Speaker B: Don't be the person who comes to

Speaker A: problems with problems, like they're not productive conversations. But when I say I have an idea for a solution than like, you know, the C's part and they get me where I need to be. Um, so that's a great way to get in there. And I like how you're justifying, you know, here's why should be brought into conversations. Um, but I definitely love that that touch on. It depends on how enablement is viewed in the org. And I think a lot of enablement people have, you know, in the past four or five years been frustrated that they're seen as this tactical engine, they're seen as this training department. But my question is like, what are you doing to change that perception? And it's like we just expect our orgs because like CROs, et cetera, they'll say like, well, we need enablement because most sales orgs have enablement. So let me bring someone in that does enablement. And then we expect them to champion the way that we're viewed. But really that's our job, right? And it's our job to teach everyone. So one of the things I did, um, because enablement was new at Megaport when I came in was just a come to me win flag with five bullets. It's like come to me when you are seeing some trends in your org that you need attention to, um, and things like that. And then just like I socialize, I'm like, hey, can I even have 10 or 15 minutes with all of the leaders that I'm trying to support Because I ran into a lot of situations where people were going to sales ops for things that I thought were enablement or the strategists were trying to do some enablement. Um, and so at first it was kind of like why is this happening? But then it was like I own this, this need to share with the business what I'm here to do and how to work with me. And so there's like this proactive component of making sure that your, your fundamentals are shared. And I would just encourage those in our profession to like be bullish in owning the narrative there. Um, and then, you know, don't shoot your. Shoot your shot, I guess. So once you get in those places, like, you got to be read, you know, present value and tie outcomes. But, um, yeah, one thing I will

Speaker B: add on and I love what you just shared is it's. I like the come to me when piece. I think that's something I might steal from you. Um, but what I will say is it gets, it gets easier once you start that way because once you win a little bit of that trust and goodwill. And as long as you do your job, you deliver good quality work based on the hot points. They don't have to feel like they have to keep telling you what's going on because you have this rhythm and pulse and you almost feel more of an owner and you want to, you own things, you own a lot more and you feel like your work is more valuable. I think it becomes easier.

Speaker C: Mhm.

Speaker B: Or simpler might be the word.

Speaker A: Yeah, it wasn't easy for me because one of my first tasks was implementing seismic. So people were seeing this function, delivering this like administrative tactical thing. And so then it was like, hey, can you add this and tag it in seismic and put it on this page? And I'm like, I can, but hold on a minute. Like, that's not, that's not what we're doing here. And it's like balancing that. Like, we do have to deliver tactical things, training things, but we have to make sure that people see it in the more strategic way.

Speaker C: But what I think is really important, barely Ann, is that you push back. You said no, you had really clear like lines. And it's not to say. And I think that is also a way of gaining credibility, is knowing when those moments are right to say, actually, do you know what? I could do this and it would be a two minute task for me to do. But as soon as I start doing that, I'm never going to be able to be able to get back to the role where it should be. Or at least that journey to get there is far harder. Um, and I think as well, perhaps when you think about your time as a seller and in previous roles, you've had to say no to customers, customers, I'm sure, a million times during that journey and we can't always give our customers what we want. However, should we say customers always. Right. And all of that. There's lines, there's negotiation. You have to push back at times to say, actually, do you know what? This isn't feasible. Do you think some of those skills that you sort of honed in that environment has helped you in that enablement space to manage expectations, to be able to make sure you're doing the right effective work that's making a difference?

Speaker B: Yeah, um, absolutely has. And I. One thing I use to make this a little bit easier, um, I want to take ownership for. One of the sales leaders actually gave me an idea on how to do it is like, have a calendar off, uh, everything you're doing and when it's being delivered. Because 1. And this is not a personal thing. No one's that. He didn't say this, but this is what I've experienced is nobody's thinking about you. Like, everyone's thinking about themselves and their teams. And this is just, I guess, human nature. People are focused on their goals and getting their next promotion and their next job. And I think being able to remind people when you do talk to them, it's like, hey, we need enablement on this. Or, hey, we need to build this. Or, hey, we need to build this. The ask will keep coming. Just having a simple enablement calendar, which every stakeholder has access to sometimes. And say, like, there's 10 things that we have in the pipe. The next available time is under that or where on the priority list is. Is this because we could reshuffle some things around and we can discuss it with, you know, the leaders higher up. And then I think getting that buy in has given me one a lot of peace of mind. Because I'm not directly saying no, I'm saying yes, that's fair. But when based on everything else, because. And I. The one piece I can draw back to my selling experiences. The biggest thing I didn't like is there's a million things being thrown at me all the time. There's a ton of new trainings, and I almost don't know when to make sense of what you want to feel like. It's going from the right. The right. The white one to the right one. And you're learning the right skill set. I don't want to recreate that just because we're getting a lot of asks because then how am I any different than the problem that I was trying to solve earlier? So I feel like just having a calendar has been really a Simple way to, I don't know, make that easier for me so I don't really have to say no.

Speaker A: I've thought about this in the way of m. Like, let seller capacity be your gauge because they can't take on a ton of stuff. So you could deliver, you could create it all in a vacuum, but you're not going to be able to give them 10 things at once. So, like, like you said, like having a list of things, being open to reprioritization, but knowing, like, sellers can only consume so much. Um, and letting that be your guide.

Speaker C: And I think it'd be a good conversation. We've got coming up in a future podcast, Leanne, which will go more into that, um, with one of our guests who talks about protecting the golden the second half of the quarter, those 45 days from sellers and how we do that. And so that's one for you to listen to, Varun, that you're on down the line once we've got that podcast out.

Speaker B: Uh, most definitely looking forward to it.

Speaker C: So, Varun, we're coming to the last couple of questions for you. The question is, from your experience and the vast experience that you've had being both a seller and now within enablement, what do you think are some of the common pitfalls that some or most enablement professionals get wrong?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's a great question. I'm sure this will evolve as my time and enablement goes longer. But, you know, I come from a sports background. Um, I'm a big game tape guy, right. So I played a lot of tennis, um, basically from the age of four, and then my dad played the pro tour for 10 years. I played internationally and in college, and I still compete and play as much as I can. The reason I mentioned this is you need to know what you're coaching towards, right? So I still coach some tennis on the side sometimes. And I feel what happens is they put themselves in a hole sometimes. It's just a programmatic function. Don't get me wrong, super important to be good at programmatic skill, things like that. But at the end of the day, your job is to directly impact revenue, right? So I feel like sometimes if you get. I've, uh, seen enablement leaders and doesn't necessarily have to be here where I work, but you could get a little bit further from the deal, maybe just because of the style of the work. It is, and it's not something anyone's going to tell you to do, but you want to stay curious on what's making our top Sellers close big deals. You want to stay curious about what's helping the velocity deal take place because you're not going to know what to coach towards and where you can actually improve little things and make recommendations if you don't know that. Also, the selling landscape has tremendously changed in the last couple of years now where if you know how an AE goes to market is completely different to how an AE used to go to market a couple years ago. You're building prompts on perplexity, you're building business value statements to go to executives with using AI in almost every part of your work stream. But if you stay too far from the deal, you won't know how AES are going about that. So how are you going to coach relevant best practices on even things that are. Let's step away from even a deal. Like little things like prospecting, you know, getting the next meeting, um, little things like making sure you have the right content or you can prep efficiently to bring back time on your calendar. I think these are super important things where when you're not close to the deal, you're not gonna know. Some people might think my job, I don't have time for that. That's okay. Like there's tons of recordings, um, that you should have access to. You should be able to talk to the first line leaders. Talk to. If you really want the truth, talk to an AE who might be a little bit jaded and has been here for a little while. They'll give you a very real scoop of what they want to see more of. Feedback is a gift. At the end of the day, um, there's a sales leader I work with who says that a lot. I admire that, keep puts things in a very positive perspective. Um, but feedback's a gift and it's going to help you operate at a better scale. So just get back to being as close to the deals as possible in whatever fashion, uh, the business you work in allows that to do so.

Speaker C: And I think what's really interesting with the answer you just gave there for Ren is that, uh, A.I. isn't going to be able to do half the stuff that you just mentioned that needs to be done to do that. Like the things that need to be done still require that human connection. And AI will allow us for space to be able to create trainings and do other work, but actually giving us the capacity to be closer to that deal, to be having those conversations, to be building those relationships so that when we do go out there and deliver that training or provide that content Whatever that is, it's going to land far better because it's coming from a place where there's trust and credibility and that's never going to be replaced by AI.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: No, that's purely, that's human nature the way I look at it.

Speaker C: Exactly.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, Varun, amazing conversation about your professional, uh, background and also love the, your story from an athlete, athletic perspective. Um, a little bit of a fun tangent. Let's assume that you weren't in your enablement role at Databricks. What else would you be doing? Do you have any, um, alternate career

Speaker B: paths if I wasn't doing this and working in software? I mean, it's funny, like my profession here in enablement has so much to do with coaching and I love it. I mean, I played tennis my whole life. I'd probably be coaching, I'd probably try to coach some, um, some top juniors on the tour and travel to, you know, some of the bigger events and try to get them to win a couple of more matches, go a little bit further, go a little bit deeper into tournaments. Um, that would be pretty exciting. I think my super competitive years are behind me, but, you know, play enough to where I could still have a perspective on it.

Speaker A: Yeah. And you've, you've done an awesome job embedding those same skills and thought processes into your enablement role. So amazing conversation. Thanks so much for joining me and Chris and I know we'll be, uh, watching you as your career progresses.

Speaker B: Awesome. Thanks for the time. Thanks for having me, Leanne. Thanks Chris. Appreciate you both.

Speaker C: So Leanne, I absolutely love that conversation with Varun today. So many great nuggets that we can all take forward into our own enablement roles. But if I was to summarize it, the three things that I took away from the call today is make sure when you're going into those meetings you go with a point of view. Don't just turn up with the problem. Take a vision of what you can do to try and resolve a problem that you've identified. Because you've got far more chance of getting feedback than you would of getting them to help you build the solution to the problem you're picking up on. The second thing was about getting close to those sales meetings. Be that fly on the wall, hear the pain and find the data points to help you drive the change. And never be too far from the dynamics of a deal that you are creating. Make sure that you are as close to the business as you possibly can be so that you can really help drive impactful results.

Speaker A: Yeah, totally agree. Vroom brought some really good points. Um, love his transition and how he brought both his seller mentality as well as his athletic mentality to his enablement role and excited to see how his career progresses. Um, so that's our show today folks. Uh, before we wrap up, as always, uh, we want to hear from you. Do you agree or do you think that we got some of our conversation wrong today? Drop ah your thoughts in the comments. If there's something you want to dig into more, tell us that too. Uh, always helps where we take future episodes. Um and like share and subscribe to the podcast on your preferred platform and reach out to us at content at sales enablement collective.com if you'd like to join the show as a guest. Chris, as always, amazing chat. Have an awesome day.

Speaker C: Take care. See you later.