Episode 7 - How to make enablement a driver of revenue not a footnote (with Russ Martin)

Speaker A: There's just such this idea that you can't reinvent yourself as you get older and like, you have to stay within whatever you are personally, professionally like. And it's just so not true. Like you can reinvent yourself whenever you want without paying the consequences. Um, and I think it's, you know, something that I've had a great, great time doing throughout my, my life, both professionally and uh, personally, where again, I, I tried my hand at like acting and had a ton of fun at it and it didn't work out. Then I went into marketing and advertising and had a ton of fun of it and then I went into tech sales and had a ton of fun with it. Now I'm doing a startup. Um, and you know, to me it's just, you can't be afraid to take chances. It's going to be okay.

Speaker B: So, 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, I am super excited that we're joined by Russ Martin and we're going to be discussing all things onboarding and training, but with the lens of impact. And we'll chat through why most trainings fail and how to get it right.

Speaker C: I'm super excited as well, Chris. We've got Russ Martin, who's the founder and CEO of Rampright AI. Russ has spent his career in revenue leadership roles, but at his core he really just enjoys building teams, processes and products that thrive in the real world. Particularly interested in how companies help people ramp and grow and how that connects to real outcomes, not just activity based metrics. And Russ is based in Boston, Massachusetts.

Speaker B: Let's dive straight in. And do you know, for anyone who's had a chance to have a Look at Russ's CV or background on LinkedIn, you will see a plethora of high level revenue roles. An scro, an svp, a global revenue. So I feel like the first question should be, Russ, when you were in those roles and you were in the seat responsible for the number, how did you feel about enablement?

Speaker A: Yeah, it's a really good question. I think looking back at the time when I was in those revenue leadership roles, I thought of enablement and I'll admit I'm a bit guilty of this as something that helped me influence a decision a little bit, but not always drive the ultimate outcome of a decision. And I think that was a massive disconnect. Now that I look back with a little bit of hindsight, of, you know, I would say, like, how are, how are things going? And how are, how are people feeling? Or how is the training? Or how is, you know, whatever it is? Um, and, you know, I would get the thumbs up or I would get the it's going okay sort of thing, and I'd be like, okay, good. That's my, like, check mark from there. And I kind of moved on to the next decision. Um, and I think what I've come to realize is just the neurons that connect enablement and revenue leadership and decisions that drive revenue and growth and scalability is broken in a lot of different ways. And people have to kind of revamp how you think about what do I need from enablement to make the best educated choice as a revenue leader to drive success? Um, and not have it be just a small influential piece of the piece of. Because at the end of the day, how enabled and how capable your team is of driving their goals is what's ultimately going to give you the success or not. Um, and so again, I think I was a little bit guilty of the pass of kind of listening, but maybe not putting the weight behind it that it deserved.

Speaker C: Well, Russ, when you talk about the decisions, give us some examples of those. Are you talking about, like, are my new hires going to. Going to cut it, going to make it? Should I make changes? And how well can we roll those out? Uh, what, what are you talking about there?

Speaker A: Yeah, and I think, you know, the, the biggest decision typically that a revenue leader makes is their forecast. And how much are we going to grow and how much are we going to sell? And then all of a sudden from there you get into, do I have individuals on my team? Do I have products on my team that are capable of me hitting that number? And that number is not only based on just new hires hitting, you know, hey, you have an exhaustive hiring process and, you know, somebody runs the gauntlet and they win the Hunger Games and they get the job. And, you know, the other side of it is like, okay, great, I need you to go write a million dollars in quota in the next eight months. Thanks. See you later. Um, one, that's not fair. And then two, the other side of it that I think so often gets looked by as well is we have a product release coming out, and I have 30% growth forecasted against that product release. And so often, and this is the case, and I joke about it with my co founder is the CPO or whoever developed that product stands up in front of the revenue team and explains it for six hours, and you kind of watch everybody's eyes glaze over and everybody starts looking, like, at the watch and at the phone. And then all of a sudden, at the end of it, it's like everybody's got it and everyone nods because they're just so desperate to, like, get out of class. Um, and then they go out. And as a revenue leader, you think to yourself, I've just prepared everybody to succeed at the highest of high levels. And the truth is, you have done nothing of the sort. Um, and so I think there's just so many different examples of, you know, I'm building out a big number of growth for, you know, for success and for scalability. But am I actually putting in the foundational elements to do that? And I think a lot of times the answer is M, no.

Speaker B: And who do you think's to blame for that? Like, do you feel like that was the fault of. Well, and it's interesting because there is the argument that the CRO or the revenue leaders should be able to see beyond the number and look for the opportunity of growth and growing their people, and that's a way to drive outcomes. Or do you think it was partly responsibility of enablement for not showing up with the right strategic level of conversation to do that? Because one of the things we talk about and we love to comment on and hear from guests on this podcast, is about how enablement shows up as a strategic partner, not just as the people that go out there and deliver the training. So when you reflect on those roles that you're in, and this isn't any casting aspersions on any enablement team that you've worked with in the past, but in general, do you think it is partly a fault of the CROs and the SVPs of revenue, or do you think it's an enablement responsibility to show up better?

Speaker A: Uh, I'm going to use the word enable, but not to gear it towards enablement. I think so many people are enabled at the idea of good enough and what those around you deem good enough. And you kind of say, all right, I did exactly what company X did, exactly what company Y did, exactly what, you know, consultant G told me to do. Um, but the reality is there's so few people that take the ownership to say that wasn't good enough. Like, we can go further on this. We can compound my answer, like, I can have an enablement leader, and I've had wonderful enablement leaders throughout my career that I would genuinely say I wildly underutilized. Um, but Individuals that would, you know, if, if we could kind of connect our heads together and say, I know that was kind of best practices based on what we researched within the market, but like, we can take this further. And I think that second part is where people come up short of we're doing best practices. That's good enough. And it's like, yeah, but it's not actually driving the desired outcome. And so when you find individuals that are okay pushing boundaries and okay, pushing the norm. And you know, something that I've learned as I've gone in my career of, you know, time to take moments of reflection because I also think too, whether you're an enablement, whether you're in revenue leadership, whatever your position is, a lot of times things move really fast. And the idea of slowing down to reflect, to say was that the best possible outcome from that exercise is just not on your radar. Right. Like you're just, you got through it, you're expecting uh, a certain outcome, but you reflect. Is what we just did going to actually create an environment for that desired outcome. And I think those are kind of the things I think about now where, you know, why didn't we do a little bit better, why didn't we drive a little bit more? And the fault of it is just, you know, if we're okay conforming to what everyone says is best, then then that's where we land.

Speaker B: Mm mhm.

Speaker C: Yeah. So you're saying that even the most strategic, strategically presented enablement person could get slighted because the revenue leader is often thinking short term, thinking about the current forecast, which sometimes equates to checking the box on the enablement initiatives. So it takes two to get to the point where we're seeing enablement as more strategic and we're embracing the forward looking approach.

Speaker A: Yeah, I would totally agree with that. And then I think also too it's really important to make sure that, you know, KPIs and indicators are aligned within multiple orgs. Um, you know, one thing that I've come to appreciate as I've gotten a little bit older is uh, prior to my revenue leadership roles, I was in marketing for a long time in advertising. And there were many times where my marketing goals had nothing to do with my revenue goals. And so I could go out there and create a billion impressions and run the greatest campaign numerically that anyone's ever seen. And we grew 0%. And so a little bit too is making sure that our enablement's goals tied to the revenue goals so that they're pushing in the Same direction as opposed to people kind of just splitting off at the Delta V. But how do

Speaker B: you ensure that's the case? Because you mentioned earlier on that there is examples where you've had, uh, you've gone and spoken to enablement and they go, uh, yeah, things are going great. People are happy, they're all smiles, all good. How do you challenge and push back on enablement to really find the metrics that matter?

Speaker A: I think it's the same way that you do in almost all groups is you try to come up with objective data points as opposed to things that might be a little bit more subjective.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker A: I mean, I think that's something that even as a revenue leader, we struggle from sometimes is. You know, if. If I was being asked when a little bit younger in my career, how things are going, I'd say, oh, the team is energized, we're going in a great direction. I'm really exc. About the quarter ahead. That's not a great answer. Like, that's me running for, like, political office. Um, a great answer is we have pipeline coverage. We have closed or, you know, uh, operate close ratio that supports our pipeline, that supports our goals. That's in. And I think those are some of the things that, you know, I've come to appreciate as I've gotten older of, you know, not did someone participate in a training, not did someone participate in onboarding or product release camp or anything like that. Do they understand it? Like, what are the measurable outcomes of them coming through that training or that process that shows this person can do their job? Um, and I think when you start to tie those objective data sets into one another, you do see very quickly. Yes, Enablement at the highest levels makes revenue run very, very well. Um, because it gets the people that drive revenue to run very, very well.

Speaker C: Yeah. And I think there's not, you can't say this person or this role owns aligning those KPIs and indicators. I think we all own a piece of that to get in the room and make sure that we're all looking at things we can't look at, you know, our leaders or the.

Speaker A: Oh, can I compound on that? Because I actually think you're bringing up such a good point of. I think when there's a round table in a room as well, and it's, you know, a revenue leader, an enablement leader, a marketing leader, uh, whatever it is, you know, all the kind of the, you know, the kings of King Arthur's quarter all kind of together in the, in the room. You can't have anybody comfortable without a, uh, connection, a, uh, connecting indicator to someone else's, right? And so often it's, well, these are our KPIs, and it's like, awesome, but do your KPIs connect to mine, connect to hers, connect to his? And I think if you can make sure that you leave a room where everything is intertwined and connected, you're going to be in a really, really good spot. But I think historically, and I'll be the first to raise my hand to this one, I kind of let the silo KPI's live by themselves without understanding how much that was going to impact me and my teams.

Speaker C: So what changed?

Speaker A: I think I grew up.

Speaker C: I think differently now.

Speaker A: Yeah, Yeah, I think I grew up. I think, you know, I've had times in my career where, like, I failed and I came up short of a goal that I thought was very possible. Um, and I think it goes back to the idea of, you know, reflection and being able to look in the mirror and say to yourself, like, truthfully, Russ, like, what happened? Like, did. Did someone wildly underperform? Did somebody not have the pipeline that they thought they had? Like, were you wearing rosy, happy glasses when you put together your forecast because you wanted to get high fives and thumbs up in a board meeting as opposed to, like, you know, the dreaded, like, it doesn't look good, Russ. Um, and so, you know, I think for me, as I've gotten older, you know, it's something that I take from a cultural value of a company a few ago, of being respectfully blunt, where the people that I try to surround myself with now are the first people that are going to be like, Russ, I don't agree with you. And Russ, I don't think that's 100% solid. And I think, you know the old proverb of like, I'm wise because I know nothing. You. When you surround people, when you surround yourself with people that are willing to challenge you and willing to speak up and raise a hand when they don't agree with you, I think you get to a really, really good place. And as I've gotten a little bit older in my career, those are the people that I really prioritize in my circle.

Speaker B: I love that, Russ, and I love that you look at it as like a, uh, path of career maturity almost as much as anything. But I would also sort of give you a bit of reprise as well and sort of say, look, we equally in enablement, we weren't always able to provide those Data points. There was often a time where the evolution of technology that we've seen in the industry over the last X number of years has really sort of ramped up and is now sort of providing us at this point of inflection where we enablement can actually show up with data. We can show up with those cool indicators, we can show up with that, uh, data point that really can tie into the objectives of marketing or revenue, et cetera, et cetera, to really show that. So I, I hear what you're saying, and certainly there is a massive part of that, uh, of, of building a team and surrounding yourself with people that truly challenge you to do that. But I do also think that there is also that maturity of, of technology that comes to it. And, and I suppose that also ties in nicely with, with what you're doing now and where you are with, with the business that you're trying to work and grow and develop, where you're looking at a really interesting part of the, of the seller's life cycle. I suppose that, well, and, well, you can correct me if I'm wrong here, but that, um, onboarding part or ever boarding part is where people come in and change roles has so often been quite, uh, well, an absolutely critical part of the journey. The cost of the new hire coming into a business, um, it's not something we've had the opportunity to touch on in the podcast so far. So it's brilliant to have you here to perhaps give us some of your insights to some of the conversations you're having with businesses around that critical part of the journey. So how do you see the onboarding, the ramp time, et cetera, et cetera of the industry right now, new sellers joining businesses.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think it's really interesting. And when we identified what we think is just a massive blind spot within the journey of a participant, um, and quite frankly the journey of a manager or a leadership role as well. We quickly realized we spend tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands hiring a team and putting them into place. We spend millions developing products. But then the barometers that we measure, do those individuals know how to interact and do their role responsibly with those products is really based on subjective metrics. And it's, hey, we put together a wonderful onboarding or a wonderful ramp or whatever it may be, and it's okay, what are the objective metrics, Metrics that come out of that? And it was, we always got the same thing of, oh, they completed it. And that's not an objective metric. It's you know, we heard horror stories from Chros and other individuals within kind of the training and onboarding world of we caught people who pressed play, went to lunch, came back and had the same certificate as the individuals who watched the entire training. Um, we wouldn't have known any better if we hadn't walked by their laptop. And to me, that just wasn't good enough. And it goes back to a point we were talking a little bit earlier in this, in the recording, uh, here of what was good enough is just being widely accepted. And we kind of saw this opportunity to make good enough be so much better. And so by doing it, what we're really trying to do is say, not do you have access to wonderful content because we're not in the content creation game. Not do you have access to like someone grading you from like a conversation or something like that. Or we want to know, like, in your core, uh, do you understand your responsibility? Do you understand how to apply the content provided to you by your company to your role? Do you have confidence within it? Do you lack confidence within it? Is there risk associated with you? And the other thing that we quickly realized too is the ability to create leading indicators as opposed to lagging indicators. That was huge for me because again, in a revenue leadership position, I would say, hey, you have a three month ramp window. And it was kind of a free for all, if I'm being honest. Like, I knew they were doing onboarding, I knew they were doing training, I had no idea where they were from day 10 to day 90. And so they would come out of a three month ramp. And then I would realize a month and a half, two months later, they had some serious deficiencies in their knowledge. And then all of a sudden, a month later, I put them on a pip and two months later, they weren't at my company anymore. And I had eight months of wasted time, um, where I probably could have

Speaker C: recognized it earlier, that that's standing out in my mind as you're talking. Like, all of this is fantastic. And yeah, like, we want to move training to proficiency measurement, to leading indicators of success, but our revenue leaders are telling us, let's just let the numbers speak for themselves. If they hit their quota, great. If even, even so much as if the whole team hits their quota, great. And then you end up with the high performers overcompensating for the low performers. And we're not even looking at individuals and we're not even looking at them on their ramp. So I think it's difficult for the revenue leader to think about the time that needs to be invested to be fully trained with measurable proficiency and leading KPIs. So, like, we have to flip that script and get them to agree that moving a little bit slower in the first month is going to increase the likelihood of achieving success. Ongoing. And it's easy for us to think about, but I think it's very difficult for the revenue leader to conceptualize.

Speaker A: Yeah, I would totally agree with that. I think you care about the historical KPIs, which at this point, it's kind of Darwinism of like, you either evolve or you die. And in many cases, like, the capabilities of technology today can give you indicators within days of foundational knowledge gaps. Right. And it can tell you what those gaps are then going to translate to in the future in terms of potential revenue at risk, in terms of a forecast. And I think, you know, to the point you're making, and it's so dead on true. And it's something, again, that I would raise my hand on, say I did, of course, hey, let's just give it six months and see how the pipeline looks. Let's see how they close their first deal or two, and then we can make a determination. Well, realistically, that's basically me rolling dice and saying, if I don't get it, like, I think I'm gonna get a seven, but there's real chance I don't get a seven. And if I don't get a seven, like, we are wildly gonna miss our goals and I don't love anymore. You know, that excuse, quite frankly, from revenue leaders, because it is like, you have the ability to know from day one if a participant needs additional support and education. And if you can jump in, or your management team can jump in and provide that support and that education, that individual might end up exactly where you need them to be, as opposed to this, like, hey, hey, just like, you know, do your thing. We'll check in with you in six months. Because I can tell you, like, one gap in foundational knowledge snowballs, and it all of a sudden becomes something that can completely overwhelm a participant. And then six months down the line, you have leadership being like, wow, that was a really bad hire. It wasn't a bad hire. It was a really bad ramp. Um, really bad. And I think. Yeah, and I think that's what I've come to appreciate.

Speaker B: Uh, and I think that's almost part of the problem, isn't it? Because when you go back and you say, oh, that was a bad hire, automatically the, the sort of responsibility Shifts to the sales leader who made that higher decision, not to the enablement team who didn't ramp that individual effectively. Because post nine, 90 days you're off of that enablement, that ramp process and you're the leader's responsibility. And suddenly the leader's got all of this stuff coming in and starts to see the red flags. And then by that point, like you say, you could be two or three, well, six or eight months down the line and realizing you've got a performance improvement program that needs to be run and then suddenly it's responsibility of the leader in order to do that. So when you think about, and I suppose we talk about onboarding as that new hire process, but really the, the idea of a ramp process, it applies with any job change, any, any change of role, any moment in your, in an individual's career where they, they swap, swap roles, swap responsibilities, gain additional process. There should be an understanding of that ramp.

Speaker C: Ramp time and Chris, product changes and messaging changes. Like I feel like we're in this zone today where we're shipping a lot of product and we're constantly reframing our message to match the market. You know, our product marketing has AI tools that tell them all the time, like here's what the market wants to hear. So we ship that out to sales. So like you're right. Like the idea of all of the additional points in time where behavior change is needed post onboarding is super critical.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think we've, we've come to realize that the situations that call for more immediate, um, understanding of capabilities and knowledge is everywhere. And it's again, how many times does an individual contributor who is at the top of her or his game get promoted to a manager and you just assume they're going to be wonderful because they were a great seller. It is completely different games selling individually versus managing a team of sellers or the same thing of, to your point of product release or you know, we've had sales kickoffs that have used us before because they want to check in with everybody on the team. And just because someone's been there for five years doesn't mean that they're as knowledgeable as they need to be or like there's not things that they could get, you know, a little bit additional support on. And so I think I totally agree. You uh, know ramp feels traditionally just like onboarding. But the reality is anytime that there's change associated and growth then associated with that change, you need to provide some type of structure and understanding for these people to get through successfully. On the other side.

Speaker B: And I think that's a fundamental mindset shift as well, though, for organizations, because I don't see, um, organizations measuring that, measuring the impact or when there is a role change, a product shift, maybe more so with a product, I think that's perhaps easier to measure because you can. You can get that information much cleaner. But you think about all of the role changes that go on throughout organizations constantly. How many structured plans are in place when someone moves from this role to that role, and equally from that. Not just the. The enablement that goes with that, but the metrics that matter to show that that individual is ready to be efficient in that role.

Speaker A: Yeah. I can tell you, besides sharing the job description with someone, none. Right. Like, here's a new job description. Like, we assume that you know our company and our culture and your responsibilities because you. You pseudo worked with this team in your past role. Like, good luck. Go get it done. And that's pretty much it. You're ramped.

Speaker B: Or there you go, manager. Go and get that person ready to go. And they can. They can go off and do that effectively. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: And typically it's multiple people at once, right? Very, very rarely is it just one person change at a time. Typically it's to start a new fiscal year or, you know, a few people are changing roles all at once. And then you're basically asking, like, hey, there's a ton of uncertainty right now. You guys go all figure it out together. Even though you all are standing in new territory.

Speaker C: I have definitely seen that. So it almost feels like we're. We're like, playing the challenger sale with each other, because we are talking a lot about this problem that exists out there, and we're like, in the rational drowning and emotional impact of the problem. Like, let's go into the solution. I'm really curious, Russ. Like, you know, because, like, I'm sitting here in a world where I have seismic and I can expose people to what good looks like. I have gong and I can see what they're doing in real time. So, like, I personally have this proficiency gap. Like, what does good look like?

Speaker A: I think good looks like, uh, good. To me, it looks like two different ways. One, are you giving complete and utter transparency to the manager or to the leadership team so that they know in real time how is someone doing? But just as important, are you giving that exact same thing to the participant? Does the participant fully understand what the journey ahead of them looks like? Do they have multiple opportunities to give you back confidence scores and reflection scores? Do they have multiple opportunities to take quizzes that actually quiz their knowledge and not group knowledge or not, like, get it wrong once, get it right the second time. Because by the way, we just gave you the exact same questions twice in a row. So, uh, to me there's just so many opportunities. But I think also historically they've all been siloed from one another. And I think that's something that I can tell you we're definitely trying to solve, is paint an entire picture of the individual's journey, inclusive of their own thoughts and feelings throughout it, the manager's thoughts and feelings throughout it, how they interact with the content and the responsibility within their role. And when you can create this larger picture taken from multiple data points throughout that journey, you can really very quickly understand within days, is this person going to be the person I need them to be? And then you help them grow and you help them accomplish more. Because again, I think so often, and I try to catch myself on this, we try to look at the negative side of it. Right? Like all the risk or, uh, all the underperformance. But the reality is if you do it really well, it's the opportunity side that really blows the doors off of, like a really strong ramp.

Speaker C: Yeah. I mean, there's few companies that, that wouldn't invest more in sales if they knew with some predictability what success could look like. Like, the money's typically there, they're just hesitant to grow it because they don't have that repeatable engine of what the success will look like. If we get that right, then, like, you'll get the infusions that you're looking for to grow the sales team.

Speaker A: Yeah. And, and what a meaningful result to look like. Right? Like not completion, not activity, what a meaningful results look like. And I think if we can start to hang our hats on those type of things, that's where we're going to see kind of the seismic shift from participation trophy culture, as I so eloquently love to call it, to meaningful outcome culture, where not only is it, like, meant to be a gotcha for people, but it's also meant to be a. I, uh, can get in here and support you and get you right back on track if you were off in your first few days here, as opposed to letting that snowball into a failed time with my company.

Speaker C: Yeah, just even what you said about giving the feedback to the leader and the participant, because I, I see people fall victim to that. We can see all of the metrics, assuming we're tracking those things, we can see them on our side, but are we sharing it in a way that others can act on it in the field? Probably not. So there's the tracking of it, and then there's the communication and distribution of it that we could do better at. Russ, when we started the conversation, you were sharing that, admittedly, sometimes you would have conversations with enablement. How's it going with training? And they'd say, it's great. Everyone's happy. They show up. We've talked a lot about what it might ought to look like with metrics and KPIs and proficiency. So, like, what do you think that that should look like moving forward? You ask me, how's it going? What do you want to hear from me as an enablement leader?

Speaker A: Uh, I think it's probably not a conversation as much of a, hey, let's take me through the dashboards or take me through the graphs or take me through, like, the reports on how people are navigating their, you know, internal ramping situations. Um, you know, I think kind of the. The days of a finger in the air trying to catch wind, uh, as kind of your barometer of success, is way behind us, and it needs to be extinct, quite frankly. Um, it needs to be a conversation where you're sitting down with your enablement leader and you have access to go through. All right, if we just hired a class of 10 people, 50 people, 100 people, how many people in the class are showing the proficiency objectively to do the job? How many people are falling behind? Because that's really, really important. If you're. If you're forecasting out $500,000 in quota attainment against those people, or if you're a marketing leader and you have to forecast MQLs, um, and pipeline gen and brand awareness, um, you know, having objective measurements. Um, and again, it kind of goes back to what we were talking about before of, like, everybody sitting in a room and making sure that, like, hey, my KPIs align with yours, aligned with his, aligned with hers. Um, I think those are the conversations that need to happen as opposed to, you know, just the. How's everybody feeling? Is everyone excited to be here? Did everybody complete things? Um, because again, I think we've seen the outcome of that.

Speaker B: And so let me just ask them. When you were a CRO, when you were an SVP of sales, those roles you had, were you having those conversations with your enablement leaders? Were you sitting down and talking about how, how the team were doing, the new hires that were coming on board that were Being ramped.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think I had the conversation in the exact way I said, we can't have the conversation anymore, Chris. Like, it was.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: How are they doing? They seem excited. Hey, I caught up with them at the new hire happy hour, and they were. They were great. And that was enough.

Speaker B: And I just think it's so, uh, I'm sure those conversations are happening today. I'm sure people will listen to this and really resonate that they have been part of those conversations for an awful long time now. Uh, and hopefully they're having this epiphany, but that we need to show up better to the revenue teams with better metrics, better data in the moment of how the new hires are doing, how they're going to, um, take that step into the field and really, truly be successful as they do it. If you were to put your finger on a few metrics that really matter in that conversation, what would those be?

Speaker A: Yeah, it's a really good question. I mean, I think, first and foremost, um, you know, understanding the content associated with their role. So, you know, do they understand their role and responsibility at a high level? Um, you know, being from a revenue side, I'll tell you, do they understand our icp? Do they understand our product? Do they understand value, props and narratives? Do they understand our tech stack and how we utilize a tech stack to go against, um, you know, competition within the market? How do we stack up against competition within the market? And so I think there's a list of different checkboxes that I would absolutely love to see within the world of sales. And then I think the same thing within all the other departments as well, like marketing. Do you understand our brand guidelines? Do you understand the voice that we're going for as opposed to your voice? Um, and it's not to, you know, you don't want to stymie creatives, but at the same time, too, like, you have to give a single voice out there in order for everybody to be rowing in the same direction. And so I think it's just a lot more of, you know, not how. How excited are they or how happy are they, but, like, do they have a foundational knowledge of their job and how to do their job? And you can find KPIs within that all day long.

Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. And I'm imagining, Russ, that. And obviously, like, you have a tool like that that serves this purpose, and we're not here to do too much around that. But I'm assuming that we're not just saying, hey, rep, do you feel good about this, I'm assuming there's exercises and ways that this Software defines proficiency 100%.

Speaker A: And what it really is is what I said before of taking a lot of siloed exercises and using them to paint a picture of their entire journey. And rather just like, hey, they, they took a quiz score at the end of their training session and they got a six, you know, 60 on it. Um, but it's okay, it's okay. They got 100 the second time. What's like. Well, yeah, they got the questions the first time and the second time, the same ones. You should get 100. I would hope you do. But that doesn't say that they know it. And so, yeah, I think it's literally, it's taking all of these siloed endpoints and making them into something meaningful.

Speaker C: Yeah. All we say she also doubled down on putting it in the manager's fingertips. I think that's really big. Is that visibility to them to not just like, I can tell you every Monday in a meeting how it's going, but that doesn't empower you. So, like, definitely the, the dashboard style seems to be the way of the future. And I would, I think that'd be a huge game changer. Yeah.

Speaker A: I can tell you the clients that we do have the ability to save bandwidth where it's. You don't have to go and hunt an answer, but you have a real time dashboard that you can immediately see. How are individuals doing? Where is their risk, where's their opportunity? Um, you know, how is your revenue forecast looking against the class that you just hired? You know, we try to give answers to the test and we try to do it based on how much bandwidth and efficiencies can we create for the managers where you're not scrambling in Q4 because you didn't have access to these numbers or you didn't take the time to go and find these numbers. Um, and so, yeah, listen, I think creating dashboards that update in real time to provide those types of things are a huge way of connecting enablement with revenue.

Speaker B: So tell me then, Russ, are we saying it's the death of CSAT and nps,

Speaker A: it's the evolution of them? How about that? That was pretty political, huh?

Speaker B: Huh? Oh, very nice.

Speaker A: There we go.

Speaker C: Good job. Switzerland over here.

Speaker A: Uh, I've got some Canadian blood in me, so I really try to tiptoe it.

Speaker B: No, I love that. And so I think. Do you know what? That I think brings that conversation nicely to a piece, because I think you touched on some fantastic points that We've gone through there. Maybe let's switch gears one last time then. Russ, if you weren't in revenue, if you weren't an enabler, uh, if you were out there following your true passion in life, what would you be doing?

Speaker A: Man, that's such a good question. There was a very small moment living in New York City where I wanted to be an actor and a writer. And I can tell you I did not book anything at all. So that was a very short lived life. Um, however, just to, of course, the way that it works within sibling rivalry. My brother is in film and is quite successful in film. And so I get to live very vicariously through him, um, when he does cool stuff. And I'm like, hi, I'm his brother. I'm just gonna stand like 10ft behind him over here. Um, so I, it was something I always wanted to do. It was quickly realized that I'm, I'm six foot six. Uh, I'm a pretty big guy. I'm about a foot taller than everybody else that acts. I realized. Um, so, yeah, yeah, I didn't have a ton of. Ton of time at it.

Speaker B: So what would be the title, Russ, if you were going to write the story of Russ's life so far? Ah, what would be the title of that movie?

Speaker A: Oh, man, uh, it's such a good question. Boy, this is one I wish I had before because I would have run this through about 30 different thought processes. Yeah.

Speaker B: Numerous AI models at this point. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: I think probably the title is like Not Being Afraid of what's Next. And you know, I talked about this on a different interview, uh, probably a year or two ago now. There's just such this idea that you can't reinvent yourself as you get older and like, you have to stay within whatever you are personally, professionally like. And it's just so not true. Like you can reinvent yourself whenever you want without paying the consequences. Um, and I think it's something that I've had a great, great time doing throughout my life, both professionally and, uh, personally, where again, I tried my hand at acting and had a ton of fun at it and it didn't work out. Then I went into marketing and advertising and had a ton of fun of it. And then I went into tech sales and had a ton of fun with it and now I'm doing a startup. Um, and to me it's just, you can't be afraid to take chances. It's going to be okay.

Speaker C: I love that.

Speaker B: Thank you so much, Russ, for your time. Really appreciate it fantastic.

Speaker A: Thank you guys. That was awesome.

Speaker C: Chris, I love that conversation. And for our listeners, if you take anything away from this, let it be during ramp. Prioritize leading indicators of proficiency and adoption over waiting on lagging indicators because by the time those show up it may already be too late to intervene.

Speaker B: Yeah, definitely. And I love the concept that the visual picture that I got that Russ was talking about the idea of the knights at the round table, the CRO, the CMO and enablement aligning on KP's, KP's aligning AH on KPIs to make sure that everyone is measuring success through the same lens so we're not working in silos that conflict downstream.

Speaker C: Yeah, I took that one to heart as well. Um, I was also noticing he said putting the actionable insights on the edge. So so we shouldn't be gating performance signals and dashboards for us, but we should be giving those to both the managers and the individuals so that they have the same visibility and can self correct in real time.

Speaker B: Definitely. And um, I finished off by challenging Russ around whether or not we're seeing the death of csat, uh, and nps. And listen up for his answer on that. Talking more about the evolution rather than just the death. How we should recontextualize lagging sentiment indicators alongside more operational and behavior based measures.

Speaker C: Wonderful takeaways. Meaningful conversation. Before we wrap up, we want to hear from you. Do you agree with what we discussed today with Russ or do you think there were areas where we got it wrong? Drop your thoughts in the comments and if there's something you want us to dig into more, tell us that too as it shapes where we take future episodes.

Speaker B: So make sure you like share and subscribe to the podcast on your preferred platform. And uh, make sure if you do want to be part of the conversation, reach out to us@contentsalesenablementcollective uh.com to make sure you can join the conversation with us. Leanne, Another classic episode. Thank you so much for everything today.

Speaker C: The pleasure is all mine.

Speaker B: Brilliant. And look forward to seeing everyone on the next enablement optimization podcast. Cheers.

Speaker C: See ya. Mhm.