Prepare Your Revenue Team for Success in 2024 with CMO Paige O'Neill

Speaker A: What kind of advice would you have to revenue leaders, enablement leaders on how to create that or foster that mindset that creates a truly collaborative environment between buyers and sellers so that the buyer experience is something really differentiated.

Speaker B: That buyer experience is absolutely critical and it's extremely complicated. I don't envy the some of the sales teams that have to figure out the dynamics in these organizations and how to navigate.

Speaker C: As you think about the future, a critical challenge emerges. How can your revenue teams position themselves for success in 2024? It's just like navigating uncharted waters, requiring a thoughtful strategy to adapt and thrive in the dynamic environment that awaits in the, uh, upcoming year. The key lies in proactively shaping your revenue strategies for the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. And who has the key? Paige o', Neill, the CMO at Seismic. Paige is known for her expertise in marketing and leadership and has played a crucial role in driving Seismic's marketing strategies and promoting its solutions in the competitive market landscape. In this episode of the Run Revenue show, she discusses the growth of enablement in organizations, the evolving challenges faced by sales teams in a, uh, selling environment, the role of technology in sales training and enablement, and the impact of collaboration and a holistic approach within the Go to Market team for sustained success. Listen through this full episode to hear Paige share the secret to building a successful revenue team in 2024.

Speaker A: I'm Kyle Coleman, CMO at Clary and host of the Run Revenue Show. Every Monday I give you behind the scenes access to executive conversations with the best revenue pros in the world and get their tips, strategies and real life stories for stopping revenue leak, achieving revenue precision, and leading their teams to success. Are you ready to run revenue? Good news. Find the Run Revenue show wherever you get your podcasts and tune in weekly for new episodes.

Speaker C: This is Run Revenue show with Kyle Coleman.

Speaker A: Hello everybody and welcome to this episode of the Run Revenue Show. I'm very excited today because I'm being joined by a fellow cmo, Paige o', Neill, CMO from Seismic. How you doing?

Speaker B: Hey, I'm great. It's great to be here.

Speaker A: Likewise. I'm looking forward to digging into your history and now your role at Seismic and just understanding how you're thinking about how revenue teams can set themselves up for success in 2024. But before we get into that, let's hear about you. Who are you, where have you been, and what do you focus on now?

Speaker B: I'm a career B2B marketer. I've been in the B2B space for gosh longer than I should probably admit to, 20, 25 years or so. This is my seventh time as a CMO, so I'm uh, an experienced uh, B2B CMO and I've been companies of all sizes, everything from public companies to very early stage startups to kind of everything. And I've spent the last probably 10 years or so in the martech space. Love that space. As a CMO, I think when you're selling into the marketing function it's super interesting and you've got a lot of credibility. It gives you a great seat at the table. So really enjoyed my time in that space, but I think the enablement space is really interesting and so I'm excited to pop over to this space and really help build that category and really immerse because I think there's so much happening there right now that CMOs are interested in, that companies are interested in and thinking about how to gel the sales and marketing teams together and really make sure the revenue team is doing everything they can to be successful for the business.

Speaker A: Let's dig into this a little bit more that I'm um, curious to hear the parallels between marketing technology and enablement technology. What were you evaluating? How did you say, yeah, this is a good fit for me. How were you thinking about that when you moved over to Seismic after being

Speaker B: in the Martech space for such a long time? And as I mentioned, really enjoying being in that space. But I've been watching the enablement space for a while now as uh, certainly as a CMO on the front lines. I've managed enablement teams before or I've certainly worked very closely with them in building out content and programs. It just felt to me like enablement was where martech was maybe 10 years ago. Merging category, coming on very strong, getting more and more recognition in the business, going from a nice to have to increasingly a must have. As a cmo, I thought it would be really fun to jump in and be on the front lines at helping build out that category, continue maturing the category and think about how that evolves. And given Seismic is has a leadership role in that space, thought it was a great place to pop in and really help achieve more scale.

Speaker A: That move from or enablement moving from nice to have to must have uh, a lot of revenue leaders listening to this maybe aren't quite there yet. They think of enablement maybe as more of a service provider. You catch the to do list and then you go and execute. But I'm um, guessing Paige, you're going to tell us that enablement really is more of a leverage function. It can, it should be more of a strategic function inside the business. Is that the way that you're thinking about things? Is that kind of the light bulb moment you're seeing happening in the market?

Speaker B: It is happening more in the market and will continue to do so, certainly in Seismic's opinion. And I think if you look at companies that are having success with, you know, getting sales teams more productive, having them achieve the goals that they want to achieve, they're putting enablement front and center in their organization. And I think the companies that are doing that versus the ones that aren't, their performance really stands out. And obviously there are levels of maturity that any market goes through. And I think we're in different levels of maturity depending on, you know, what market you're in. Certainly in industries in the US versus maybe some of the countries in Europe, some are further ahead than others. But we've seen a real trend happening a couple of years ago. Our CEO just gave a stat at our customer conference in San Diego a couple weeks ago that the enablement title didn't really exist in nat. Now the, the Google search for that and the jobs for enablement have gone up like 300% in the last couple of years. It's a crazy stat. And so you look at that category kind of being created out of nowhere, and now we see the same thing with enablement professionals who used to be on an island trying to push a, uh, training program. Whereas now there are many companies, many enterprises who are putting enablement at the core of everything that they want to accomplish with their go to market teams. It's not just the sales team, it's the marketing team. It's the entire go to marketing team function.

Speaker A: I have a fun fact which is not only has the title exploded, the function exploded. I don't even think enablement literally was a word a couple of years ago, like it wasn't a word in the dictionary. And now to see the way the category has grown and developed and the whole ecosystem that's going around, it is pretty remarkable. You mentioned that you have led enablement teams before in past lives and certainly you've worked closely with them from uh, a programs and training or collateral, whatever it may be. What is maybe more structurally, what do you see as the most common sort of reporting structure for enable management marketing? Is it rev ops? Is it into the CRO? Where do you see that? Let's start there.

Speaker B: There is a little bit of a trend now where it might have been Reporting into marketing a little bit more than it is now. And it's now, um, moving more into the sales function, the marketing ops function. But we see it across the board. I certainly, as I mentioned, I've had it sitting on my team. I've seen it sitting on the operations team. I've seen it sitting with the croat. I've seen it sitting with the CEO. I think it's sitting in different parts of the organization depending on, you know, the goals of the company, the maturity of the enablement program. And so I don't think there's going to be firm resolution to this one anytime soon. I think it completely depends on the dynamics of the company and where they're placing it.

Speaker A: Can you give some guidance to the listeners page? What are the scenarios where you think it makes sense for enablement to report into marketing versus into revenue leadership? Do you see any clear lines? There is a really just organizational preference.

Speaker B: I really don't see any clear lines there. I think it is organizational preference. It does seem m to me that as enablement gains more importance, it is moving more over into either the OPS function or the CRO function. Because a lot of CROs are recognizing that having an enablement program that transcends just sales kickoff is critical to the success of the organization. And I think the more this gets on the CRO radar, the more the CRO realizes I really need to have this reporting into my organization. Or I've also seen a lot of companies where the OPS function is centralized and you get really a really robust organization that kind of thinks of OPS and analytics and tech as Switzerland and they want to build that out for the entire company. And I think there are a lot of pros to that, uh, structure as well.

Speaker A: Let's dig into the relationship between enablement and marketing now. Candidly, most of the listeners to this are going to be revenue ops or revenue leaders. Well, let's be helpful to them. How can they help their marketing team work more closely with enablement? What are the hallmarks of a good relationship and what are some of the expectations that revenue leaders should have about marketing's involvement with enablement?

Speaker B: As someone who has a lot of my experience when enablement wasn't sitting on the marketing team, is product marketing being front and center in creating that enablement content? And I think I've seen the relationship work best when it really is thought about from a holistic point of view. I mentioned already once that it's not just let's pop this out for sales kickoff and then not think about it. Again, I think that organizations that tend to have that mindset tend to be the ones that might struggle to get the retention and get the throughput that they really want from their enablement program. When an organization puts it at the center of their go to market strategy and they're working in tandem with not just the marketing team, the product marketing team, but the ops team, the rest of the go to market team, to really understand what are the goals we're trying to achieve, where are the gaps where we're seeing either training or absorption of messaging, what are the messages that we're trying to go out with from a holistic point of view and building a sustainable program that lasts the entire year around those go to market initiatives. That's where I think we see the most success. When it's thought of in a holistic manner. It's doled out for the entire year. There are goals and measures that go beyond just a, you know, kind of a quarterly basis. And it really becomes the centerpiece of everything that a company wants to roll out. It's the starting point and the ending point, if you will.

Speaker A: The starting point and the ending point. So if that is the strategic direction that we're trying to go, let's go down maybe to a more tactical level. How can companies bring this mindset to life? How do you tactically put enablement at the center and then drive that, uh, always on cadence that you just talked about?

Speaker B: It really has to come from a place of making sure that it's not just one person trying to drive this, especially depending on the size of company, right? See these very large enterprises where you've got one person and they're an enablement team of one. And then every year after sales kick off, that person quits. Because it was just, I've seen this happen so many times. You're just not setting up that person for success. It's not a one person job. It's gotta be the mentality of the entire C suite. Thinking about enablement, the, the CRO driving what they want to accomplish for the year, it mapping back up to the company objectives, thinking about what does it really take to train the sales team to get them on message, to get them in a position where they can truly collaborate across these very complex buying committees that we have today. Especially on the enterprise side, it's really an entire company effort that starts with, sure, you've got an enablement leader who's setting out the strategy and putting together the resource requirements, but you've got backed by a, uh, Content team sitting in product marketing backed by the sales leaders who are going to make sure that they're enforcing the discipline for the sales team to uptake the programs that are being created and creating a 360 degree loop where you're getting feedback to what's working and what's not so you can adjust at every point in the cycle.

Speaker A: That flywheel is such an important component and advice I've heard from enablement, uh, leaders at Seismic is to create, I believe they called it an enablement advisory council or some. Maybe I have the wrong. But I guess the thinking is what you just described, Paige, that 360 degree feedback loop and everybody's activated accountability, making sure all the like, that doesn't happen by accident. You have to architect that it needs to be a true system that you go and you build. And so what is an enablement advisory council and your advisory board? It's getting those stakeholders that you just mentioned, sales leaders, product marketing leaders, the members of the field who are really influential, whoever the right folks are, a group of eight or 10 people, probably getting them together on some sort of cadence every month, a couple times a quarter, whatever it is, to do exactly what you just described. Where are the gaps? What training do we need? How did our previous training actually land all these things? And getting that group of people together is critical. Otherwise a lot of the sales enablement efforts are going to fall on deaf ears or not be nearly as effective.

Speaker B: You would expect this because we're seismic, but we talk about this every day. Every executive team meeting, there's some agenda item around enablement. At every CRO meeting, there's a check in on the dashboards for how's the training going, how many people have consumed the content for the new product launch, what are we seeing in terms of the uptake in the responses and the efficacy of the presentations and so many other things that we're measuring. I think we'll get into some talk about metrics later, but it's an everyday occurrence.

Speaker A: I'm not at all surprised to hear that you're drinking your own champagne to a certain respect the getting enablement a seat at the table and involved in those conversations. Critical. And what's so interesting, Paige and you and I, again, maybe this is a little marketing therapy session, but there's so much pressure on top of funnel. Let's just create more pipeline, more and more fill the funnel. And yes, pipeline is important. Pipeline coverage is important. However, all of the things downstream of that are actually much larger levers. If you can Improve your stage to stage conversion rate by 5%. If you can, improve your win rates by 5%, holy smokes. You take a lot of pressure off the top of the funnel and it's that kind of leverage that enablement can really provide. And so let's talk a little bit about metrics. What do you see as the kind of the right metrics to evaluate an enablement team on or what kind of things can they truly influence?

Speaker B: We spend a lot of time focused on, let's build more pipeline. Can we get to like 10x pipeline coverage? I think that would, you know, make a lot of the sales teams happy sometimes. But in terms of, you, uh, know, some of the metrics that we're seeing and looking at when we're tracking the success of enablement, it's things like the good news is we're getting so much more sophistication in the technology. And we used to look at things like, all right, how many people on the sales team downloaded the piece of content that marketing provided and they were supposed to download this training presentation or this prospect presentation, did they download it? Or how many people completed the training? Those things are still things that we absolutely look at and they're important, but I think they can give a little bit of a false sense of security because you can download it and never use it. You can take the training and we all know that you can multitask while you're taking the training and not really absorb anything. Not that anyone would ever do that. But I think that now with the technology we have, we're able to really zone in on if we're looking for specific keywords that we want to make sure our sales teams, our go to market teams are talking about that we know are important for industries or certain prospects or certain situations or launches we can go in and see. All right, how many times were those keywords used? Do they spend the time on the slide that we think is the really the money slide that we expect them to be spending? Or we can tell where there might be issues happening when presentations are given where we need to go back and do some training. And so I think we're moving to a place with some of the enablement programs that we're able to provide where with the help of technology, certainly with the rise of AI, we're getting to a point where we can do individualized training, coaching, enablement. And now being able to do that at scale as we go forward, I think is something that seismic is certainly exciting. It's not just a one size Fits all. It never has been. But we've had to live with that and now we don't have to live with that anymore.

Speaker A: Individualized training, I love that concept and often, and I've heard this maybe from Seismic or some other source, that the goal of enablement isn't necessarily to turn A players into A plus players. The goal of enablement is to turn your kind of middle of the pack into closer to top of the pack players. And if you can do that again, we're talking all about leverage because your A players, I Wish it was 100% of your sales work, but the reality is it's not. It's 10 or 20% at most, which means 80 to 90% of your field needs a, ah, boost. And if you can raise the floor for all those folks, you're going to provide an uh, enormous amount of leverage. And to your point, Paige, it's not one size fits all. The way that Karen sells is very different than the way Josh sells. And if we can understand the individualization and what they need programmatically to improve, we're going to do a much better job raising the floor for everybody. And so with that said, uh, what are some of the metrics that you see enablement leaders or sales leaders tracking to evaluate the performance of their enablement team?

Speaker B: They're certainly still tracking. If we're doing a product launch, has the sales team completed the training? I think they're certainly tracking milestones. If I'm committing something to pipeline, has it gone through these stages that it should go through and have I made the presentations I'm supposed to make? I think they're certainly still tracking which pieces of content are performing best. And now we're able to relate that back to actually closed deals, which is something that we haven't been able to do for that long. So I think that's an important metric that's on the rise. And as I mentioned, I think we're now into tracking use of keywords in key presentations that give us a sense of did the training go over? Are they uptaking the positioning that the marketing team has put together? Are they using the phraseology that we think is important to use in these situations? And so I think those are just a few of the metrics that we're seeing, looking at, you know, the recording summaries to make sure that with technology popping out areas where there might be training that's needed and making recommendations as to training that might be helpful, I think those are all things that are on the horizon now to help us move more towards that individualized enablement that I think is the holy grail.

Speaker A: I'd love to hear that. And again, maybe more marketing therapy here, but part of the difficulty with product marketing and the narratives and first call decks and all of that is we're trying to change behavior for field reps. And changing that behavior is risky. And often reps need some sort of proof that if they change the behavior, the juice is worth the squeeze. They're going to actually get better results. And so if you can track that, if you can, and now you can show them that, uh, using these slides, using this verbiage, using this talk track, whatever it is, when Lynn gave this talk track to XYZ company, here were the results. Or when this cohort of our little beta group that we tested with, tested this first call deck, here was their conversion rate, early stage and showing that there is data behind what you're doing. And it's not just us fluffy marketers inventing some fancy narrative and saying, trust us, this is going to work. Like substantiating that with data is a critical way to get sales buy in.

Speaker B: We are able to see just that. We've got a number of customers that do those exact pilots that you just mentioned. They might take seismic for a certain segment of the sales population and do a, uh, test case where they show that if they leverage seismic, if they leverage the content, go through the training, then their close rates go up by X percent. And then that's a figure that you're able to take back into the rest of the sales organization to help drive that change. So we all know that the sales team wants to see the success and wants to know that if they're going to change their behavior, then that behavior's change is going to be worth it and that those metrics are powerful.

Speaker A: And the flip side of that same coin page is you could run the beta group, test this new messaging, and it might not work. And knowing that, heck of a lot better to know that before you roll it out at an SKO and then you end up falling flat. We're entering the new year here. M. For many companies, they either just started their new year or they're about to, uh, talk to us about maybe some enablement priorities that you're hearing, and I'm sure you've already mentioned a handful of them. But for the revenue leaders listening to this, what are you hearing in your conversations with CROs and heads of operations and everything like that with respect to maturing their enablement function?

Speaker B: One of the Things that we're hearing certainly from a lot of our customers is when they started down the path, it was about trying to get control over all of the content. The content was just in, you know, chaotic state. Nobody could find it. And so their top goal was really to just get a handle on, can I get my reps more productive in finding content more quickly so that they can get on with their day and they're not just spending an inordinate amount of time looking for the content and trying to find the right thing for the right situation. A lot of our customers have moved past that point. Now they feel like they've got the infrastructure, they've got the repository, they've got the content, they can find the content, the reps are more productive. And so now they're moving into, all right, now, how do I refine? It's actually about now. Less having less content, having the right quality content, understanding how to be more collaborative in the buying cycle. That's absolutely, you know, a trend that we're hearing about. We all know that in times when we've got some economic headwinds, we get a lot more complexity in the sales cycle. And the buying decision that's top of mind, I think, for every CRO right now is the fact that sales cycles have lengthened. A lot more people have gotten involved in making the decision. It's gone up to the C level a lot more than it has in the past. And so that's absolutely a consideration when thinking about enabling sales teams who suddenly that they haven't been used to selling into that situation before, especially younger salespeople who haven't seen these kind of economic cycles before. And so that certainly becomes top of mind for the enablement cycle, for the CRO, for really for everything, uh, having to do with that.

Speaker A: Something that I've been thinking a lot about is buyers, they're buying, hopefully a differentiated solution, of course, and the way that you train and position and all that is very important for the technology or service or solution that you're selling. But another huge differentiator is the style of the salesperson and the buyer experience that seller creates is really important. So how are you thinking, uh, about. And what kind of advice would you have to revenue leaders, enablement leaders, on how to create that or foster that mindset that creates a truly collaborative environment between buyers and sellers so that the buyer experience is something really differentiated.

Speaker B: It's a critical question. And we hear all the time that people buy things from people they like, and it doesn't really enablement Critical. We've got to get our salespeople trained. They have to understand how to sell our solutions. They've got to understand how to navigate complex enterprises in some cases. But at the end of the day, if the buyer doesn't like you, then it's going to present a headwind that you just don't want to have in the deal. So I think that's one dynamic that's critical to salespeople who are thinking about developing their style and their relationship and driving that experience. And then I think the other dynamic is that, as we talked about already, with some of the economic headwinds that we have in this particular climate, the sales cycle has gotten longer. More and more people are involved in the deal. I mentioned that, you know, so many C levels are now involved in deals that weren't before. And so the. Everyone has got a different thing that they're looking to get out of the conversations that they're having with the companies that they're looking to check. The CFO is looking to check a box on economic impact and value. And am I getting the best solution? Procurement wants to get the best price for the solution. End user wants to make sure they're getting the best possible features and functions to solve the problems that they're having. And everyone's got their different viewpoint. And it's incredibly complicated for the sales team to navigate those different personalities. And so this becomes, I think, a critical part of the enablement journey, the enablement process that companies have to think about when they're training their sales teams. It's not just about understanding how to sell a feature or give a demo or create value from the solution and talk about the roi. Uh, it's also to navigate the personalities that are involved in the deal and understanding what each person hopes to get out of that equation. And so that buyer experience is absolutely critical, and it's extremely complicated. I don't envy some of the sales teams that have to figure out the dynamics in these organizations and how to navigate that.

Speaker A: First point you made, Paige, about, uh, people buying from people they like. Define the word like for us. Because what I'm afraid of is that people will hear that and they'll say, oh, the seller just needs to be a yes person and just do everything that the buyer wants. And I know that's not what you mean, so describe or to explain the word like for us.

Speaker B: That could be a small part of it. More importantly, does the buyer have confidence and that the company, as represented by the sales team, the salesperson is representing themselves in an authentic way, that they're going to do what they say they're going to do, that they can count on all of the things that are being presented to come true. A lot of times the buyers are betting their careers when they make these technology decisions and so they want to feel like they're in a situation where that's not a big risk if they're buying from you. And as a salesperson, I think you've got to communicate trust, authenticity, credibility, expertise and likability all in the same package. There are a lot of nuances that go into that. I think it goes back to understanding who you're talking to and what their priorities are. I do a lot of uh, customer calls, as you would imagine. And I'm always asking the sales team talking to a CMO or if I'm talking to other marketers, what are their priorities for this project or for the year at large. And a lot of times the sales team doesn't know. I think a big red flag. If you don't understand what every single person is looking to get out of the interaction they're having with your company, then you're missing some tricks there.

Speaker A: I knew there was more nuance behind that ability phrase, so I'm really glad you unpacked that. I couldn't possibly agree more. This is what the best sellers do naturally. And the best sellers are not just relationship builders, but they challenge at the right points in the sale. They can do that because that uh, word you use, Paige, credibility. They have that credibility because they're students of the business. They have a really strong point of view on the account that they're selling into and because they've worked with. If you're selling to chief revenue officers, hey, I just worked with eight other CROs and here's what's most top of mind for them right now. Boom, boom. What most resonates with you and just like manufacturing, that kind of credibility goes a really long way and helps create that kind of back and forth relationship that is truly collaborative. We're trying to solve this thing together, not trying to sell you this thing and then be on my merry way. I care about you, care about the outcomes of your business and here's how we're going to go make it happen.

Speaker B: We're in this together mentality for enablement in particular because I think that depending on the level of maturity of the enablement function within organizations, in some companies the enablement person doesn't quite have that seat at the C level table. And so it's up to the seller to work with that enablement professional to help them um, be able to sell that solution internally, communicate the value, communicate what the impact is going to be of rolling out a mission critical enablement program across the enterprise. And sometimes the enablement person needs help, they can't do it on their own. And so the seller's really got to help, be the champion there to give all of that information over in a way that the enablement professional can sell it within the organization to C levels potentially.

Speaker A: So now bringing it back maybe more squarely in your world, what is marketing's role in helping enablement and helping sellers navigate all the different members of the buying group and really providing that more collaborative, solution oriented advisory type relationship.

Speaker B: Marketing can have an absolutely critical role there in that we are often a uh, major touch point with the customer in terms of understanding the market needs. We're doing work a lot of the time on the Personas that the sellers encounter. What's important to the cmo, what's important to the CRO, what's important to the enablement professional and being able to build out that kind of roadmap, that footprint of what's top of mind, bringing market research into it. You mentioned being able to spout off, oh, I talked to five CROs last week and this is what they said, that data might come from marketing sometimes in that we're presenting opportunities to not only collect data and serve it up to the sales team, but also facilitating events and interactions where the sales team can have that interplay and get that knowledge.

Speaker A: Really we're not letting marketing off the hook here. We're not saying this is simply a uh, sales or enablement job. It has to be. As Paige said earlier, the efforts, combined efforts of the entire go to market function. There are areas where execs can contribute and CSMs can contribute and marketing can contribute. So make sure that if you're an enablement person, if you're a revenue or ops leader leading enablement, don't allow that enablement function to exist on an island. Make use of all the cross functional resources that you have, the knowledge that you have. I think a lot of enablement program is turning tribal knowledge into official company knowledge, codifying it. It's not a one person exercise, it's not even a one team exercise. It really does require the collective energy across go to market.

Speaker B: It's an important thing to think about putting a program around, turning that tribal knowledge into collective knowledge and making sure that gets served up in the right way, that it's Visible to the entire sales team and they can leverage it.

Speaker A: So that was the main meat of the conversation today, Paige. But I always have a bonus question. I'm really interested to hear your answer to this, which is curious for a book that you would recommend. It could be a business book or fiction or poetry. I don't care. Just a book that you've read that's had a really big impact on your career, affect you.

Speaker B: In the last year or so, I read this book. It's uh, called the Power of Presence. It talks about confidence in difficult situations. Actually recommends all of these self mantras that you can do and it even gives you these power poses which when I was reading the book, I was rolling my eyes. This is ridiculous. And then I actually recently found myself in a situation where I was gonna make a big presentation and usually I love doing that, but I was feeling a little bit unconfident and I did one of these power poses and it really helped. And so now I'm a huge proponent of using this kind of psyching yourself in these situations and building confidence. And I've started using a song before I go on stage in those situations and I'm doing these power poses. And again, I can barely say it with a straight face. Cause I thought it was ridiculous when I first read actually worked. And so I would recommend, and I think a lot of sales teams could use this in situations where they're going in making the big presentation to the C suite or a, uh, buying committee and thinking about that mantra of success as you go into that presentation. I think that would be helpful for anyone.

Speaker A: In fact, coming into 2023, I was surveying CROs and asking them what the number one skill was that they were looking for. And I think seven or eight of them, the overwhelming majority, said executive presence. This is what's going to matter most. For all the reasons you've already unpacked for us, Paige, More C level buyers involved earlier in deal cycles. You need to be able to hold your own. It's tough for anybody. It's especially tough if you're the 23 year old seller who's never had to do that before.

Speaker B: I would say too, it can be a learned skill. A lot of people will think, oh, I just don't have executive presence. I don't think I had executive presence 10 years ago. It can be a learned skill and I think a lot of it comes from confidence and just projecting an air of confidence whether you feel it or not. Right. Fake it till you make it. My favorite is Unstoppable by Sia. Uh, that is an amazing power song to, to be listening to before you go out on stage.

Speaker A: Where can people go to learn more about you? Where can they go to learn more about seismic?

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: So seismic.com is our website. Encourage you to go there and check us out. And I'm on LinkedIn. You can connect with me there at ah, backslash page, o'. Neill.

Speaker A: And if I'm not mistaken, Seismic has a book coming out all around Enablement Best practices sometime soon. Am I speaking out of turn?

Speaker B: We it's out on audiobook right now and it was written by our two rock star heads of enablement, Megan Brzina and Irina Soriano. And you can get that on audiobook now and it's going to be coming out in hardback form in uh, Q1 of uh, FY25 of uh, 2024.

Speaker A: Paige O', Neill, thank you so much for the time.

Speaker B: It's been an absolute pleasure, absolutely great talking with you and hope to see you soon.

Speaker A: That is a wrap for this episode of the Run Revenue Show. Thank you all for tuning in. Don't forget, subscribe, rate, review, tell a friend and we'll catch you next week.

Speaker C: Don't let what you heard today go to waste. Take 2 minutes to download today's checklist to get your priorities in line for the week. You can find that linked in our show notes and if you liked what you heard, make sure you give us a five star rating and leave a review. We'll be back next Monday with more to help you win your week.