Solving Enablement Problems Together

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The world of work is changing. Sales Enablement is emerging as a truly cross-functional role.  Often "first through the wall" to tackle complex problems across silos, sales enablement leaders in marketing, sales, technology, operations, and training must be savvy and focused to help sales leaders be successful. 

This is the city of Charlotte, NC. Here, a small group of sales enablement practitioners, VP of Sales and consultants are teaming together. And something is happening.

What's Going On?

In just a few short months, we have come together, figured out a charter, begun to solve problems together, and created a deliverable that someone (we barely knew) found valuable.

While this may seem mundane, let's dissect this for just a second.

1. We came together. I'm new to Charlotte. I reached out to my long-time acquaintances Mark Lindwall, Dawn Adams-Miller, and Phil Everhardt via LinkedIn. We talked about their work to get people together as part of the Sales Enablement Society. So, we used LinkedIn to ask if anyone wanted to meet to talk about Sales Enablement. And people came. Here's a picture of who showed up. We had a conference room, a pizza, no agenda, and no idea what would come out of it! In the room, Sales Enablement leaders from Fortune 50 companies, sales consultants, a VP of Sales/CRO of a tech company, and a small business owner.

2) We figured out a charter: In our first meeting, we didn't know what was possible. We talked about Sales Enablement, what we were seeing, and where it was going. We outlined a vision for Sales Enablement in Charlotte and the impact it can have on wage inequality and economies. We shared stories of wins and losses. And something began taking shape -- the seed for what we were to attempt to become. We documented or first meeting outputs and approach. It became our charter. If you want a copy of it, reach out to me.

3) We began to solve problems together

To give our ideas an identity and clarity, we white-boarded together. We split into two teams and asked ourselves 3 simple questions 1) What's our vision, 2) How will we approach that vision, and 3) What's our unique value-add to the profession of sales enablement?

Here's what we came up with:

• Our vision: We will help sales VPs and their teams be successful by enabling sales conversations, without doing the work for them. We will be a volunteer organization of like-minded people who enjoy problem solving, co-creating wins, and co-creating emergent value.
• Our approach: We will focus on implementation and execution. Not "doing it for people" but helping them get started and get practical advice (sales enablement mentoring and coaching). To help clarify it, we used the analogy of the Best Buy Geek Squad. We want to be the Geek Squad to sales VPs and leaders (we will rename this).
• Here's the approach we came up with:

4) What's our differentiation?

To flesh that out,we had to figure out what we wanted to offer. We knew we wanted to take a local Charlotte focus to give back. We also knew we weren't going to create contracts with VPs of Sales -- and we would be volunteers. Since we're providing a service, we also wanted to provide outputs to Sales VPs, providing recommendations and options that either a) validated they were on the right track or b) provided something they haven't thought about before. That's it. simple.

What Happened Next? We Started Doing It

In that meeting, we had a VP of Sales (Fred Sheffield). He said "I have a problem we can work on". He shared some context, and also gave feedback on the approach we wanted to take. His framed out his challenge as this? How do I improve new hire ramp up time?. We agreed to try our newly white-boarded approach on him. An more importantly, he agreed to let us :)

Over the next few weeks, our team of sales enablement professionals produced an output in our off hours and volunteer time (since we have day jobs), and we walked Fred and his sales enablement team through it 4 weeks later. Here's what we came up with:

So, let's recap. We identified a VPs of Sales/CRO, defined an approach, and took accountability as a group of volunteers to 1) understand a single sales specific challenge , 2) make thoughtful recommendations while providing options and 3) provided a catalyst or spark to help them move forward in their organization.

That, in my opinion is amazing work. We're currently waiting to hear back from Fred on his feedback. But what's more amazing to me, is what we created as an output of working together.

There's a Difference Between Saying it's "Cross-Functional" and Working That Way

In essence, we created a collaborative problem solving process and used a series of working sessions to gather inputs, form some options, and provide an output. According to Fred's comments, in the session, we added value

1. "I can use this immediately" The output was actionable.
2. "This is spot on." The output was relevant
3. "I have done some of this, and I am hearing some good new ideas." The output validated thinking while also providing some new thinking
4. "I think may like to pick something from all 4 recommendations" The likely "solution" will be a hybrid of 4 recommendations. Not only "one" recommendation

The lesson learned?

There is value in dropping a problem on the table and working together to a) make recommendations, b) role play the possibilities, c) see what's possible, and d) prioritize options to execute

Now What?

Going forward, our team is zero-ing in our producing an output in less than 90 minutes based on clearly identified Sales VP problems. Our members are embracing the value of working together, problem solving together, and tackling complex challenges from multiple perspectives. We're focused on what works, not what we're doing "wrong."

So what's working?

If you join us in Charlotte, NC, you will see teaming "problem solving culture" in action. There are 5 ingredients we have found to working together so far. We'll see what others emerge as we do this.

Working Sales Enablement Challenges TOGETHER

Here are the ingredients:

1) EVERYONE IS RIGHT

Yes, you read that right. Our community members understand that smart people have honed experiences and points of view. Also, we know our audience. The reality is, if they're working on or in sales enablement, there's a reason they're doing it. They don't need to be lectured to and told about the history of consultative selling, etc. At our meetings, nobody is providing "wrong" advice. Instead, we struggle with a new phenomenon we call "everyone's right, now what the hell are we going to do?" We're developing new skills to meet each other in the middle and move forward together. It's interesting how much time and energy we can save by having empathy for other's points of view.

2) CREATE VALUE -- IN THE MOMENT

In the space of sales enablement, tribal knowledge is the norm. Since most work today requires cross-functional teaming, it's easy to get into discussions about what everyone else "should" be doing (marketing should do X, training should do Y, the technology should be different). In our team of community, we don't talk the language of "should" -- because it lays blame on others. Instead we build forward momentum by creating value that is additive and supportive. So, if you come to our meetings, "no-shoulding on others" :)

3) HUMBLE UP

It's easy for people to dish an opinion and move on. It's even easier to start declaring the answer to other people. "You know, just do X." Or, "that's because Y." Our community members understand that opinions are plenty, but results are lacking. Instead of "declaring it to be so," we embrace the technique of defining possibilities and providing thoughtful options to move forward. When we do that, we have to be willing to answer questions from other smart people, and admit our own personal blind spots. We create a safe place for that. And we trust people can make their own decisions. More importantly, our ideas are NOT the same thing as our identity as human beings. We can debate the value of an idea and still be worthy people.

4) SEEK THE VALUE AND YOU WILL FIND IT

Sales Enablement is cross-functional. That means, by design, if you're only talking to people who think like you, work in the same domain as you, and are certified to be "like you", you're likely not going to make break-throughs in sales enablement. Quite the opposite, you're probably "hardened" (read my post on making a pivot here, to see how hardened I was). Therefore, in our meetings we do not judge personal definitions or domains of expertise. While it might be easy to dismiss each other based on where we're working, what we are doing, the title we have, or the industry we're in, we've found that problems and opportunities are a universal language in business.  

5) DON'T SWEAT THE DEFINITION

Sales enablement means a lot of things to a lot of people. We've decided we're not going to get into debates with each other on the name of things (i.e., is it called sales enablement or buyer enablement? or "are you scrum or agile?"). We're also going to be methodology agnostic and platform agnostic. Why? We believe these definitional debates don't produce forward momentum. Rather, we've found they paralyze and alienate others. They are divisive instead of inclusive to the new world we sell in. Instead we focusing on labeling, we focus on underlying thoughts, beliefs and the "why." We don't want to create barriers to collaboration. We don't polish nouns, we move forward.

Who's Next?

Based on what we learned in our initial round, we want to see if will work again. To do that, we're going to continue meeting. If you're a VP of Sales/CRO, please reach out to Phil Everhardt to sign up to be our next test case. He's helping us with intake.

Look forward to your feedback!