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ISEs3 Ep8: Bob Kelly - Sales Management Association
Episode 8 • 7th March 2024 • Inside: Sales Enablement • Scott Santucci, Brian Lambert, Erich Starrett
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On the eve of the Sales Management Association's annual Sales Force Productivity Summit right here in the ATL at Emory University (NEXT week! March 12-13th ...use promo code TAGFAM for nearly half off at salesmanagement.org) SMA founder and commander-in-chief @Bob Kelly joins me to discuss the past, present and future of enablement through the lens of a globally recognized ambassador of Sales Management.

HIGHLIGHTS from the SHOW:

  • The first time bob heard Sales Enablement was from John Aiello and his partner Drew Larsen at the Savo Group in the late 90s/early aughts. They had created a system for distributing content, they called sales asset management. Craig Nelson of iCentera was doing this as well.
  • At that point Bob saw Sales Enablement chiefly as a solution for marketing.  Due to Sale's uncertain agency marketing couldn't really see nor control what the sales force was doing with their content and feared much of it was going to waste.
  • The Sales Management Association tends to be more broadly sales effectiveness focused, but they have had sales enablement sponsors / underwriters co create content with them including Brain Shark, Highspot and Seismic.
  • Bob's appeal on behalf of the SMA to those who have a niche focus in sales enablement / supporting the sales force is to learn about the bigger, broader issues affecting sales leadership, sales governance.
  • "(At the SMA) we try to put our arms around a very diverse membership with that basic proposition, learn about the big ideas and get a broad understanding. A liberal arts education about what it means to work and to manage the sales function."

QUOTES of NOTE:

  • "A criticism of sales enablement that I have that it's too overreaching in its scope and definition. Only because it's poorly defined."
  • "I would like to see sales enablement making better managers.  That should be the charter."
  • "The traditional function of sales management,  a nanny function of supervising, making sure people are doing the right things in the right spots, it's largely a problem we automate now. So this has at least in theory, freed up some capacity to focus on more substantive things like making the sales organization better."
  • "Our research shows on average, large sales forces reorganize every three years. And often that's in response to this fundamental need to change how the sales organization delivers value."

Don't wait - hit PLAY! - to hear about all of the above

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Erich

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Transcripts

Erich Starrett:

Hello, everyone, and welcome to ISE Inside Sales Enablement,

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Season 3, Enablement History.

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And today, I'm excited to have

in the Orchestrate Sales Studio,

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a man that knows a lot about the

past, present, and future of sales.

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With a side of sales enablement,

we're going to see what he has to say.

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, Mr.

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Bob Kelly, who is the founder

and chairman going since:

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the Sales Management Association,

the only global cross industry

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professional association for managers.

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focused in sales force

effectiveness, . He's also an

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adjunct faculty of the Goizueta.

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I've never had to say that loud.

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Oh, how about

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Bob Kelly: Pretty good.

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Erich Starrett: All right.

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Business school right here at Emory

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Bob Kelly: University here in Atlanta.

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Goizueta was Roberto Goizueta.

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He was CEO of the Coca

Cola company in the 80s.

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Erich Starrett: there we go.

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And there's some history, , Coca

Cola here in Atlanta.

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I believe in fact, there's about to

be history made , on March 12th and

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13th the 2024 Salesforce productivity

event will be hosted on that very

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same Emory campus by Bob himself.

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And I'm sure we'll be

hearing more about that.

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Bob, anything else I missed

out in the intro before we

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dive into a question or two?

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Bob Kelly: Thanks for

plugging the conference.

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It's March 12th and 13th.

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So the business school is hosting

it for us and we normally have

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an event at least once a year.

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This is one of the first times

we've done that in the spring.

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So hope you can join for that.

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I would also just let your audience

know they can learn more about

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the conference from our website.

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Salesmanagement.

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org.

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And you can learn about

the conference there

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Erich Starrett: outstanding.

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And don't worry, folks we'll

circle back and give that to you

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again at the end if you missed it.

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So for now, Bob , sales enablement.

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, fiercely curious.

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When did you first hear those two words?

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2010.

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We're going back to , on my books,

the society itself didn't come into

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being really until 2016, but the

words have been around for a minute.

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When did you first hear them?

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What did they mean to you?

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What do they mean to you?

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Bob Kelly: where was I when

I heard those magic words?

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That's what you want to know.

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It's difficult to understand,,

when a new term comes along.

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Just how bad ish or long live it'll be.

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So I do have a little bit of history

about this term sales enablement, and

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this comes from a conversation I had a

few years ago with the person who I

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would call the Abner Doubleday of sales

enablement, and that's John Aiello at the

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time he was at a firm called Savo Group.

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Savo Group was a firm really at the

headwaters of this idea, sales enablement.

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John and his partner Drew Larsen.

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Now this is in the late 90s, early aughts.

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They were running a company that was

essentially doing marketing consulting

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for B2B sales organizations these

guys are really good marketers.

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They were creating really good content

and they were a little frustrated

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that it was sometimes difficult

for salespeople to find this stuff.

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And at the time that they'd created

a system for distributing content,

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they call it sales asset management.

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This is the precursor this is the

bronze age equivalent sales enablement.

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Erich Starrett: Yeah.

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I think Craig was calling

it that at the same time.

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Bob Kelly: yeah, it's good that you

mentioned him because his firm iCentera

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was also active around the same time.

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In fact, Aiello acknowledges that.

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The folks at iCentera may have also

been using this term, but they got

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some funding in 2004, raised some

capital, and coincident with that,

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they decided they need a more, they

needed a more highfalutin name for

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this stuff than Sales Asset Management,

and they adopted the moniker.

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sales enablement at that time.

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I'll give you some perspective on

what I thought that was . It was

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chiefly a solution for marketing.

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The people that bought sales

enablement were marketing.

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It was mostly solving a marketing problem.

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That problem was Marketing was creating

content and sales may not have really

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been making good use of that content.

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So this solved a problem for marketing

that was related to the sales

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organization's uncertain agency.

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We can't really control what the

sales force is doing with our stuff.

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We think a lot of it is going to waste.

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Sales enablement was grounded in

this distribution problem, getting

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content where it needs to be.

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This is a big problem, especially in large

companies with many, thousands of products

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those were the humble roots of

sales enablement, as I recall.

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And that was in the early 2000s.

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And then since then, I think it's

come to mean a little bit more.

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Erich Starrett: So then from there, what

about the society, the sales enablement

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society, and maybe even in the interim?

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I always go back to the 2008 is to me

the middle when Scott Santucci and in

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fact, we just spoke with Brian Lambert.

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That episode will be

coming out soon as well.

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I think Scott was the guy definitely put

the stake in the ground over at Forrester

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and then Brian was his first hire.

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And that clearly is our legacy

here at Orchestrate Sales.

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Brian and I started the site.

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But was there a bump in there when you

went, Oh, this thing's become official?

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Bob Kelly: Yeah.

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. I remember when the sales enablement

society came along, I always found it.

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You know a little intimidating.

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I'm not really the society type I

you know, I assumed you guys were

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like eating like cucumber sandwiches,

and having high tea over there

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Erich Starrett: Pinky's in the air.

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Love

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Bob Kelly: so I was a little put off

by that, but I think you know, my my

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General impression of these kinds of

organizations is that they tend to have

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a center of gravity one of two kinds I

mean they're either focused on creating

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content and new practices they're

create, they're focused on networking

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and the more social elements that is

getting people together, collaboration

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fraternization within the industry.

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And I think from what I've, I

know the society has been really

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good at that second thing.

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Erich Starrett: From a involvement

perspective, what element does

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enablement play in your business?

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Bob Kelly: Yeah, no it's an

important topic for our audience.

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Our audience is a little more I guess

general their interests are a little

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broader than sales enablement, but sales

enablement is certainly or, the kind of.

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Associated issues of, learning

and development or content

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management are things that are

relevant to our audience for sure.

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We tend to be more broadly

sales effectiveness focused,

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or sales management focused.

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but we have sponsors in our

organization we call them underwriters.

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They sometimes co create content with us.

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And we've had over the years.

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a number of vendors in this space,

including the the folks at Brain

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Shark, for example, for a long time,

or High Spot, or Seismic I so we've

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participated in the, in those ways,

learning what those solution providers

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have to say sometimes to our audience.

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And also, we do our own research

in areas related to what you

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guys call sales enablement and,

try to stay current in that way.

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Erich Starrett: I spent a little

bit of time on the site, and I was

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very pleased to see that you do

in fact have a sales enablement

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button as a subset of your search.

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I think it was 12 or 15 pages of content

I'd love to hear more of a peek behind

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the curtain, and again, for the benefit

of the audience, what might the value be

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of being a member if you are an enabler?

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Of joining officially becoming

a member of your site and

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coming out to the conference?

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Bob Kelly: Sure.

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That's a nice question to ask.

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Thank you for thinking

about it in that way.

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We are called the Sales

Management Association.

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We try to take the most broad approach

possible for getting at the issues

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relevant to running the sales force.

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My appeal to a lot of people who have

a niche focus IN sales support or

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helping sales forces is to learn about

the bigger, broader issues affecting

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sales leadership, sales governance.

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And I think this helps us greatly in

the mission to support the Salesforce.

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Sales organizations and sales leaders have

to rely on a lot of corporate functions

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that don't always have the content domain

expertise around sales and sometimes

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simply don't understand the peculiar

issues that affect the sales organization.

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So for sales enablement folks, especially

those that might be creating training or.

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Working on collateral it's important to

understand what those big issues are.

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We try to, put our arms around a very

diverse membership with that basic

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proposition, learn about the big

ideas and get a broad understanding.

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A liberal arts education about

what it means to work and to

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manage the sales function.

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,

there are a lot of issues confronting the sales force right now.

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One of them is the enormous

amount of change happening.

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How do organizations build

adaptiveness into their capabilities?

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Do we have the, the management

competency, for example, to

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lead change in the organization?

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Do we have the ability to change and adapt

sales process or value propositions in

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a way that can effectively adapt when

buying preferences change or markets

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change or the stuff we sell changes.

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These are really big issues that matter

a great deal to sales leaders right now.

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I think an enablement person has to be.

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on the very leading edge of how do

we help our organizations adapt.

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Also, what it means to help

people learn and develop in

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sales organizations is changing.

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Enablement as a function, has led the

way in that area in many respects.

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Erich Starrett: If we go back to

the founding of the sales enablement

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society, they talked about there

being 4 flavors of enablement,

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Bob Kelly: I think all

those areas are important.

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, the danger is getting

hung up on the semantics

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when I hear that four part charter

charter of sales enablement, the

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question that occurs to me is.

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Is there anything that is not included

in that definition of sales enablement?

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And I really don't think there is.

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So this is a problem.

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A sales leader will look at this

maybe in the context of we've got

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to double down on sales enablement.

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And they'll say, first of all,

what is this word enablement?

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Is that a word?

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I don't know about this.

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What is it specifically?

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And is there a direct connection between

The investments and activities of

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people in this area and their expected

impact in the business in a direct way.

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So that's a criticism of sales

enablement that I have that its too

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overreaching in its scope and definition.

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Only because it's poorly defined

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Erich Starrett: I'm part of the problem.

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Here's what I mean by that is that

what enablement really has gravitated

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toward is the talent portion of that.

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Going back to, , the roots of

the sales enablement society.

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Their vision for the role was much broader

and it included all of those areas.

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There are still some of us speaking

that language, the orchestrating a

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cross functional business within a

business Position number two was that

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it needed to be chartered and run that

way , but what most folks gravitated

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towards was really the training And

the enablement of the sales force, but

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not getting into those other areas.

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So there is a little bit of attention

even in the community where folks like

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me are going man There's still this huge

opportunity To orchestrate a dotted line.

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That's important.

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Cross functional business within

a business that is metrics driven.

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Starting with a charter and strategy

that is metrics based that is founded

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in dials that you can watch, that

the executive team is in alignment

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with , and almost more importantly,

that are leading with the value that

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your company can bring to that client.

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And as those dials are moving internally

towards delivering that value, the dials

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are moving externally because you're

actually providing value to the client.

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And you've aligned that

revenue engine, right?

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So what I talk about and i'm

excited about is the idea of

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an orchestrated revenue engine.

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Is that 100 enablement?

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No, it's a cross functional dotted line.

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And in fact, it might be With a CRO, CMO,

Chief Strategy, or Chief Sales Officer,

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either of the CSOs at the head of that.

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I love that you called that out,

and I hold myself accountable

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to being part of the problem.

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But to your point , there needs

to be that definition, there needs

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to be that stake in the ground.

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So thank you for pointing all of that out.

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What I would like to turn back to you and

say is, So Bob, what does good look like?

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Is there room for sales enablement?

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And what would that look like?

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Bob Kelly: honestly, despite, my sort of

quibbles with the name and everything.

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I don't really care what you call it.

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I think let's get down to the essential

value that the idea brings to the table

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I would put that in two broad categories.

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One is the, the efficient distribution

of content, the collateral, et

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cetera, the distribution problem.

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I think the technology associated

with sales enablement can

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help this solve this problem.

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Helping people find things,

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also getting things to

people, which is different.

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It's more pushing as opposed to asking

people to pull it when they need it.

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It's getting things to people in context,

where when and where they need it.

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The more important thing

is developing salespeople.

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We use this term now, development,

and we use it because we

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resist the term training.

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It's not as a great term.

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Training now brings to mind,

like jamming people in a room and

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making them listen to a lecture.

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I'm a journeyman educator too.

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So , it's interesting to me the

similarities in, , selling and , teaching.

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There.

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equally challenging, I think.

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,

we now know the limitations of simply trying to fill people up with knowledge.

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We don't do this anymore.

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, and in education, by the way, we call

this flipping the classroom, where you

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get people to learn stuff on their own,

and then you bring them together to solve

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problems in the classroom as a, give them

something to do that they're on the hook

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for, that they can't do unless they ask

questions and make them learn that way.

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Developing salespeople, it's very similar.

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We can give them this information.

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We can even push it out

to them when they need it.

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But to really have them develop skills

and applied knowledge, we have to

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observe them and we have to coach them.

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And this means, , objectively looking

at them, watching them, making judgments

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about them diagnosing root cause issues

associated with shortcomings and how

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they're performing, having assignments

and things we can prescribe to them

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to help them improve, judging that

improvement, monitoring that, and doing

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all this in a way that is collaborative

and customized to that person.

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And this is what is ideally done,

not by sales enablement, but by

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sales management who has authority

and who has accountability for

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the performance of that person

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Not always.

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In fact, it's a problem for the firm.

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It's not a sales enablement

or sales management problem.

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, so I see sales enablements

role is supporting that

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essential management function.

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I would like to see, sales

enablement at making better

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managers that should be the charter.

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Change it to something like that.

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, we're going to make management

better at developing salespeople.

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Erich Starrett: Bob in my observation

One of the biggest gaps has been that

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sales managers a lot of times are

brought up into that role from an

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individual contributor, and I just

heard you say that sales enablement.

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1 of the biggest opportunities is

exactly that to close that gap.

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What is being done right in that respect?

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And what could sales

enablement be doing better?

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If that is the sweet

spot of sales enablement.

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Bob Kelly: Yeah.

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So that's a great question.

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one of the things that I've seen

that is really effective is to

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rotate management candidates in and

out of sales effectiveness roles.

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Whatever those may be called.

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So you might have a, first line sales

manager whose promotion and a larger

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company is into sales operations, where

they learn about process and, back office

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technology issues and incentive comp

design and performance management issues.

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Or you might rotate them into a

training role or sales enablement

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role where they're, actually,

accountable for those responsibilities.

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That's one idea.

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Rotate people around, get them experience

in doing some of these different jobs.

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In general, though, I think something

at a macroeconomic level is happening

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in sales organizations that makes it

more important to develop salespeople.

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Maybe it's a few things happening.

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One of them is that the traditional

function of sales management, a

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nanny function, of supervising,

making sure people are doing the

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right things in the right spots, it's

largely a problem we automate now.

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So this has at least in theory,

freed up some capacity to focus on

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more substantive things like making

the sales organization better.

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Another maybe bigger issue is that

this is labor market economics.

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A lot is being made right now

of layoffs in the tech industry.

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But if you look at the overall economy

and across all sectors, employment

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is actually very robust and many

organizations are having trouble

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holding on to the best salespeople

and attracting the good new talent

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One way they do this is with places

that are nice places to work in and so

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companies that develop people are better

places to work and a more discriminating

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labor pool can make judgments.

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Based on that criteria, they

can say, I don't have to take

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the first job that comes along.

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I'd like to work at a place.

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Where I'm going to get better

and more marketable in the role.

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And we see that, developing people

and creating nice places to work for

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salespeople is an emerging vector of

competitiveness for sales organizations,

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and they're thinking more about it.

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Layer on top of that, the issue of

the sales organization has to change

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our research shows on average, large

sales forces reorganize every three years.

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And often that's in response to this

fundamental need to change how the

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sales organization delivers value.

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And so we have to be adaptable

and we also have to make people

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better in our organization.

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So this idea of sales enablement's

role in helping develop people, I

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think is more important than ever.

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And maybe more strategic than ever.

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Erich Starrett: Bob, I feel like

we've done a really good job covering

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enablement history and we talked

a good amount about the present.

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I know with your event coming up next

month in your present, you're thinking a

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good bit about the future, that event and.

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I can only assume some of those

topics are about the future of sales,

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the future of sales management.

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Can we maybe land on telling us what

folks can expect to learn about how they

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can be in the present here in Atlanta

at that event and learn about the

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future and drive additional productivity

in themselves and their teams.

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Bob Kelly: Yeah.

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Happy to.

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So there'll be four major tracks.

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The first is a sort of general and it

is sales leadership's new priorities.

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This is an opportunity to acknowledge

those things that we think are emerging

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areas of importance for leadership.

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Another is, we're calling it Bold

Futures in Sales Technology, and this

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is really an opportunity to acknowledge

some of the hand wringing and pearl

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clutching around AI, especially

the generative language based AI.

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Then we'll have two other sections.

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One is competing on sales talent.

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This is a place to talk about the

challenges that many organizations are

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having in attracting new salespeople

at, in certain sectors and also

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holding on to, the top sales talent,

which is, under siege in many firms.

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, fourthly, we'll talk about transformation.

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Managing really a better

term is leading change.

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In sales organizations, what's

management's role in that?

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Where are the areas, sales organizations

see themselves changing and how

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do firms adapt to those demands?

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We'll have a few great speakers.

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We'll have a President of

Corporate Sales at UPS.

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We'll have a Senior Vice President

of Performance Effectiveness

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at Cox Communications.

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We'll have Senior Leaders From a couple

of other Georgia companies Great Dane

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let's see, we'll have some folks from

Schlumberger, from Asea Brown Boveri,

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ABB a number of other industrial firms

anyway, that's all I can think of

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at the moment, hope you can join us.

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Erich Starrett: Bob, thank you so

much for that and for joining us.

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And again, folks you've got

to get out salesmanagement.

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org.

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And I'm very pleased to share both

in partnership with Bob here on

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the podcast, but almost more over

on the Technology Association of

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Georgia here locally, of which I'm a

proud member for a decade or three.

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Has teamed up with Bob to offer

up a promotion code, which is

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being part of the TAG family.

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And it doesn't, if whether you're

here in Georgia locally or coming

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from overseas, T-A-G-F-A-M is

the promo code you can plug in.

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And Bob, tell 'em a little

bit more about that.

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Do they get a little

knock off the price or

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Bob Kelly: They do.

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Yeah, you say, so that lowers

the registration cost for

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you from $895 to $4.95.

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The code is TAGFAM.

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Erich Starrett: Awesome, Bob.

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Thanks for sharing that.

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Thanks TAG for being part of our extended

family and Bob for being right here

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in Atlanta and leading the charge to

elevate sales management enablement

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and sales management specifically.

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Great to have you on the show Bob.

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Bob Kelly: Thanks so much

for having me, Erich.

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Really enjoyed it.

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Thank you.

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Erich Starrett: Pleasure.

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