Welcome to the Inside Sales Enablement Podcast, Episode 13

Sales enablement is a cross-functional role.

You have to work positively with: salespeople, sales managers, sales leaders, sales operations, various HR functions, IT professionals, finance professionals, product marketers, field marketers, customer success professionals, sales engineers, product leaders, and manage expectations from the c-suite. 

How do you do it?

It can be manageable when the breadth of your remit is focused solely on onboarding. However, if you don't have a framework and toolset - you can submarine yourself quickly without a stakeholder management strategy. 

In this episode, Scott Santucci and Brian Lambert introduce the idea of a cartoon to introduce the simplicity of the core idea around stakeholder management and we connect it to a famous quote from Zig Ziglar "you can get anything you want in life if you help enough people get what they want"  

Join us at https://www.OrchestrateSales.com/podcast/ to collaborate with peers, join Insider Nation, participate in the conversation and be part of the continued elevation of the profession.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Nick Merinkers 00:02

Welcome to the inside sales enablement podcast. Where has the profession been? Where is it now? And where is it heading? What does it mean to you, your company, other functions? The market? Find out here. Join the founding father of the sales enablement profession Scott Santucci and trailblazer Brian Lambert as they take you behind the scenes of the birth of an industry, the inside sales enablement podcast starts now.

Scott Santucci 00:34

Hello, I'm Scott Santucci.

Brian Lambert 00:35

And I'm Brian Lambert. And we're the sales enablement insiders. Our podcast is dedicated to helping sales enablement leaders understand the big questions they should consider in order to be successful with sales enablement. In this podcast, we reframe, revisit, rethink and confront reality in sales enablement. And on this podcast episode today, we've got something pretty special, but I'm I'm not sure what it is Scott, frame it out for me. What do you got?

Scott Santucci 01:04

Thank you, Brian. And thank you everybody for joining our show. As you know, this is the part of our show where we frame out the topic or the theme today, this theme that that we're using, actually, we're going to go a little multimedia and try something different that we've never done before. I'm going to play you a clip. It's runs about a minute and 10 seconds. I'm going to comment a little bit along the way and see what you think. So, five bucks if you know who this is, or you know, buy a beer when I see you sometime. That is a little chicken Hawk. And that is one of the main characters and Foghorn Leghorn. So, the person talking now that's the dog. The dog is the arch nemesis of Foghorn Leghorn. So, he's just run in to another character in this little, tiny story. It's a cat. This character is a mouse. He's come out of the barn. All right, that's it.

Brian Lambert 03:14

That's a good question. So, so what will the cheese want? Got? No, just kidding. First of all, I don't know if the listeners can hear that. But it's pretty cool story. So, you may have to turn that up and you have my permission to hit the rewind button for a minute and listen to that again. The second of all, I don't know how you have time for all this to come up with this stuff. Are you watching chicken bog and Foghorn Leghorn for hours on end looking for clips there What?

Scott Santucci 03:42

Actually, when I was a kid, watching that, for whatever reason, I just remember some of the cartoons and this one stuck in me, because when I was getting sales trained, and I was listening to my Zig Ziglar tapes, Zig Ziglar has this quote. That just resonates with me at my core is quote, and I think anybody who knows what Zig Ziglar is, if not Google and learn all about it. He says, you can get anything in life that you want as long as you help enough people get what they want. And for whatever reason, I needed to have a way to connect the dots between those two. And so that's really how I get the this Foghorn Leghorn cartoon to me, epitomizes all of the challenges that we're dealing with sales enablement.

Brian Lambert 04:34

Yeah, everybody wants something different. Actually, I would add another component to that, you know, that the chain there, right, I need a bone, I need some cheese. Everybody's got a different need. But on the sales enablement side, you have to kind of orchestrate that all together into one outcome or one solution, right.

Scott Santucci 04:53

So, the way that I the way that I think about it into you know, put some, I feel like now we're in English class and trying to determine the meaning of Walt Whitman or some poem. For me, the chicken Hawk represents all of us sales enablement people and going from just a super eager Yay, I can get the dog a bone. But what is it that we want? And ultimately the end of this cartoon it's, you know, seven minutes it's way too long to play a clip like that is he ends up getting the plan from the dog because he gets that he gets the cheese to the mouse the mouse gives the bone or gives the fish that he caught with the cheese to the to the cat a cat gives get get it tells him how to get the bone and it gives the bone to the dog, who ultimately gives him the plan on how to get Foghorn Leghorn. So little chicken, chicken Hawk can eat that big, big, big, ridiculous Foghorn Leghorn. So, the point of this is, we sales enablement professionals. Like the little chicken Hawk, in the sense that we start off with, what is it that we want, we want to have a measurable impact. Now what our impact is, is different for each of us. But depending upon our company's scope and appetite, how strategic that we want to be, but at the end of the day, what is it that we want, you can get anything in life that you want, when we want big chickens for dinner?

Brian Lambert 06:26

And we want to help people, right? I mean, the mouse needed help the cat needed help the dog needed help, right? We want to be able to help people. So that's part of that to the chicken Hawk story to me was, not only did he want to get his own outcome, he actually was considering the needs of others. I'm not sure if that's what you meant as well. But I think I see that and sales enablement people all the time was is trying to be helpful.

Scott Santucci 06:49

That's right. And that's the second part. The way that you get what you want, is helping others get what they want. And the part that I like the best that resonate with me the most in this cartoon is when it goes, everybody wants something,

Brian Lambert 07:05

And they want something that they want something I think that was Zig Ziglar himself.

Scott Santucci 07:10

That's true. He also says that maybe Zig Ziglar his famous quote was inspired by watching, because Looney Tunes came out before Zig Ziglar. So yeah, who knows? Whatever it is, it's a universal truth. The user universal truth is that you are better you can get more of the things that you want, by supporting others what they want. Now to make this business focused, he because we don't want you to, quote, Foghorn Leghorn inside your company. This is just meant to make, make some of these big ideas, simple, but there's a term that maybe you should embrace. It's called stakeholder management. And really, that's one of the one of the critical success factors that all sales enablement leaders must master. If you're going to to keep your job and also continuously add value. So that's really the key. The key point that we're talking about here is stakeholder management, the importance of it, how stakeholder management helps you sell the value or the function of sales in a more and internally, and how challenging it is.

Brian Lambert 08:19

Yeah, like it. And, you know, little known fact, though the word cell is Icelandic. It's spelled like SJ e Ll, so our global audience could tell me how to pronounce that, like Val, or something like that. But a lot of our listeners may not know this, but the word sell actually means to serve. So, to your point, Scott enablement, who are you serving? Who are you helping, and this is a profession built on serving others and providing some sort of outcome to a group of people who are also serving others to provide some sort of outcome and it's an important profession, but yet from a stakeholder management perspective. Everybody wants to bow not only today, they wanted it yesterday, and everybody has their own needs. And you get into this I, you know, I've seen it before. And I've been in been in a role where this happen every day is a new request. And it's hard to serve people in that. What do you what do you think about that?

Scott Santucci 09:17

I think you're right. And I think that's one of the things we had a we had an episode. I think it was episode number seven, we're back on and we brought up this issue. But let's start to make this more real before we start making act academic. So, we're starting out with a cartoon. The nothing is less academic than that. But now then we bubbled it up to stakeholder management. Oh my god, the academic alert is way high. Let's talk about why you need these. It's why you need these things and why you need these tools. So, insert any Chickenhawk, any sales enablement practitioner like any of us, you've heard the stories from earlier podcasts. Our first two podcasts were about selling sales enablement, internally. The third podcast was how I set up a sales enablement function was heavy on on selling internally. Let's just break this down very simply, who are our constituents? To whom is it that we're enabling? And it's a very difficult topic topic. The sales members within the sales enablement society don't agree on what the definition of sales enablement is. We've commented before Brian for when we were at Forrester, we produced the first version for CERN upon itself has come up with a different version, elapsed time frame 10 years still debating about the definition of sales enablement. That's a circular wheel that doesn't add any value. Let's talk about your company inside your company. Who is it that you're trying to enable? Are they individual salespeople? If so, what's the bone they want? Is it the sales managers? If so, what's the fish? They want it? Is it the VP of Sales So what's the cheat that they want? And then in order to give them those things, we have to go into what is the CFO want? Because ultimately, we're going to need resources, right? We're going to ask for headcount or ask for for money. So, what is the CFO or finance organization want?

Brian Lambert 11:20

Yeah, like this, because visually, you can categorize by these big, big items, you know, then you can say, what kind of what kind of cheese, you know, cheddar, Colby cheese, what kind of fish is it? Right. And these are questions that you can ask your stakeholders without assuming and I think that's, that's important. Being a chicken Hawk and all

Scott Santucci 11:41

that's right. And it becomes more complex as our businesses get more complex because we're trying to solve, solve universal problems for our clients, or bring them commercial insights or whatever we want to call them, rather than just selling a product. Okay.

Brian Lambert 11:56

Yeah, so before you go on to that, sorry to interrupt but by Are we making this? What would you say if somebody said okay, now now you guys are getting crazy? You're making this too complex. You went from a cartoon. We're one click into this and this is this is getting too complicated. What would you say to that?

Scott Santucci 12:13

That's the reason you got a job. The reason the role sales enablement has emerged is because somebody got tapped on the shoulder and said, Brian, this thing's broken, fix it. The things that are broken, are really the sales system, the sales engine, however you want to put it, your sales machine coming apart at the seams, because you don't have a execution fabric to connect the dots because your your company is organized in a bunch of different silos. With a ton of specialists. They're really smart in their own own areas. But none of your customers care about any of that stuff.

Brian Lambert 12:51

And you're getting handed broken things. It's not like they're all put together. I don't know if you've ever had to build something for kids and it exploded upon opening into A bunch of little piece parts, like Legos. Yeah, that can get kind of complicated.

Scott Santucci 13:05

And it can get very complicated to when when you open the package Christmas Eve night and you're putting together the kit putting together those those toys when you lose the instructions. Yeah, that's the thing. You don't have instructions. Yep. Others have instructions. This is a brand new, this is a relatively new role. There isn't an instruction manual. So unfortunately, this is you. The good news is you have a job, and you have a job in a function, that there's a lot of upside to if you can get it right. The con of that opportunity is guess what? You've got to confront the complexity of putting the jigsaw pieces pieces together. It's just it just goes with the territory. Sorry. If you know if you can't handle the heat, get out of the kitchen.

Brian Lambert 13:52

Yeah, and I think that's why we're seeing that more and more roles in sales enablement. And then to the evolution of the role to be more, more strategic, in other words to take a purview of broader set of pieces. And, you know, that's a whole separate show. We'll talk about that. But back to the topic of being the chip Chickenhawk here. Remember that story from Elizabeth when when that one podcast who confronted reality where she was talking about what the sales managers wanted, and there was this, this friction, and we kind of coached her up on you know, you can't have that friction. What would you say about that? Productive friction and, and the the bringing together of people and where they're rubbing the wrong rubbing elbows and how how that relates to, you know, stakeholder management because to me, it's not all gonna be happy, you know, cartoon, it's gonna get messy.

Scott Santucci 14:48

Well, I think if you watch this cartoon, the little chicken isn't happy, right? Everybody wants something. Yeah. That's your dilemma. So that even that that that premise, isn't isn't true. But really the key point is, it's really getting at the heart of what enabled means. Enable doesn't enable could mean I give you what you want, and just give everybody what they want but then there's no quid pro quo. In order for me to do something for you I need something in return.

Brian Lambert 15:21

Yeah, that's a foreign, but that's that. Okay, first of all, you might be the first person that I've heard talk about that in a public setting about what are we getting back as enablement leaders? Because I've been to a lot of meetings, I've been to a lot of events. I've talked to hundreds of sales enablement people, nobody's nobody's asked, you know, what should I be asking for? What's my quid pro quo, they all they, although, however, have a challenge with resources, getting a seat at the table, you know, having a strategic partnership with sales, you know, they tend to talk in terms of the outcomes that they want. So, are you talking about that are you talking about something more tactical, a meeting cadence with others is a quid pro quo? are you what are you talking about with the ask for sales enablement can be more.

Scott Santucci 16:09

So really, I'm going to be simple about that. I know you know, we want to go in to start talking about what we're doing. But let's just make sure we're really clear on what it is I'm talking about. You only have a limited amount of budget, you can keep asking for more budget, you can keep asking for more resources. We both know that the way that you get it, that's probably you're never going to get enough resources that you asked for. You're going to want to own more things, but you're competing with other departments that want to own things. None of that's a winning strategy. The winning strategy is to look look at the deck of cards that you've got, and say based on what we've got, here's what I can do for you. The quid pro quo comes from other people granting you things take to get get having them give you or agree to give up ownership. things. So, for example, we can start that the scenario with Beth was she's, she's viewing the sales managers and the sales managers are viewing her as competitive. Well, the first thing is, let's make clear, how do I help you? Me a beat meal as a bit? How do I help you as a sales manager? What is it that you want? If I can give you x? What are you going to do in return for that? And they can say, well, that's just what I expect. But that's not who Beth who pays Beth's checks? Who writes Beth checks? The VP of sales, or the director of sales in this case is the one who writes the checks. That's the that's the one she has to make happy. So, in other words, she has to get permission, gain permission. So, I'll do this for you. You'll do this for me. And because we've done that together, both of us win at sales 101.

Brian Lambert 17:53

Yeah, and I know for a fact that that approach works, we actually in my enablement role took over additional headcount and even had a new function for a while we took over function based on that, because, you know, our leadership was complaining about a lack of service, we said we can provide it. But to do that, we need the headcount of those, those people cut over to us. And it was simple. Okay, make sense.

Scott Santucci 18:19

So, let's put this into more concrete terms, right, so some of our listeners, so we're gonna, we basically Brian, and I think think of the world of enable in three stages of maturity. stage number one is a highly reactive world, which unfortunately, most of us are in right now. Stage number two is a managed world. And stage number three is an adaptive world. And you have to be able to accumulate enough of these favors and be able to accumulate enough of the another of the piece parts in order to, you know, move up that value ladder. But let's talk about something a lot of us are doing right now, which is onboarding. Now we can take the point of view that says onboarding as I develop the program and then you can say, Well, I trained all the reps and throw your hands up and say, you know, it's up to them now look at all our scores that we add. But if at the end of the day, the time from New Hire to productivity, if that metric is small, you haven't really enabled sales, you haven't given anybody anything except made a bunch of deliverables. So, one way to think about that would be, hey, in terms of onboarding, what do sales managers want? And you can ask them, but you know, you can get really clear, one of the things that sales managers want are some sort of predictable performance,...