Part 3 of this conversation covers revenue enablement, cross-functional alignment, leadership visibility, culture under pressure, and the measures that enablement leaders should prioritize to prove impact, featuring Roxanna Marazzi of RM Consultancy. This is for senior commercial leaders trying to scale without losing collaboration, accountability or the human connection that drives performance.

Hello, and welcome to the Growth Workshop Podcast.

In this podcast, we'll be sharing insights and hearing from other industry leaders

to get their thoughts and perspectives on what growth looks like in modern business.

Welcome to part three of three.

And it, in terms of the kind of sticking with this topic of integration

and collaboration across teams, you mentioned silos a couple of times,

Roxie, and you're thinking about the different parts of the organization.

We've got Bob in IT, we've got, we've got we've got L&D HR.

How does- it feels to me that r- that enablement should be a lot of the

glue that knits all of these things together and has a, has that sort of

holistic view across, you know, across what the sales team need, right?

And there's the sort of, the various different things that they would need

to pull out in different circumstances.

What do you see as some of those sort of challenges, but also some of where

you've seen it work really well in terms of that collaboration of lots

of different teams all feeling like they're pulling in the same direction?

When I headed up Asia sales for Rackspace in Hong

Kong, we were a 12-person team, so everyone wore many different hats

I was running a sales team where we didn't have Enablement in in Hong Kong

so we were working within the US and then we started to bring in people from

marketing perspective and stuff like that.

When we joined forces and started to realise what lands in the US is not

gonna land in Hong Kong, the way we advertised, the way we marketed, the way

we sold to our clients, there were so many cultural differences that needed to

be respected in order to make our mark.

And this is in the dawn of cloud, so there was a lot at stake for us.

But we collaborate- collaborated on everything.

And that might be down to the size.

We were at 12 people, we grew to about 60 when I left.

But it was that collaboration where we would truly understands understand what

good looks like to everyone, what works from a local perspective what are our,

what are the marketing's KPIs of success?

What are my KPIs of success?

What is customer experience's KPIs of s- success?

I was oblivious because all I thought about was myself.

Yeah.

When we started to understand what success was in each of those teams and actually

collaborated, and, there was a few, there was a few verbal scuffs now and again,

but what it did is we had one universal or centralised framework of truth.

So when we went out there, it was successful because we were all singing

from the same hymn sheet, and we respected each other's views and what you needed

to achieve in order to get this done or that done or this event or that webinar,

but getting to that, trying to, make a s- make a build that part of our industry.

So that is where I feel it worked the best, and we grew really quickly

in a short space of time because we stayed true to the strategy.

So even though there were parts of us that said, "Oh, let's do a

little bit thing here for this month and that month," we stayed really

regimented to what our vision was.

And because of that, we were really successful.

When you say we who is that we?

Who was involved in that, really driving that in terms

of the different departments?

That

was HR. HR. That was marketing, that was sales, that were the

SEs, that was our MD, that was everyone.

That was finance.

It was everyone.

And because it was working, the US gave us the thumbs up

because it was working, right?

And the impact that it made commercially to the business stood out.

But I also do understand the p- the pain points of scaling, right?

And when you scale, you're trying to per- you're trying to preserve that culture.

And then because of that pace, things do naturally slide, right?

You do cut corners with hiring because you need to hire 10 people

in two days, so you just take anyone who sounds right, feels right.

But that's where you're

tested to stick to the plan and stick to the strategy,

I think that's a really interesting point, and this is why I see I'm

gonna use the word pivot without trying to trigger you right now.

Say it again?

But this is where I a number of years ago when sales enablement started to

pivot into revenue enablement for that exact reason because when you're solely

focused on what sales are doing and you're not taking into account what KPIs

do customer success need to achieve?

Do marketing need to achieve?

So changing the role from sales enablement to revenue enablement I think just

gives a very different lens on the whole go-to-market strategy because you're

taking into account everybody's views, what everyone's trying to achieve.

When you just have these siloed, okay just sales enablement or just customer success

enablement, you're not bringing it all together to, back to your point, have that

true collaboration because you're only really centered on your own problem, and

bringing that full loop round just, yeah.

And it's so interesting that when we qualify

a client We qualify everything.

Their need, their urgency, their timeline, their consequence, who's involved.

Yet we don't do that internally, and we take it for granted that we're

all under the same roof, so we're all like, we all want the same things.

We're all getting paid.

But everyone has different views and of success and how they get paid.

So why wouldn't we qualify internally?

That was an epiphany, by the way, when you were talking.

Like, why wouldn't we understand our internal customers as much as we would

want to understand our own clients?

It's the s- It should be the same, right?

And that should actually be part of onboarding.

Just because you work for whoever you work for doesn't mean you know the people

that you're gonna be interacting with.

Especially as the business scales.

You talk about the challenge of scaling, you talk about that.

How do you maintain the culture or preserve the culture?

How do you y- you, h- how do you do that in an effective way without creating

silos, without creating differences?

And, you said with a team of 12, even a team of 60, actually this is much easier

to go, "Okay we all still, we can all still see what one another are doing."

And the moment that sort of starts to break down and we no longer know who just

joined the business, and we see someone strange in the corridor or, or whatever

that might be That's when you have to be able to rely on the strategy, to your

point, in terms of keeping things aligned.

That this is, look, this is what we're all here for, this is

what we're all pulling towards.

And having it, again, comes down to that sort of the regularity and the way that

those teams and those leaders engage across the different points of view.

We started this conversation talking about a disconnect between, between say,

the teams on the ground and enablement and how that can sometimes come in, and

that's perhaps through perception, that's perhaps through, you've not sat in my

chair, how could you possibly tell me what to do type mentality that we know

exists in lots of places in organizations.

So yeah, I think that's a really, that's a really interesting point

of the kind of qualification piece.

And as you scaled in that Rackspace example, how did you-- w- what were some

of the kind of specific me- mechanisms that you used to maintain that culture

and to preserve that way of working?

Yeah.

O- one of them was the hiring process, so making sure that we're hiring

the right people to join the team.

Because it was a mix of local and Rackspace employees from around

the world, we needed to make sure that there was a balance.

We needed to make sure that we were hiring to the gaps that we had and what we needed

in order to, break certain markets and, find certain characteristics or profiles.

So the hiring was very-- There was a framework around the

hiring as to who we hired.

And then also from a leadership perspective, so When I headed

up Asia, before that I was the SMB manager, and then there was

another manager who had enterprise.

So we made sure that we had the same outlook, the same wants, the

same needs within the business.

We hired according to that.

And then the people that were coming up, we coached those behaviors.

We made sure-- And everything, I've always worked in an open plan, so your face and

what you, regardless of what's happened, you walk that floor, and you make sure

that you are the brand of the company and make sure that everything that you are

doing, you are essentially a role model.

What they're gonna see, they're gonna do.

So it's not easy at the end of the month or when you're really struggling

and you're going into boardrooms.

But it's little things, put the curtains down or it's little things,

and it's making sure that you are emotionally aware of how you turn up.

People feel that energy o-on the floor.

And if you don't know yourself, if you don't understand yourself,

it's gonna be really hard to understand others, and really hard

to help your team beyond a number.

'Cause it's an emotional-- It's, sales is an emotional game, right?

There's a science behind it, but there's also very much a human side to it.

Being given the green light, then been told no in the 11th hour, and then

having to scrap and find something.

You take these things personally.

It is personal.

That's how you feel.

So making sure that you've got those right attitudes especially from the

get-go, those are the leaders of tomorrow, so you need to start from

the hiring from the hiring process.

Love that.

Again, it goes back to that.

Your it goes back to EQ.

It's the, it's not the ability to pull up a dashboard and point to it, right?

Yeah … AI can help us do that.

It's the human connection and that ability to understand what your team needs when

they need it and then adapt accordingly.

Yeah, and are you coachable?

That's something else that I look for.

Are you coachable?

On

the hiring, yeah.

Yeah, on the hiring piece.

Are you coachable?

Because if you think you're the smartest person in the room, you're

in the wrong room, and if I can't coach you or your leaders can't coach

you, there's no room for improvement, and everyone's got something.

There's some-- People are good at s- everyone's good at something,

but not everything, right?

And if you're not open to that- That's a problem for me.

I think the other place where I've often seen, so when you talk

about scaling a team and how do you keep the culture, how do you keep that the

great feeling that you've built from a smaller team in terms of collaboration

and working well together, I think a lot of that's also driven from the top down.

So I've worked with some CROs who are exceptional at, as a team is growing,

as you're getting more in customer success, more in sales, more in RevOps,

they do a tremendous job at ensuring that it remains, let's just call

it sharing culture, where everybody works together, everybody has this

a l- true alliance and alignment.

Whereas when I've seen it break down, it's when C-suites, whoever that

might be working together at board level, don't have that mentality,

don't have that m- mentality of we are we, like we are a- as a team.

It's almost all I care about is the number.

Whoever gets there first is the one that's gonna get the pat on the back.

Then when you see these teams grow, they are growing in silos

because that's the behavior that's been pressed down from C-suite.

So I do think a lot of it has to play in, like who's a CRO, who's a CEO?

Oh.

What is their… what behaviors are they trying to drive?

'Cause ultimately, whatever behaviors they're driving is

gonna filter all the way down to leaders, to individual contributors.

Oh, yeah.

I've seen s- some leaders at C-suite never seen, might see them

on a video once a year or once a quarter telling you to close more.

Then you've got others that, that would sit with you at 10:00 PM at

n- at night waiting for a deal to close, and these people are busy,

but they make that time because they know you will remember that moment.

Someone shaking your hand because, you took y- and someone of im- like

from a from C-level coming down and going out, with you after work to have

that one drink just to say well done or, knowing your name in a corridor.

Like all of those, it's the little things that start to become big

things in a good way- or a bad way.

And everyone needs human connection.

Everyone needs it.

So especially in a sales team a- as you said, Dan, it's re- it's really

important because you just think there are people in towers making all

these decisions, and they're so far removed from the reality that there is

g- there'll b- there'll naturally be friction, there'll naturally be a, a

change in goalposts because you're so far removed from it that why wouldn't you?

But that's where the issue is.

There has to be a finger on the pulse especially from the top down- I've seen a

great- … for making the decisions … I've seen a great

example of the finger on the po- pulse.

I was with a, a client of ours in Finland last week working with their

commercial team, and a new CEO had recently joined, and he took the

time to come in and have lunch with everybody during our development session.

And then during that session he said to a number of the salespeople,

"If any of you need me to join any of your calls, call me.

My door's always open, and I if you think I'm gonna provide value, I'll happily

join your call." This is an international big organization, and you've got the

CEO saying, "I'm here to help you."

And I just thought, "Wow." Yeah.

Like, where do we find more people like that?

Yeah.

That's the human connection piece, right?

And I imagine everybody in that room thought, "Okay. W- we've got the support,

we've got the backing. He knows what it feels like to be just like us-

Yeah … and he wants to get on the ground and come to battle with us."

Yeah.

He's not just a face.

Yeah.

Like you're either being led by someone that you want to be led by or

you feel like you have to be led by them, and there's a big difference,

being a leader that is being followed because people feel like they have to

or they want to is a big difference.

The sort of ivory tower versus someone- who's on the ground on the floor.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And- Rox I what we find really helpful and our audience really loves is, and

you shared lots of these already, is these, these kind of practical things

to think about, and like what should we be thinking about when it comes

to hiring and the different types of, behaviors, but focusing on, recognizing

the different skills or capabilities that we wanna bring into the business.

We talked a little bit about go-to-market accelerator and how that works as well.

And I think the the bit that I wanna end our conversation today on is if you're

an enablement leader listening to this podcast today, and as an incredibly

experienced enablement leader, what … And you're looking to prove impact in

the year what would you be focusing on?

And I know context is everything, right?

So the context of the business that you're in, but, what would

you be looking to measure?

What would, where would you be looking to leverage AI if you

were building your plan today?

Yeah.

So for, for me, I would look at a few things.

The first would be current performance.

So where is the business in this current state?

The second would be capability gaps.

Where are the capability gaps at the moment?

Is it from a metrics perspective?

Is it from a behavior perspective?

Really drill down as to where that is.

The third would be potential for development, so as  Dannii said.

Do we have the right people?

Is there room for improvement?

And does that lie with your team, or does that lie with your leaders?

Because both of them need to be looked at.

There are many leaders that don't have the training because they've been the

best salesperson in the world, so of course they're gonna be a great leader.

And then vice versa with AEs moving through the ranks from BDR.

They can open the doors, so they must be able to close the doors now.

Is there the right onboarding in place?

The fourth is role alignment.

So do we actually know what good looks like?

Do we have a blueprint or a profile for what that looks like, and what's

gonna move the dial from a performance perspective within those teams?

And then as I mentioned, the manager readiness.

Do we have the right leaders that are going to be able to coach, mentor,

guide, talent multiply and build the business to where we want to be?

And then AI should always support the cause but not be the savior of the

cause, which is you can build crazy KPI stacks and measurements of success.

Work with sales ops.

They've got the best data and ideas when it comes to metrics.

Leaning in.

So for me, enablement should- Take charge in bringing people together.

As you were saying before, they are the glue.

So how, think about in your organisation, how can you bring sales ops, s- sales ops

HR, sales leaders together and build a really open and honest conversation as to,

"Hey, this is what good looks like for me.

This is what I'm looking to do." It'll be crazy to see that you're all actually

looking at the same thing, or you're driving towards the same outcome, which

is per- getting more rev- revenue.

And then using AI as a tool to support that cause.

But I think there is so much more that enablement can

give within an organisation.

I just think the perception of what they do isn't as clear as it could be,

and as it should be within businesses.

I think that's a really nice way to to leave our conversation today.

I think that piece around what AI can and could and should be used to do.

I know we touched a little bit on that.

I know we've talked about, I think it's evolving so quickly, right?

And we've all gotta stay agile, stay resilient and work, and work together.

But I love that collaboration point, bringing the teams together to get

to that, to get to that outcome.

We're all essentially should be s- should be rowing in the same direction.

Yeah.

And never think it's, "Oh, I'm in a massive organisation," "This isn't

gonna work." It's a ripple effect.

So it's like what I did in, or what me and my team did in Hong Kong.

It could be a small subset in a UK team that does it right, and then promotes it,

and then it gets taken on, and it scales.

It isn't about changing everything for the company.

It's about making that one move, making it work, showing that it

works, having the data to show that it works, and then the rest will follow.

Don't think that taking that first step is, "Oh, there's like

thousands of people here. Who's gonna care?" You'll be surprised.

But you just have to have the courage to do it.

Great final message for the team.

Thank you so much.

Roxy, thank you so much for joining us on the "Growth Workshop" podcast today.

And on behalf of Dannii and I, we really appreciate the conversation.

There's so much insight in there to share with our audience, so thank

you so much, and we hope to have you back again sometime in the future.

I'd love to be back.

Thank you.

Can we create our own learning circle, please, where Rox can-

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Goodbye.