Welcome to the Inside: Sales Enablement Podcast Episode 44

At the end of our anniversary show the guys talked with Sarah Fricke who is passionate about laying a path for other women to join us in the enablement field while also while promoting the fact that there are many paths into enablement.

Sarah joins the show to host a panel with:

1. Amy Benoit - Renaissance Woman Catalyzing Change, consultant 
2. Lindsay Gore - Microsoft
3. Hang Black - Juniper
4. Sarah Fricke - RingCentral
5. Alicia Leach - Salesforce
6. Steph Bell - Salesforce
7. Stephanie Middaugh - Divvy

The show topics include:

• Share how great women forged a path in sales enablement and why
• Share strategies of navigating career conversations within a male dominated organization that doesn’t have a definition for enablement
• To help improve businesses by creating an environment where everyone benefits by the ‘melting pot’ concept of bringing people together.
• The business case for diverse mindsets and cognitive diversity
• The importance of allies in the workplace

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:

Intro 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 Sam Tucci and Trailblazer Brian Lambert as they take you behind the scenes of the birth of an industry, the inside sales enablement podcast starts now. I'm Scott, Brian Lambert

Greg 00:36  

and we are the sales enablement insiders. Our podcast is for sales enablement, leaders looking to elevate their function, expand their sphere of influence, and increase the span of control within their companies.

Scott Santucci 00:49  

Together, Brian and I've worked on over 100 different kinds of sales and Avon initiatives as analysts, consultants or practitioners, we learned the hard way. What works Maybe what's more important, what doesn't?

Greg 01:02  

That's awesome in Yep. And we know what works because we know conversations work. And we're going to have a conversation today in a very special episode with a great panel discussion with women in sales enablement. gotten I are super excited to host this panel because as orchestrators, we need to work with people who have different perspectives than us. And we need to be inclusive of those perspectives. And so what we're going to do is make this fun and informal and informational. And if you guys remember in our last podcast, which was our anniversary show, it was Episode 43. And in that particular episode, Sarah Frick from ringcentral was with us. And after we were done shooting that episode and recording it. We were talking to Sarah and the rest of the panelists about ideas for this year. And as we move into season two, what could we talk about? and Sara chimed in and said, hey, let's you know it'd be great if we brought together and created some space to have conversations with women and salespeople. And so we said, That's great idea and help us Can you help us do that. And so that's what we're going to do. We're going to I'm going to pass this over to Sarah Frick, who's going to be our guest host. And she's going to talk through and introduce the panelists. And she's going to talk about and ask them questions, like, you know, what's happening when women in leadership for enablement? What does it look like when they're working well, and when it works well, and what are some specific challenges that women in enablement face today and many, many others, and then Scott and I are going to chime in along the way. And as usual, we'll recap it at the end. So Sarah, thanks so much for volunteering to do this. Really appreciate it. I'm gonna pass it over to you. And you can kick it off how you want to.

Unknown Speaker 02:41  

That sounds great. Brian Scott, thank you so much for providing the space to do this. Part of part of part of any raid group is how can I continue to get additional perspective, one of the things that you know, I started with my colleagues that bring Central is something called the ladies room. So today I like to think that we're kind of broadening that concept and bringing in a few more folks to the conversation. So,

Greg 03:10  

there we go. Like, as a guy, I'm not sure if I want to be in the ladies room. I don't know.

Scott Santucci 03:18  

I don't I definitely want to be in the ladies room.

Unknown Speaker 03:21  

Just want to make sure.

Unknown Speaker 03:23  

Well, Brian,

Unknown Speaker 03:25  

you're getting a really

Unknown Speaker 03:26  

good invite. We're having this conversation between.

Unknown Speaker 03:31  

Ryan I have to say as a woman in technology, welcome to our lives every day. There you go.

Unknown Speaker 03:38  

Men can have their locker rooms ladies are getting the ladies room here. So I really appreciate the great panel that we've got here. We have some phenomenal, strong, great enablement leaders. So I don't even think I could do justice of introducing everyone. We've got folks from the south To the west to not across the pond quite yet. Let's do that next round and tons of voices that have been highlighted by folks like LinkedIn and others of, hey, these are the people that you really should be listening to. So thank you, ladies for joining us. And I'm just going to start by asking you to introduce yourself to the crew. So Amy, would you like to kick us off?

Amy Benoit 04:24  

Sure. Can you hear me? I can. Awesome. Thank you for having me. It's very nice to be in such good company with a lot of estrogen. And not generally surrounded by as much and we'll get into that. I've been in the enablement learning development space throughout my career started off at EMC, about 15 years ago, and in 2018, I started my own consulting business. What I love to be able to do is help executives make decision and influence up and down their chain to create efficiencies. I also love to make sure that we're getting all the perspectives from the different folks in the organization. I believe that that lens is not often seen by most leaders because they, their point of view is it's focused and so I widen the focus so that we get more diverse spot.

Unknown Speaker 05:32  

That's awesome. Thanks, Amy, for sharing that and look forward to diving into that commentary deeper.

Unknown Speaker 05:39  

Lindsay, can you introduce yourself, please?

Unknown Speaker 05:43  

Yeah, hi, it's, um, I'm excited to be here today as well. So great group of women and I think this should be an excellent conversation. My name is Lindsey Gore. I've been in technology sales for about the last 12 years or so. Both in sales and sales leadership. roles and currently I'm at Microsoft today and in their cloud business, so selling data and AI solutions.

Unknown Speaker 06:10  

Thank you, Lindsay. Really appreciate that. Let's say you want to give go next. Yes, thank you very much for having me. My name is Alicia Leach. I come from Salesforce. I am a field enablement director at Salesforce. Prior to being in enablement, I was in sales for quite some time. I'd say I've had I have about a 20 year, technology sales career. And like a me who likes to help leaders in decision making. I like to help sales leaders in getting deals off the table and helping them make money. So we're all here for make that money. I like that you you come from it's like you've, you've come down from space. into sales bars, which totally makes sense knowing Salesforce. That's awesome. Thank you so much. And Steph, I know you're on the same team. Can you introduce yourself?

Unknown Speaker 07:10  

Yes. Hi Sara. This is Stephanie bell. I am also a Salesforce. I've been here the last five years and have been in sales the last decade, just recently moving into the enablement side of the house actually under Alicia. So I'm also a manager of field enablement. And one of my passion projects is the Women's Network at Salesforce. So I'm the president of the Salesforce Women's Network for the southeast out of our Atlanta home. We have about 350 members. So that is my passion project and helping get more women into leadership.

Unknown Speaker 07:48  

That is phenomenal. And being in the southeast, you've got a part of my heart. I'm actually in South Carolina, so

Unknown Speaker 07:59  

hey, Yeah. Can you introduce yourself, please?

Unknown Speaker 08:02  

Hi there. My name is Hank black. I'm the Vice President of global sales enablement. At Juniper Networks. I've been here about 18 months, my route has been a little bit circuitous. I spent almost a decade in engineering, a decade in marketing, and almost now a decade in sales. And I've loved all of it, but I feel like enablement is my home because it is the convergence of all three and I to hail from Louisiana. So I'm feeling the SE vibe.

Unknown Speaker 08:30  

Yeah, everyone should have moved to this alfea. Everyone should be in sales. We've all at least experienced that a little bit. But it sounds like with this core group, I think we could build a product we could market a product we can enable a product in the market, right? So we got it all covered. No, no.

Unknown Speaker 08:48  

Selling. How could I do that?

Unknown Speaker 08:52  

It sells itself.

Unknown Speaker 08:53  

Yeah, we're going to create such a great product Scott that that it will just we'll just put it out there and people will buy it.

Unknown Speaker 09:01  

Well, thank you again for joining us ladies in such great backgrounds to have and give experience to others. As just to open it up quickly. I know staff you had shared the women's group in Atlanta that you, you run, as anyone else started a group like that within your organization or doing anything within your particular teams to help create that environment for other women in the workplace.

Amy Benoit 09:29  

Yeah, this is Amy. I've, when I was working at EMC, I was leaving the West Coast women's organization. So we had a west and east of the Americas. And it was something that we ran quarterly events, had newsletters and just drove a lot of conversation and awareness around women in the industry.

Unknown Speaker 09:55  

Awesome in a quarterly newsletter. It's a fun way to capture it and Get it out there.

Amy Benoit 10:01  

Oh, yes, this is back when newsletters were a hit right. But yes, we did have it was just a great way for folks to get the information and we found that a lot of our audience actually enjoyed reading the newsletters. So

Unknown Speaker 10:18  

that's great. Yeah, I remember the, from the desk of x days, whenever you get the highest readership and you're like, yeah, now it's like doesn't have a hashtag nobody's listening.

Unknown Speaker 10:31  

Anyone else.

Unknown Speaker 10:33  

This is happening. I am a few years ago created a leading group called marketing mavens of the Bay Area. But since I've exited marketing, I've actually tended to be more involved in not intercompany, but intra company women's functions as sponsoring that from my company as part of engagement other companies examples would be networking with a purpose that connects some of the largest 14 companies in the Bay Area, and women Unlimited, those sorts of connections and I'm now kicking off a new group where we want to focus on actually creating action.

Unknown Speaker 11:13  

That's a good one.

Unknown Speaker 11:15  

There's a lot to talk and create an inclusive environment stock, but there's a whole nother part of actually taking the action and making it happen. Steph, tell us a little bit more about your group in Atlanta.

Unknown Speaker 11:28  

Sure, so I can't take all of the credit for launching. So I want to be clear, there's a lot of people that helped. We are lucky at Salesforce to have a lot of er G's. And a few years ago, four years ago, they started thinking about things like wit that exists on a national level and how we bring things like that is Salesforce. So a group of women started to think through what that would look like as an ER G and the sales worse. Women's Network was born. And we decided to launch a version of that in Atlanta. So you were lucky enough to have some executive sponsors who helped us get it off the ground and say, Hey, whatever you need, we're here, both male and female, we find that it's really important to have male allies, because they tend to be the majority of leadership. So we were lucky that we had a great male ally and lots of female executives that helped us stand it up. And then basically what we do is we try and grow our membership. And every year at the global level, Women's Network, that's a v2 mom. So if you're not familiar with the v2 mom framework, it's your vision, your values, your methods, your measurements and your obstacles. So we work from that framework, work as a company and we also work with that framework as the Women's Network.

So every year we set that out and this year, our major goal is to see 50% of women in leadership. So we structured Are events in our engagement with all of our members around? How do we get them exposure to leaders? How do we focus on the intersectionality of women and other groups? And how do we build diverse teams, and offer people networking, mentorship, sponsorship opportunities. So we try and really stick closely to that one big goal and center everything we do with our members around that. So it's really interesting that we sort of have a global lead, but we get to run it how best works for our members in and around Atlanta.

Unknown Speaker 13:35  

I am floored and impressed with the model that you both use right as a company and then you've put that into your ear. Geez. One of the things that I've really noticed as folks are creating them and crafting them is we don't always remember that we should use all the core business practices that we already have in place, as we're starting essentially a new team and Just for clarification for everyone er DS or employee research groups, hang Good call out there. And it really, obviously right diversity and inclusion as as part of a company have now become an actual division and typically they're running the RGS at a high level and then of course right like staffs point of view it's you can't have any RG in just headquarter say out in San Francisco like our organizations are based and expect that to apply everywhere. There's got to be these offshoots of organizations. How Tell me kind of a little bit guys, as you think about er G's that you've gotten placed within your company. How, at UNICEF, you mentioned male and female. Does everyone agree with having both parties included in the conversation? fill out a heads nodding for Harlan. No early listeners. What about you know, if you Have that diversity around the table. And you've had women that have spoken up and said I'd actually rather have a, you know, a forum. That's just women only as that happens anyone?

Unknown Speaker 15:14  

Well, I think there are two types of conversations. There are conversations that are kind of, you know, Vegas rules and their conversations where you bring in allies and I don't think it's just men. I think inclusion and diversity. There's a little bit of a misnomer around. It's just around race is just around gender is just around this, that or the other. It's a non exclusion of all parties. It's it's bringing in voices and cognitive diversity to the table. And there's no social movement ever. I repeat ever in history, who that has been one without the Allies at the table.

Unknown Speaker 15:52  

really true. I think. I couldn't agree with you more hang at Salesforce. We have this tagline that says is the greatest platform for change. And at first, I thought that that was branding maybe 10 to 10 years ago when we first started with that. And it's not it's actually a living breathing mantra at our, at our workplace. And if you don't diversity, inclusion is just that is diversity. It's the diversity of men, women, race, cultural background, sexual Association, all of it. And so if you don't have, if you create a group that is a vacuum of all like one person, then you're missing the diversity and inclusion part.

Unknown Speaker 16:42  

It's interesting, though, on the flip side of that, I'll just sort of throw this out there it for folks that maybe haven't had as much of a voice or have had a hard time finding their voice being in a group of like folks with shared experiences, give something of that context to actually develop that voice. So then When you're in a mixed audience, I think you can show up in a different way and feel supported. So, you know, I think the allies are certainly very, very important. But I think, you know, sort of the group connection as well, is also important. So I think there's probably value on both sides, I would say from, from my own experience, and this hasn't been intentional at all. But I've never worked in an organization with as many women as I do now. And women leaders, so I've, I've never actually had a female boss until you know, the last two years of my career. And you're her boss's boss as a woman and there's a quite a chain. But my networking within the within Microsoft has been very female focused, and that hasn't really been intentional, but I found that those connections have been easier to make in terms of building up my own network versus in other places where the organization was very heavily male, and it was a lot harder. to approach executives to build out my network that way, and I don't know that that has anything here there in terms of saying one way is better than the other. But I think you've got to be able to span both directions. And, and maybe there's value in both types of conversations one with with your group and then the other, with your allies and inclusive.

Unknown Speaker 18:21  

As Lindsey, I've found that, definitely to be the case, right? I think we're all in agreement. We want our allies around the table, but they're also, you know, creating space to have this more the smaller conversations and like we continue