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Learning-Centric Sales Enablement w/Jonas Taylor
22 Plays3 days ago
In this episode, Brian Dietmeyer talks to Jonas Taylor, the lead of enablement at Sigma Computing, about the evolving landscape of sales enablement. They explore how sales enablement is shifting from an education-centric approach to a more dynamic, learning-centric model that prioritizes real-time, actionable training over traditional content-heavy methods. Jonas shares insights from his extensive experience, emphasizing the importance of aligning training closely with the actual needs of sales reps to enhance their productivity and effectiveness. This conversation is a must-listen for anyone involved in sales training or looking to modernize their sales enablement strategies.
Timestamps:
- 00:14 Introduction of Jonas Taylor and Sigma Computing.
- 01:25 Discussion on the shift in sales enablement philosophy.
- 03:03 Jonas explains the core purpose of sales enablement.
- 05:09 Jonas introduces the 70-20-10 learning model.
- 10:13 Jonas discusses the need for real-time enablement solutions.
- 16:40 Challenges and shifts in sales training methodologies discussed.
- 25:13 Jonas emphasizes the importance of practical, actionable training.
- 31:07 Closing thoughts and the future of sales enablement.
Recommended
Transcript
Intro
Introduction to Close Mode with Jonas Taylor
00:00:05
Brian
Welcome to another edition of Close Mode, the enterprise sales show. I'm Brian Diepmeyer, CEO of Close Strong, the home of precision guided selling. And today I'm excited to be here with Jonas Taylor.
00:00:16
Brian
Jonas is the lead it and and ah lead of enablement at Sigma Computing. And Sigma,
Analytics Without Experts
00:00:23
Jonas
Yeah, I felt it.
00:00:24
Brian
very, very briefly, if you're not familiar with them, they help provide analytics from your cloud data without the need for experts, which I love that.
00:00:34
Brian
get the consultants out of the, out of the game. but so anyway, Jonas, welcome to the show.
00:00:40
Jonas
What's up, Brian? I'm Jonas calling in from from London today. I'm actually doing some sales enablement and sales training out here with our with our UK team.
00:00:50
Jonas
We're starting to ah ah invest in our EMEA presence, but yeah, thanks for having me. I'm super stoked to chat today.
00:00:56
Brian
yeah That's true.
Enablement Legend Award
00:00:58
Brian
I remember when we were talking last week, I encouraged you to do this show in a British accent and I'm unencouraging you now. That was a joke. So, and unless you're really good at it.
00:01:08
Brian
So we went, we were talking last week about many things, like all, all things enablement. And, and and I should, I should mention too, that in 2023, you received an enablement legend award, which, which you said, Oh, that's old. And I was like, no, it's not, you should be proud of it. So and congratulations on that.
00:01:26
Brian
But given that you are an enablement legend, we are talking about all things
Shifting Sales Enablement Paradigms
00:01:30
Brian
enablement. And you made one comment about sales enablement needs to rethink or shift the way they think about training. and And you kind of double clicked on that and said it's moving away from kind of the notion of education. So can you elaborate on that? What did what did you mean by that?
00:01:49
Jonas
Yeah, so, oh gosh, yeah, this this will send me on a tangent for sure. So, you know, I think at its core, I like to start with the Y. I'm a huge Simon Sinek sucker of the golden circle, right?
00:01:59
Brian
Yeah.
00:02:01
Jonas
Why, how, what? And I feel like that's almost overused at this point, but I'm gonna say it anyway. For me, the Y behind sales enablement, we we exist for one simple business reason.
00:02:12
Jonas
There's a number of like, Human and and and i think other interesting reasons for me but for one simple business reason and that is to get reps to productive capacity. And this requires a ton of things falling into place right i mean you need great leaders great sales people you differentiate products need product market fit.
00:02:33
Jonas
And sales and internal content or sales training and internal content is like just one tiny piece of the puzzle.
From Content to Experience Design
00:02:39
Brian
Yeah.
00:02:40
Jonas
And that's, and that's like my beef with sales enablement today is that, you know, to your point, it's education centric and content centric instead of learning centric.
00:02:47
Brian
Yeah.
00:02:50
Jonas
And I won't take like any credit for these concepts. It comes from this really smart guy, Nick Shekton Jones. He wrote one of my favorite books of all time titled How People Learn.
00:03:01
Brian
Okay.
00:03:03
Jonas
Yeah, i I can't recommend it enough. And the the short of it is that education emphasizes instructional design. So think of things like test compliance lectures over experience design.
00:03:17
Jonas
And you know back to my earlier point, the purpose for sales enablement is performance support, get reps to productive capacity. That only occurs when we provide information that matters to people and you do this by tying whether it's training, whether it's content like to the job.
00:03:24
Brian
Yeah.
00:03:34
Jonas
so So that's some of the things I'm saying like i'm seeing today. like I can absolutely go more into detail if you want.
00:03:40
Brian
Yeah, but but I wonder Jonas a kind of follow up comes to mind that
00:03:41
Jonas
but
00:03:47
Brian
If I go back to like history of sales training, it was all personal sales skills, right? That's all human, human sales skills, right? Look at what is on his desk and the pictures on his wall, you know, it was all those kinds of things.
00:03:59
Brian
And then, then yeah we we made this metamorphosis to like selling as a business process, which was cool.
00:04:00
Jonas
Yeah.
00:04:07
Brian
And then we started rolling out at scale all of this kind of methodology training because it was, and and And I wonder how how much of this current mindset has to do with the legacy approach to these massive rollouts of methodology because it was a it was a new way to try to systematize what was rather random. and And I feel like not to lead the witness, but that's kind of the core problem and you're suggesting we need to move away from that.
Outdated Training Methods vs Experience-Focused Approaches
00:04:37
Jonas
Oh, totally. I think write the old way is you know I think people hear training and they think content, they think PowerPoint. it worked and it it got us here. And there's kind of this new age of of sales enablement. And I think just learning and development in general, there's these new it this new age popping up where it's more around experience design. And so I think, for example, we there's this really famous learning model. It's just called the 70 2010 model. And it's been around for a minute. and I couldn't even tell you like who came up with it.
Importance of On-the-Job Experience
00:05:09
Jonas
But it's it's like a pretty well-known thing at this point where 70% of learning comes from on the job experience. 20% comes from working with others.
00:05:15
Brian
Yeah.
00:05:18
Jonas
And then 10% comes from formal learning interventions.
00:05:18
Brian
Hmm.
00:05:22
Jonas
And yeah, and i I think there's like one way to misinterpret this and it's that only 10% of, you know, a SalesWorks learning comes from enablement.
00:05:34
Jonas
For me, you know I think good learning experience design taps into this model.
00:05:36
Brian
the
00:05:40
Jonas
right like Enablement should be less about training. It's less about the content. It's not about me, the lecturer. I'm not supposed to be the hero of everything, but it's about making training actionable.
00:05:46
Brian
yeah
00:05:50
Jonas
It's about leveraging reps and managers to come speak and be part of the training. And it's the partnership that occurs with the frontline manager after a training intervention. And if we want like a real world example, i you know I think of like my best teachers and you know throughout college, throughout high school, throughout middle school, the ones that really left an impression on me. a They set up activities. They made us write songs about historical events. They brought in guest speakers. The teacher was 100% responsible for my learning. But when I look back on it, only
00:06:24
Jonas
10% of it was only 10% of my learning like actually came from homework and and pop quizzes.
00:06:28
Brian
Yeah.
00:06:31
Jonas
and i And I think it's a misperception of what sales enablement is. People think it's just sales training. And I think a lot of sales enablers, because whether maybe they come from a ah legacy version of it or because, you know,
00:06:45
Jonas
their stakeholders and their business partners see them as sales trainers. I think a lot of sales enablers just believe that, oh, this is what I am, but, you know, we're more than that, right? And, you know, like even like competitive tennis, like and another example that I'll give you is when I played competitive tennis, training wasn't about reading how to be good at tennis. It was a diet. It was an exercise regimen. It was rallying with a partner. It was watching game tape.
00:07:14
Jonas
For me, sales training or sales enablement, it's the same thing. There's a framework, there's a process, you need a coach, role play and feedback loops, and so much of the magic for what we do, whether it's from a learning perspective, whether it's from a training perspective, for me, I would not be a good sales enabler if it was not for my frontline partnerships with
00:07:21
Brian
Yeah.
00:07:39
Brian
yeah
00:07:40
Jonas
my VP of sales or with my managers or with reps that are my champions. Like that is where the magic happens and that's how you get learning and that's how you get training to stick.
Real-Time Sales Enablement
00:07:49
Brian
Yeah, you just, and and maybe, maybe I knew this sometime back, but, but I'm, I'm still like this notion of 70% on the, on the job. and, and 10% that that's still kind of resonating in my brain and that 70% then means.
00:08:05
Brian
when we think about enablement, at least to me, we need to think about real-time interventions. And you said on our pre-call last week, what can we do right now to hit the number? And I'm kind of connecting back, like we need these real-time interventions. and And by the way, one might say that's coaching. We we we know the stats. I see 5% of pipelines being coached. So it's not going to be done by coaching. It is enablement.
00:08:31
Brian
and enablement function and i'm I'm trying to like wrap my head around all this that it is, no, but it's a redefinition of we need to rethink how we think about it and how do we have these interventions real time at a moment in time when people need it and and the way they're going to learn. Does that sound about right?
00:08:50
Jonas
Oh, a hundred, a hundred percent, right? Like, like when it comes, yeah, I think you're spot on when it comes to like coming up with a a sales training or something that we, that we want to do.
00:08:53
Brian
Okay.
00:09:05
Jonas
Like salespeople don't give a shit about learning frameworks like Addy or Kirk Patrick.
00:09:09
Brian
Yeah.
00:09:10
Jonas
Like they don't care about our build process. They need things like right now to help them hit their number and. you you know For me, you know one day that could be slides. It could be, hey, we don't have slides from product marketing that outlines this specific use case or these specific or logos for this specific vertical. like Is this something you can help with? Or, hey, I don't have slides that speak much to this specific like value for, hey, i might I need an r ROI calculator because this is a really big deal. you know this is This is actually potentially the biggest deal of the quarter. It's going to be an absolute pain in the ass to get it across procurement.
00:09:54
Jonas
We have a CFO who's really big on tech consolidation and is scared about tech sprawl. I
Enablement as a Sales Partner
00:10:00
Jonas
need an ROI calculator now to justify the negative consequences of why they should not remain with status quo and the positive business outcomes if they move forward with a solution like Sigma.
00:10:07
Brian
Yeah.
00:10:11
Jonas
like This is all of the types of audible stuff that we get pulled into. and In my mind, and I think and I hope that you know, other great sales enablers that their mind doesn't go to. Sure, we're always prioritizing things because there's a lot of things on our plate, but I'm not asking my stakeholders to fill out JIRA tickets or to help forms to work with me. I have a weekly one-on-one with my head of enablement and I have a weekly one-on-one with my SVP of sales. And it is a rolling trade-off conversation about priorities. For example,
00:10:47
Jonas
you know if we're So I specifically work with the commercial segment of the business, and we know this to be true and at Sigma, that a huge chunk of our pipeline, or a huge chunk of our closed one bookings, and this is very normal for write any higher velocity, you know faster sales cycle like type of motion, is that a huge chunk of our bookings come from pipeline that we ah ah we source in quarter.
00:11:07
Brian
yeah
00:11:15
Jonas
And what that means is that if we're short on PG in month one of the quarter, well, it needs to be all hands on deck PG about pipeline, right? And so a huge chunk of my focus you know, this quarter was was prioritizing PG programs and ad hoc fixes. It was coming up with new reporting. It was building better like bookmarks and kind of clean your room type of like reports for our reps. So really easily they could service like the best and the highest propensity accounts in their territory. It was getting really dirty and their workflow was just sales now building Bluebird searches, which is
00:11:56
Jonas
Hey, how do we look through all of our Sigma customers and find X Sigma customers that have gone on to to other companies and prospects? So those those are just some like tactical examples of, you know, you go into the quarter as an enablement person.
00:12:09
Jonas
i thinking We want to do this program. We have to build for for this training program. And you know, it's a quarter long build, but you have to be willing to be audible ready.
00:12:20
Jonas
Because at the end of the day, like I'm a business partner.
00:12:22
Brian
you Yeah.
00:12:24
Jonas
to my VP of sales, and when he was like, hey, pipeline, all hands on deck, you got to be ready to lean in there and and get dirty with the reps.
00:12:30
Brian
Yep.
00:12:35
Jonas
So yeah.
Preemptive vs Real-Time Enablement
00:12:35
Brian
Yeah. It's when when you said audible ready, it reminds me that, uh, a while back and I can't remember if we said this or someone else did, but it doesn't matter. It's moving from, from just in case enablement to just in time.
00:12:49
Brian
Like that keeps spinning and in my head.
00:12:50
Jonas
I like that a lot.
00:12:51
Brian
that When you talked about audible ready, it's just like, and that's, and that's, I think the the old model was just in case. Let's, let's roll this thing out to everybody. yeah at a moment in time that we choose based on the operational aspects of rolling this out globally, you know whatever it is. and that I had a question for you last week about you know what why this this probably explains why there's multiple rollouts of methodology. I've talked to so many people that say, okay, SKO, we're going to announce the rollout of XYZ selling methodology. and then
00:13:29
Brian
12 to 18 months later, SKO, we're announcing the rollout of XYZ2 selling methodology. you know what that that's that's a It's sort of a given practice. I've talked to so many folks that nod when I ask them if that's happened in their business. That doesn't seem like a productive use of funds, of time, of anything else.
00:13:50
Jonas
It, it's expensive and I, yes, yes, I have, I have some thoughts on this and I want to answer it, but I do love what you just said about just in case versus just in time enablement.
00:14:03
Jonas
I think a good, a good example of that is almost like, I think oftentimes a lot I've met a lot of enablement people, myself included obsessed with competitive battle cards, but
00:14:13
Brian
Yeah.
00:14:15
Jonas
I think that's a good example of just in case enablement.
00:14:16
Brian
Yeah.
00:14:17
Jonas
Oh, we have to rebuild it. We have to do all of these like templates and we we got to go crowdsource and build all these new battle parts from scratch versus to me, just in time enablement would be look at your pipeline right now.
00:14:29
Jonas
and look at your closed loss bookings from last quarter,
Challenges with New Sales Methodologies
00:14:33
Brian
yeah
00:14:33
Jonas
which competitor contributed to the most closed loss bookings and why?
00:14:38
Brian
yeah
00:14:39
Jonas
And then and in our current pipeline, which competitor is making up the majority of that? And then you focus, like that's just in time enablement is there's a really clear why behind, we're making this a priority now because this competitor is a huge chunk of our pipeline versus this like,
00:14:57
Jonas
We've got to update all our competitive battle battle cards.
00:15:01
Brian
Yeah. Yeah.
00:15:01
Jonas
that's a That's a mouthful. Just because we have to, you know that's what enablement teams do. like No, there needs to be a clear why behind it. I'm always about digging into the data for that.
00:15:11
Brian
Yeah.
00:15:13
Brian
No, that's I, it's, it's, it it is not nothing less than a, and a redefine and interrupting, you know, because the, one of the things that i've I've heard recently too is the market shifted.
00:15:13
Jonas
Yeah.
00:15:26
Brian
We're not in a growth market anymore, et cetera. Uh, Jim, Jim Dickey, one of my advisors says all the time that, you know, it's, it's now about uncertainty. where we're competing in this market of uncertainty. And again, you just help me make that connection too. with With uncertainty, you need just in time, right? That holy smokes, this shift is happening and we need to address this right now.
00:15:50
Jonas
hundred percent And I think that's where I think any type of just sales reporting on the metrics that matter, that helps with that. I think Gong has changed the game there as well.
00:16:02
Jonas
because you're you're able to get those insights in real time and then kind of action that way. And, you know, maybe one person sync with your sales leaders and kind of use them as your your gut check for prioritization and where you should kind of spend your calories.
00:16:18
Jonas
But no, I really i really like that framing. So i'm gonna I'm gonna steal that from you.
00:16:24
Brian
Please do.
00:16:26
Jonas
Yeah, awesome. But okay, happy happy to talk about framework, methodology, failures, hiccups, mishaps, we can kind of call it whatever you want.
00:16:33
Brian
Yeah.
00:16:39
Jonas
But no, I love that question. So yeah, rolling rolling something out like Challenger and then 12 to 18 months later, you're yeah on to value selling, spin selling, ah ah custom methodology, whatever.
00:16:47
Brian
Yeah.
00:16:50
Jonas
For me, I you know i think a couple of reasons that happens, I think you know a new leader might have a bias. So you have a new revenue leader that comes in and you know typically, i yeah, high turnover in those roles.
00:17:00
Brian
Right.
00:17:04
Jonas
so i So I empathize with that and they might feel pressure to do something in like the next six months. They got to get something on the board. They got to look like they're doing something.
00:17:15
Brian
yeah
00:17:16
Jonas
right And then I think, Another one, probably probably like the least common is just that people didn't give enough time for the previous program to take effect.
00:17:28
Jonas
And I think that's always the case when you're looking at things like closed one bookings or an impact on win rates or an impact on stage conversion as a result of a program or a methodology rollout is those are lagging indicators.
00:17:42
Jonas
There's so many things that happen before that, before you're going to notice any type of trend quarter over quarter or year over year.
00:17:42
Brian
yeah
00:17:51
Jonas
for those things to to take effect, especially when you're talking about, I mean, it's just math, right?
00:17:53
Brian
yeah
00:17:55
Jonas
When you're talking about enterprise and you've got some deals that are, you know, 200, 250 day, you know, sales cycles. And it's going to be 200 days, you know, at a minimum until you start really start seeing a significant change in a way that your your pipeline's being managed, deals are progressing and all of that good stuff.
00:18:09
Brian
Yeah. Yeah.
00:18:16
Jonas
i I think another one on the, say I have two more, I think one on the enablement side is poor execution and poor follow through on the rollout.
Operationalization of Sales Enablement Programs
00:18:24
Brian
Yes.
00:18:27
Jonas
And I think that could be a myriad of things, I think. you know I've worked with third party groups before that that they do these methodologies. They're known for them. And it's it's never really personalized to your company.
00:18:39
Jonas
It's it's always like very hi high level, like pie in the sky. And I think a lot of enablement teams get caught off guard by this. If you're an enablement leader or if you're even a sales leader or revenue leader, and this is your first time rolling out a proper methodology that you invested a shit ton of money in.
00:18:57
Jonas
I think they get really caught off guard by the delta between the assets and the materials and the enablement that that company or organization gives you. And the really massive change management gap between, you know, we're docs from 2004 and
00:19:16
Brian
Yeah.
00:19:17
Jonas
How do i make this into systems today like modern like go to market text that things like gong. You know things like outreach you know things like where are reps taking notes where they managing your chair and just like everything like how do we actually where is the rubber at the road for.
00:19:33
Jonas
for reps today. And I think a lot of enablement people get thrown off guard because they're like, oh, we're paying all this money for a methodology. So it's all going to be done for us. And it never is.
00:19:44
Jonas
It has to get baked into onboarding.
00:19:44
Brian
No, and yep yeah the two things you just mentioned, so ah we we just completed some primary research and the the goal of this working with a couple, uh, non-for-profit associations in the selling space, SAMA, SAMA being one, in what investments are teams, high performing teams making right now and more importantly,
00:19:45
Jonas
And it's it's it's huge. Yeah.
00:20:08
Brian
How, how are they approaching in, you know, the ingesting of whatever that is? It could be technology. It was coaching programs, methodology, closed plans. We looked at about seven different items and it was interesting. Something we know in our gut that you just said that the top performing teams, those closing at greater than 60%, I think.
00:20:28
Brian
And, and those, uh, on average, uh, meeting their team goals. You, you just said the two things, whatever it was they, they invested in, it was customized to a great degree. It was relevant. It was very scenario relevant for reps. And the second part is what what you just said, and we all know.
00:20:48
Brian
They operationalized this stuff. They put at least as much emphasis on that.
00:20:51
Jonas
Boom. Yep.
00:20:54
Brian
and And so those are the, yeah, the, the report will be coming out soon, but at the high level, it's got to be crazy, crazy, relevant, contextual. And then two, you got to operationalize it. And there's, I've often complained that I, in in my past company thinking, we did a lot of global negotiation training rollouts and I would get our fees.
00:21:12
Brian
90% of the RFP response was about the events. who is Who is the consultant? What is your methodology? you know All that sort of stuff. And almost nothing on pull through. you know And that that's problematic. But anyway, you you just hit on the two things that high performing teams say they do. They contextualize and they have a ah plan to operationalize it, embed it into their systems.
00:21:35
Jonas
i I love it. Yeah, I mean, I've been through a few of these and I think those two resonate big time with me. I think the only other thing I'd add is I think also just a misalignment of expectations. I think a lot of, I think sometimes a lot of individuals see the methodology as the silver bullet.
00:21:54
Jonas
instead of the hundred other things that you have to figure out as a GTM org. So yes, to your point, it's the reinforcement, it's the operationalization, but there's a ton of other teams that go to market and revenue work with, right? There's marketing, there's product marketing, there's CS, NDR, NetDoll retention is like one of the most important SaaS metrics today. Your RevOps team is you know I follow all these SalesMean accounts and I love it because everybody makes fun of RevOps, especially if you're on the sales side, but they they're your best friend and they need to be. And it's so important for that infrastructure and foundation to be there, to scale. and like I very much come from the camp of like great process makes good people great and great process can also make average people good.
00:22:50
Brian
Yeah.
00:22:50
Jonas
like so So a bit of a tangent there, but i you know I think that all those things are also important. And ah ah you know if if if the methodology is the fix, or for me, methodology is never the fix.
00:23:08
Jonas
It is part of the fix.
00:23:10
Brian
Yeah, and it has a, it has a role.
00:23:10
Jonas
And there's a lot of other things that go into it.
00:23:12
Brian
Yep.
00:23:13
Jonas
Yes, 100%.
00:23:14
Brian
Yeah. I agree. And I, and I just made that note that it like, it has a role. and And my argument with a lot of folks is you probably don't need more of it. You probably need to pull through what you have. So if your instinct is to go, well, I used XYZ in my last company and I'm new here. It's like, no, you know no pull pull through what you made the investment in. That's probably going to help. The other thing i'm I'm hearing very often in my regular business life and and then on the podcast is that, and this has really been like a ah bright light shine down this lately that A lot of the the sales process and methodology is
Flexibility in Sales Processes
00:23:48
Brian
linear. And buying is not linear. And and and you you talked about being able to audible. And I'm hearing this a lot lately that we have to stop thinking of this consistent linear process over and over again, because deals deals are not hearing us. They're not agreeing with our linear approach. And and yeah, when you said audible, that that ties to that notion that this isn't linear. It's like, oh, this changed. What do we have to do right now?
00:24:15
Jonas
I love that. I've been thinking about that a lot too. just in I am a sucker for sales process. fails people aren't. But no, it's and you know I think about that a lot.
00:24:27
Jonas
like From a training, from an enablement perspective, what can we do better to make it you know stick with reps better?
00:24:31
Brian
Yeah.
00:24:34
Jonas
and it's it's less about
00:24:38
Jonas
stage exit criteria and entrance criteria. I mean, those are good things, right? like if They're good for management.
00:24:42
Brian
Yeah.
00:24:43
Jonas
They're good for leadership. They're good for us to know. help the org get to where they need to be from a forecast standpoint of view and being within 5%, all that good stuff. but Reps don't want to know stage one, stage three, stage three, stage four.
00:24:58
Jonas
Reps want to know, what do I do in stage one?
00:25:00
Brian
Right.
00:25:01
Jonas
Reps want to know, what do I do in stage two? And what things are you giving me to help me do my job there, right? Like stage stage one is this call and this type of call looks this way.
00:25:07
Brian
Yeah. Yeah. yeah
00:25:13
Jonas
Stage two is, you know, a demo call. And this is how a demo call should look. And if it goes this way, you need to have another demo call that brings in more stakeholders and you try to start multithreading with the EB.
00:25:25
Jonas
If it goes another way, well, you need to do a workshop and you have it this way. If it goes this way, it's if this, then that, and it's much more like mapped around the activities and the behaviors that you expect from reps versus, here's a sales process, like follow the stage gates in Salesforce, have fun.
00:25:31
Brian
Yeah. Yeah.
00:25:37
Brian
yeah
00:25:42
Jonas
like That's kind of useless.
00:25:44
Brian
Well, that and I've been hearing a lot of that too lately. It's it's sort of like, yeah, you're you're auditing these aggregated stages and telling me I needed to XYZ. And and i so I spoke with a couple... frontline sales leaders who I could tell from talking to them, they're great coaches and they put their, like the auditing thing. Yeah. The report can tell you this needs to happen. My goal as a coach is to say, Hey, Jonas, let me help you get that thing done. What can I do to help you get that thing done? And and that's, that's the next stage.
Evolving Enablement Function
00:26:16
Brian
So yeah, this is that you you have gotten my brain spinning about all sorts of things and I go back, I think i think we've kind of landed this whole thing from from kind of just in time, just in case to just in time, that the world has shifted like that. That thing you threw away from me and moving away from education as the core of what we do to understanding think things aren't linear, things are unpredictable and and it is it is just in time support on this deal.
00:26:44
Brian
that's That's our challenge and that's messy. It's doable, but it's messy. And I think people lean back to the other stuff because it is more linear and you can process map it.
00:26:51
Jonas
. .
00:26:53
Brian
But what you're talking about is, is messy, but really effective.
00:26:55
Jonas
. .
00:26:58
Jonas
Yeah, I think it's easy to look at enable-menace compliance and and cover your ass, but I think it can be so much more than that. and you know we we take that into We take that into consideration.
00:27:07
Brian
Yeah.
00:27:12
Jonas
We design our programs. People learn and people process information differently, and the majority of people are kinesthetic learners, and so they learn by doing.
00:27:23
Jonas
And I'm just always going to be the biggest advocate for, you know, if anyone's listening to this podcast, they walk away with two things. The easiest way to up level the way you think about enablement, the easiest way to up level the enablement you're doing today is, you know, is having reps be a part of your programs.
00:27:43
Jonas
And I think this is where a lot of traditional enablement programs miss is that it's lecture-centric. It's coming from the enablement person that's not carrying a bag.
00:27:54
Jonas
Funny enough, I do have a bag. I do have variable comp, and I'm a huge advocate for enablement people having variable comp based on
00:28:01
Brian
Yeah.
00:28:02
Jonas
you know, the company performance or based on the reps that they're tied to or based on ramping rep performance, whatever the model is, I'm a huge advocate for that because it gives enablement teams skin in the game and it's going to help them move to this model of what can I do right now that's going to impact the bottom line of the business in the right way.
00:28:25
Jonas
And what can I do right now that's going to help reps get the productive capacity? Typically that comes comes down to closing deals.
00:28:30
Brian
No.
00:28:32
Jonas
And you know the best way we can do that is have reps and have managers and have leaders be a part of every program, every training we build.
Involving Reps in Training
00:28:41
Jonas
We just launched a new onboarding bootcamp, actually a SIGMA that's in person.
00:28:47
Jonas
And the feedback that we got from our first bootcamp, Me and this other enablement guy, Joe, who's on my team, he's got years and years of enterprise sales experience, and I and i think he's stellar and better than me in so many ways.
00:29:02
Jonas
And both of us, you know, poured our hearts out into building this entirely new training curriculum from scratch. First call excellence like we, we hands on tier reps territories like literally their second or third week at the company so that they leave bootcamp being PG ready.
00:29:21
Jonas
We have great content and everyone says we have great content. Everyone says we have great training, but the feedback is always when we ask people what was the best session for you and which one was the most impactful for you and which one gave you advice and information that you can apply stuff to your world tomorrow.
00:29:39
Brian
Yeah.
00:29:39
Jonas
it was Oh, it was the Q and&A with Johnny or the Q and&A with Adam or the Q and&A with Katie, where they showed me how they're tearing their territory.
00:29:44
Brian
yeah
00:29:48
Jonas
They showed me theyre the the slides that they're using and the discovery cheat sheets that they're using and how they're thinking about first calls. It was a Q and&A with the AE and the SE pair telling me how to actually, how they collaborate on calls.
00:29:59
Brian
Yeah.
00:30:03
Jonas
And I think that is just, Yeah, I think that just reinforces a lot of this stuff I've been going on a tangent about.
00:30:08
Brian
Oh, you're, you're yeah. No, and no, no, but you're, you're, you're right. And, and there is for for you and anyone else who's listening, there's a podcast I did with the enablement lead at snap for Snapchat.
00:30:21
Brian
And, and he, that was the entire thing was that, how do you put that structure in place?
00:30:22
Jonas
Nice.
00:30:26
Brian
So, you sir, have been super generous with your time and your ideas, both in prep and and now on on this call and also for all of us who have traveled internationally for you, for you to.
00:30:37
Brian
ah ah execute this podcast, uh, which is late in the day for you after traveling internationally. Thank you so much. Cause I know that's, that's not easy.
00:30:48
Jonas
No, anytime. i I love nerding out about enablement. And yeah, I think we're we're hitting a new era and it's time it's time to step up. I think we can be one of the most important organizations in the company if we get it right.
00:31:01
Brian
Yep. I agree. and And you've added greatly to that body of knowledge. So thank you.
00:31:07
Jonas
Appreciate you and thank yeah, thanks for having me. This was great.