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Tactical Vs. Strategic Sales Enablement w/Jeremy Park
20 Plays3 days ago
In this episode, Brian Dietmeyer talks to Jeremy Park, Senior Sales Enablement Manager at Airbase, about the strategic and tactical aspects of sales enablement. They explore Jeremy's unique journey from a non-traditional background into the world of sales and how pressing 'two' led to his first sales job. This conversation sheds light on the reactive versus strategic functions of sales enablement, the importance of discovery in sales processes, and the critical role of emotional intelligence in sales. It's a must-listen for anyone looking to enhance their sales enablement strategies or understand the nuances of effective selling.
Timestamps:
00:01 Introduction to Jeremy Park and his diverse background.
01:06 Discussion on sales enablement and its effective approaches.
02:51 Jeremy shares his unconventional entry into sales.
03:17 Exploring the reactive nature of current sales enablement practices.
04:34 Jeremy discusses the ideal state of strategic sales enablement.
06:24 Transition to tactical aspects of sales enablement.
07:19 Challenges with broad feedback in sales leadership.
10:14 The gap in sales methodologies and practical application.
14:48 The intersection of emotional intelligence and effective discovery.
18:58 Closing remarks and appreciation for Jeremy's insights.
Transcript
Intro
00:00:05
Brian
Hello and 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 Jeremy Park. And Jeremy is the senior sales enablement manager at Airbase. And Jeremy's got a cool background. nick You and I were talking about this the other days.
00:00:26
Brian
Uh, degree in nutrition is also a trainer, uh, has been an account executive and a firefighter. So yeah he's what I, I've referred to as a poet warrior, like a little bit of everything. So for those of you who aren't familiar with airbase, uh, they lead the spend management category with it, with their all in one platform to support complex workflows, payments, and accounting of all non payroll spend. That being said, Jeremy, welcome to the show.
00:00:52
Jeremy
Thanks for having me on, Brian.
00:00:54
Brian
So as I understand it, your wife plans to watch this recording and and critique maybe us both. So we'll see what we can give her in terms of content to pick on us for.
00:01:04
Jeremy
yeah Yeah, she loves any any any chance to one-up me for sure, so this is going to be a good one.
00:01:09
Brian
and we'll we'll do our We'll do our best to to give her some material. so our Our topic today, of course, is is sales enablement. and Last week, you and I were having a discussion about like effective and ineffective sales enablement approaches. and You had some insight, I want to explore. But first, just in our casual chat, you were telling me how you got your first sales job. and and Most of us here that are listening, watching live in sales somewhere. and I loved the story. Can can you tell me about ah pressing two?
00:01:39
Jeremy
yeah Yeah, happy to give you kind of an expedited version of last week. so you know I think there's a lot of people who are generally interested in sales. They may have also then and they might also have different viewpoints of what sales actually encompasses. definitely come from I would consider non-traditional background, started at the age of 26.
00:01:59
Jeremy
And software sales, as you mentioned, my education's in nutrition, pre-med. Won't get into the gap between that and my sales career, but got my start because I wanted to make some money. Like a lot of folks, startups here, I'm based in the Denver area. We're really starting to pick up locally. And I started following up with all the resumes I was submitting by cold calling the companies. And normally it's,
00:02:26
Jeremy
Hey, this is company a press one for service, press two for sales. And I pressed two for sales and ended up speaking with the VPS sales who had just been hired on three months earlier and told me, Hey, listen, why don't you come on in interview with me?
00:02:30
Brian
Thank
00:02:39
Jeremy
I need people like you doing exactly what you just did. So that's how I got my start. in sales was from the bottom and since then I've been a seller at five different companies and now an enablement.
00:02:49
Brian
you.
00:02:53
Brian
I love that story and and you and I are going to weave into discovery and and and what that process means to you. And I kind of connect that back. But again, for any of us who have sold pressing two and helping to get the VP of sales and getting a job is really cool.
00:03:06
Brian
It's like the holy grail of selling. So um so let's go back to to sales enablement. You mentioned last week that that, you know, for some sales enablements becoming a reactive and administrative
00:03:19
Brian
yeah Can you elaborate on that a little bit?
00:03:22
Jeremy
Yeah, absolutely. I think sales enablement, it's not, so just this context, I didn't have a sales enablement function to rely on for more than half the companies I was selling at.
00:03:34
Jeremy
And I think that A lot of sales enablement practitioners would agree when I say a lot of companies define it in different ways. So when you're like, hey, what do you do around enablement?
00:03:40
Brian
Yeah.
00:03:42
Jeremy
You're going to get a slightly different response. In my experience, what I've uncovered is that a lot of sales enablement can be used as reactive measures, whereas really ideally it should be strategic.
00:03:56
Jeremy
The background I come from is largely early stage VC backed high growth startups.
00:03:56
Brian
Yeah.
00:04:02
Jeremy
And in that realm, what a lot of companies are striving to accomplish is to achieve repeatability so that they can actually scale. And far too often, I find that enablement was used tactically to plug smaller holes when there might be bigger holes in the ship.
00:04:20
Jeremy
And so it doesn't, and when you change too often, as you can start to see when you walk that story down the line, you actually can't create any repeatability.
00:04:31
Jeremy
There's no foundation from which you build.
00:04:31
Brian
yeah
00:04:33
Brian
Yeah, well that, and yeah, and Jeremy, that leads me into the next question. So yeah, what, what is the kind of desired state? If we, if we know that sort of reactive and and administrative is not really where we want to be, how would you describe the desired state of, of that more strategic function?
00:04:33
Jeremy
So that that unfortunately is a reality.
00:04:51
Jeremy
Yeah, and I think, so let me preface this by saying that obviously organizations are really complex. There's a lot of different dynamics going on, and especially if you're in a competitive market, I think there is a natural need to make pivots on the fly.
00:04:59
Brian
Yeah.
00:05:06
Jeremy
You have to make changes, otherwise you're going to die as a business. a few of the things that I think sales enablement Well, a few of the things that you need in order for sales and that enablement to be really effective, I believe, is one, believing that it is truly a strategic function.
00:05:22
Brian
Yeah.
00:05:23
Jeremy
I think you want to rely on, try try as best you can. I think data is an issue for a lot of companies, especially the hygiene, but where you can make data back back decisions, I think similar to the healthy tension that exists between sales and marketing, you might also want to consider that for sales enablement in sales, where if you because if you think about how folks are incentivized, you don't want to just give so you don't want to just play into sales leadership incentives for short-term fast growth.
00:05:54
Jeremy
Sales enablement should be thinking longer term because again, typically you want that repeatability factor.
00:05:57
Brian
Yeah.
00:06:01
Jeremy
Very closely tied to that, I think not every organization necessarily establishes an enablement charter. that might be a good place to start because then you can really start to align with key stakeholders on what's the purpose, what's the structure, and what are the guiding principles behind enablement that you can continue to refer back to so that you can make principle-based decisions.
00:06:10
Brian
Yeah.
00:06:23
Jeremy
I think that would be a really fantastic place to start.
00:06:26
Brian
Yep. So we're cool. that That's helpful and and clarifies for me. And, you know, we're going to kind of make a transition to to more tactical because you and I dove into some. Yeah. All right. So, separateive we have to be a more strategic function. you You talked a little bit about leaders talking to reps in sort of broad strokes. Like you need to do more discovery. You need to, you know, ah broaden your footprint in the account. And and what what do you see as the problem or the issue with that?
00:06:55
Jeremy
Well, for one, I think that sales leaders, like most leaders, have really good intent. But when you give feedback and really broad strokes, my experience has been that it's not very constructive.
00:07:06
Jeremy
It doesn't provide a ah ah clear path, clear tangible targets for reps on the field to actually advance their career.
00:07:14
Brian
Yeah.
00:07:15
Jeremy
And some of the most common things, and we'll probably get into it, is you know You're sitting in a deal room where you're reviewing your top deals. Maybe this is a public forum where you have multiple other sellers and sales leaders in the same room and your CRO VP of sales is picking apart your deal and ultimately concludes that, okay, you just did not do good enough discovery and hey, the compelling event here is not existed.
00:07:38
Brian
Right.
00:07:42
Jeremy
You need to do this. Hey, you need to multi-thread here. And I think a lot of reps leaving that room don't really know how to put that into practice.
00:07:52
Brian
Right, right.
00:07:52
Jeremy
And that that directly conflicts with the VP of sales goal, which is you know to drive revenue as fast as possible to create this repeatable engine. So yeah, that's what I meant.
00:08:04
Brian
Yeah, no, it's so interesting. And this is related but unrelated years ago. I have a a friend who's a Western trained psychologist and a Buddhist monk. So pretty cool background, that which is kind of why is that I liked your background of mixed mixed it up. But she said to me once, like, yeah it's probably 20 years ago, like you should meditate more.
00:08:24
Brian
And I was, that sounded right to me, but she, and I ended up telling her like 15 years later, here when you said that to me, I got it, but I didn't know how to do it. And so when you told me that story last week, I kind of went, that's where the nickel dropped for me to just go, yeah, well, maybe I would have been doing it if I, if, if I knew how we, you and I wandered a little bit into, into methodologies and I want to go like to discovery, for example. And, and I don't want to paraphrase you, but what I heard was something along the lines of like,
00:08:53
Brian
you know, methodologies are not really solving the discovery problem. and i'll And I'll tell you from interviewing a lot of folks, almost everyone has had kind of training, and they're still troubled with discovery. So what's your sort of view on methodologies relating to discovery specifically?
00:09:10
Jeremy
I think, so because so having been at five different companies, there's some parallels, there's some overlap, and then there's some new frameworks that I was introduced to. Overarchingly, they're all really helpful, and they all have some truth behind it.
00:09:21
Brian
Yeah.
00:09:22
Jeremy
I think the the gap behind frameworks and methodologies is that that's all they are.
00:09:23
Brian
Yep.
00:09:28
Jeremy
It's a framework and it's a methodology, but you still need to help, for example, bring awareness to the table, and that's at an individual level. And then secondarily, you need to show constructive paths to not only again, be ah ah become aware, but cover those gaps.
00:09:47
Jeremy
And the methodologies don't really solve for that. Methodologies are a really good way to check a box and say you did or didn't.
00:09:53
Brian
Yeah.
00:09:53
Jeremy
But I think that there's this really big gap around, okay, so now that we know there's opportunities for improvement and and to for example, improve your ability to identify compelling event, how do you actually do that?
00:10:06
Brian
Right.
00:10:06
Jeremy
What are the mechanics behind it?
00:10:08
Jeremy
And they don't address it for the like in large part.
00:10:09
Brian
Yeah, yeah. No, and I've heard this a lot. It's the what and the how, right? And it's get it's kind of like we talked about with discovery, with meditation. It's like, yeah, okay, get get me into the weeds about for me as an individual. How do I do that? And so one of the reasons I'm digging into discovery is I know, I know you have a passion for it. And and I love this was like illustrative to me. Last week you said discovery is kind of like dating. connect Connect discovery and and dating for me because it intuitively makes sense to me. But yeah, flesh that out a little bit.
00:10:42
Jeremy
Yeah, I think, so I have a fairly strong point of view on this and it all comes from past failures, to be honest, and trying to do exactly what a lot of these VPs sales told me to do, which is I need you to do better discovery. I need you to do XYZ. And I didn't really have a path. And so by analyzing top reps and then trying to bring that into my own practice, one of the key things that I think a lot of sales programs miss is Look, for most sellers out there, they're not selling for the Oracles, the Googles, and Microsoft. Most of your buyers may not know what your product and service is, and therefore you can't command and demand. Hey, this is the sales process. Stick with it or leave it. No.
00:11:25
Jeremy
you have to recognize that you're on a first date. And if you don't keep that front and center alongside identifying meaningful pain, trying to identify why now what's the cost of doing nothing, you're really gonna miss the boat.
00:11:38
Jeremy
You have to think about how am I building some momentum, some engagement, establishing some credibility so that by the end of the call, you can start positioning next steps.
00:11:40
Brian
Yeah.
00:11:46
Jeremy
And it's a very fluid positioning that leads to an agreement. Yes, Jeremy. Would absolutely love to meet with you next week at this time to do this thing.
00:11:56
Brian
Yeah. Yeah. the the The point you make about, and hadn't thought of this until you said it it's different when you have a $20 billion dollars brand behind you and you're doing discovery. And I learned that pain painfully. I was with a Marriott for 17 years and I think it was a $15 billion dollars company when I left. And when I walked into a room, I got a certain, I was at VP level and I got a certain, whether it was customers or competitors, you know, a certain amount of acknowledgement. And when I went out on my own,
00:12:25
Brian
All that went away. And when you said that to me the other day, like I never connected that for those of us who are selling at startups, that kind of thing that, yeah, you don't have that horsepower. You don't have, and if it with the dating analogy, it's like, if, if, ah ah if all that person's friends know you, then that's the equivalent of a $15 billion dollars company behind you. You're not starting from scratch. You know, I know Jeremy, I know Brian, but yeah, it's, it's such a valid point. So it makes it even more important, right? For, for startups to get this right.
00:12:53
Jeremy
Yeah, and by the way, at startups, what ends up happening too is leaders try to demonstrate, hey, here's what I want you to do. So they'll step into a first call with you. They'll try to demonstrate it. But if you're a VP of Sales, CRO, whatever, you've been selling for the same software for 15 years, even if buyers don't know your brand, like your company brand, you being an elevated position carries a different level of authority
00:13:17
Brian
Yeah.
00:13:17
Jeremy
and you carry a different swagger. So there's also a disconnect there for reps where they don they still don't know how to connect. Okay, I see what the VP of Sales is doing, but how do I do that?
00:13:27
Brian
Right. Yeah. And, and it's, it's, it's funny you say that because it's like in the past, in, in my previous company in here, when we talked to people about discovery, the thing that I always come back to is ultimately you, you've got to adjust that for your own style and maybe with the style of, and the relationship with the person you're talking to, right? It's like, and and that's, that's why I feel like we miss it. It's like, how how do you turn both of those knobs a little bit? So, so, and and it's funny, this word's used a lot, but it's so your discovery is authentic.
00:13:58
Jeremy
Actually, that's a critical part of building interest and excitement. People want to deal with, people want to work with other people. And you know even the way you ask the questions, even the way you position questions, hey, do you sound like you're reading a script, which is oftentimes what sales leaders try to do, hey, draft up for me a list of discovery questions.
00:14:18
Jeremy
Those really only work if you somehow internalize, personalize it and the true authentic self comes out. That takes a lot of honing, a lot of practice, a lot of awareness. And that's where again, methodologies are great.
00:14:31
Jeremy
I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, you know, talking crap about them, but you also need to cover some of the more foundational skills that a lot of training programs aren't addressing today.
00:14:37
Brian
Yeah.
00:14:40
Brian
ye Yeah, my my my final question has to do with a favorite topic of mine, and I know you have interest too, is is EQ. and And you and I, we're just making a connection between the EQ and Discovery. I'd love to hear your view on that.
00:14:54
Jeremy
At the end of the day, what's happening is you're trying to work with this stranger who you've, again, never met. and you you if you don't have If you don't have emotional intelligence, that's okay.
00:15:10
Jeremy
I think you can actually develop that, but it's one of the most critical skills in having what you might otherwise call just a normal human conversation.
00:15:12
Brian
Yeah.
00:15:19
Jeremy
Buyers want to work with other humans.
00:15:21
Brian
Yeah.
00:15:21
Jeremy
and so I think there's a lot of mechanics behind it, but at the end of the day, it's
00:15:29
Jeremy
I mean, it's such a complex field. Honestly, sales to me, you know this is the therapist side of the job where you come in and you really try to listen to the buyer.
00:15:36
Brian
yeah
00:15:40
Jeremy
That's why despite having your own internal goals of, hey, I know for the business, I need to identify some meaningful pain. Am I going to qualify this up, move it to the discovery stage? You have your own business interests.
00:15:52
Jeremy
You also need to do it in a way where you're not scripted, you're able to pivot on the fly.
00:15:58
Brian
Yeah.
00:15:59
Jeremy
And that's where I think emotional intelligence really comes in is picking up on those signals, word and by the way, nonverbal gestures that you can witness through the screen.
00:16:08
Brian
Yes. Yeah. and it And it's, I often think the simplest definition of of, and probably oversimplified is, is being able to read the room. And if you're reading the room, uh, and you you may have said this last week that we're not selling something to somebody. We're reading the room and and that's what the other human feels we're leaning into wherever they're at. And and that's driving our discovery. And, you know, as as I understand from, from people who are pros at this, that that's, that's what literally allows people to lean in to say, Oh, this is focused on me. You you really do care. You're not just trying to push a solution down my throat. Yeah.
00:16:43
Jeremy
Totally. And probably the one thing I'll say on that topic that's kind of tactical is what I love to help sellers focus on are the vague subjective statements. One of the key things we really talk about as a sales team is what is the definition of pain? Because actually when you read the descriptions and sales force around what pain actually constitutes, I would argue most sellers' notes are not pain.
00:17:10
Jeremy
If you look at the dictionary definition of what pain means, it means something like emotional suffering. And so anytime I hear terms such as, yeah, you know, that was frustrating or this wasn't working well. To me, my ears should immediately start flagging up. My EQ should be lighting up because what you want to ask is,
00:17:32
Jeremy
Wait, when you said this, what what did you mean by that? Can you unpack that for me?
00:17:34
Brian
Right, right.
00:17:35
Jeremy
Because that's really where you start getting to the pain of personalized emotional distress, emotional pain that anchors all of the facts of what their process looks like and all the manual work and yeah know all of that stuff, which is good, but not pain.
00:17:45
Brian
Yep. Yeah, and and and i do I do think you're right that like maybe, you know, just like IQ, we we all have different levels of EQ and it can be taught and I think it's underserved and that could be a whole other podcast is, you know, the the need, especially for people in sales. But I think any any leader, anybody who works in a business, the EQ should be yeah higher and can't and can be. There are books, you don't even have to take a class. but
00:18:15
Brian
Yeah, you've been super helpful and ah available to to prep for this and do this, and I appreciate your time, your ideas. I really do think of this podcast as a place where, you know, people can go to hear what other pros are talking about. this is These are tough jobs that we do, and it's a really nice for people like you to give your time so someone else can go, oh, that's how Jeremy deals with it. So really, really appreciate you being here.
00:18:38
Jeremy
Yeah, of course. I hope you know folks out in the audience get some value from the content.
00:18:42
Brian
Okay, thank you.
00:18:44
Jeremy
Thank you.