How have you best seen Sales Enablement align Sales and Marketing?

Which Sales Enablement trends have you seen are most successful in 2021?

How have you best seen Sales Enablement align Sales and Marketing?

 @Nisha Baxi First, let me start by saying that alignment with sales and marketing is so key especially in the product management area so I have always tried to partner with them early by even during my interview loop for Gong where I had them be part of the interview process.

Second idea that has helped me is personally ask a seasoned leader in marketing to mentor you so you can stay even more aligned than just normal work best practices. I have done this both at Tableau (  with Chief Product Officer Francois Ajenstat) and now Gong ( with VP of Product Marketing @Julien Sauvage ) to call it out. Just ask then you need a mentor in marketing to stay super aligned then pick something you are good at so you can help them so I ended up giving some fashion advice ( one of my favorite hobbies) instead of work things! haha. Helpful? 

@Nate Vogel thank you! So helpful!

@Nate Vogel Seems like you like French-speaking mentors. 

Which Sales Enablement trends have you seen are most successful in 2021?

 @Anja Mertl Great question and first I am seeing a lot of trends on virtual learning.

So many of us (including me) are not wanting to get online as much- Zoom fatigue right? For a few months we thought it would be ok but now after a year and half it’s wearing on people. Solution? Making zoom meetings the most important ones to keep and the rest really ask is it necessary- one on one’s? Can it be on the phone and tell folks- time to go for a walk or get outside. Training meetings- does it have to be always on a video- can we add more learning on self paced or even podcasts/audio format.

Second trend is to start thinking about hybrid learning so some in person and some virtual as many offices are opening up (or soon). This will be a whole new trend on how we create programs and launching on overall Enablment. This is just picking up now- thoughts? 

I agree @Nate Vogel. Zoom fatigue is definitely a real thing. We are using Zoom for important team stand ups, Trainual for sales trainings and onboarding and recently started doing team meetings in person again. 

Lastly- @Anja Mertl forgot to mention if you have to do virtual meetings- can you make them short? 30 min? Have everyone share something before you start to get folks engaged. Add polling and other ways to engage. Just a few more thoughts!

Yes, spot on. We started sending out Bonjoro videos before our demo calls to set expectations and ask questions to gather information prior to the call. My default booking link is 15 minutes. I like the meetings to be efficient - you can always book a follow up which is necessary anyways if you are not talking to NDM not the NDM.

What is your experience with polling, @Nate Vogel? Do you have an example?

Yes good to hear @Anja Mertl and keep some of the best practices coming to me. Thank you! Yes we used polling at Tableau and I had an amazing learning and development team there where we would get audience participation on polling in the beginning of meetings and throughout the training to keep everyone engaged. Sometimes the polling would be about the content and sometimes just fun to start the meeting with some random polling to have some fun like seeing how many folks have traveled so far for vacation or newhobbies since everyone has been home for a long time. Make sense?

I does! I will check it out with the team. Thanks for the insights @Nate Vogel!

A few early questions sent by community members:

1. What would you have done differently on building out enablement teams early on? First, get Gong earlier- haha. Seriously it would have helped but in the early days would have hired program managers and instructional designers earlier as we built out the team. We did hire former successful reps and leaders to join the enablement team which helped but these program and design roles could have helped us with scale in programs and have better adult learning best practices.
2. What are your favorite books for Enablement? I love the classics and books that any roles in the selling space can learn from not just sales reps but also leaders. Here you go: How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, Proactive Selling by Skip Miller, To Sell is Human by Daniel Pink, The First 90 Days by Michael D. Watkins. Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek and Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss.
3. What is one Sales Enablement tactic that everyone should implement that is really easy to do but few people think about? Managers first mentality. I did way to much training in the early days from doing enablement from our team to reps versus enablement to leaders than the next step is to reps. It’s makes huge difference when managers become your change agents along with helping scale with enablement competencies are reinforced by the managers. Warning: it takes a bit longer to do with a cycle with managers but you have to do way less reinforcement because managers are showing the right behavior themselves and helping drive best practices. 
4. What are some examples of companies that are doing Enablement really well -  what is it about their strategy that make them special? First, I was blessed to learn a lot at Tableau and there are some great enablement leaders doing some excellent work especially around skill development. They have built out some strong competency models and there internal bootcamp and sales kick off’s are world class. Second, I have respected Salesforce’s mentality to not only help their internal teams be successful but also their Trailblazer community. Another great book to read is Trailblazer by Marc Benioff where you can really learn how they think about impact. They use a lot of technologies to help scale with 50k Salesforce employees they have mastered how to enable from a global perspecitve. Third, I have been impressed with Mulesoft and their work on building out a strong onboarding track where they have a very detailed road ramp on increasing productivity with new hires especially in their first 90 days of being hired. I have seen it and something we are working on here at Gong on making sure we have a strong 90 day ramp plan for every role including new leaders.

Helpful @Nisha Baxi ? Any feedback from the community let me know I can help.