My Biggest Sales Enablement Mistake

Manager-led coaching programs are a powerful tool in improving sales organisation performance and is key to achieving long term behaviour change. But it can be challenging for frontline managers to balance their role so how can you tap into the potential of this superpower? In this episode Kate is joined by Founder of Sales Excellence Advisors and Founding Member and Former Chapter President of Revenue Enablement Society Jerry Pharr to discuss how to get the most from your manager-led coaching program and why they are so beneficial.

We are all familiar with discovery as a key competency for sellers but it is overlooked in Enablement? Understanding the 'pain points' in the sales team and where you need to focus is a vital process for Enablement but it also important to be able to communicate what you have found to your key stakeholders - without it, there will be a harmful disconnect. An author on the topic of Enablement, a former teacher and a big believer in a human-centred, data driven approach, TD Haines joins Kate to look at what can happen when there is a lack of discovery and how it can impact solution delivery and ultimately results.

Connecting Enablement to revenue goals is the industry's burning issue currently. Everyone has felt the swing from tactical, tick box Enablement to a need for it to be strategic and impact revenue. But that change is easier said than done. In this episode, SEC One To Watch, Enablement ambassador and Staffbase's GTM Enablement & Productivity Lead Kieran Smith shares his own experiences and thoughts on how to begin to quantify the value of your Enablement.

The role of Enablement has evolved at pace over recent years but this often creates a grey area of where sales leaders should be coaching vs when Enablement should step in and often this runs the risk of nobody fulling taking accountability. In this episode Dannii Mathers, JobAdder's Global Revenue Enablement Manager and self professed people person with a passion for coaching, joins Kate to bring clarity to this situation. They discuss what accountability really means and how to create a harmonious relationship between Enablement teams and sales leaders and get the maximum benefit from your coaching.

It can be difficult to know where to start when building an Enablement function from the ground up but the way you do it will dictate how much you are able to move the performance needle where it matters. In this episode, Lawrence Wayne, Revenue Enablement Leader and Co-Founder of The Practice Lab talks to Kate about what he has learnt from his good and bad experiences of this and describes his step by step approach.

Results come from people - that's a fact! So when Enablement is treated as a collection of things that all sales people must know and training they must all complete then trust is eroded between the Enablement team and their audience. In this episode, Phil Putnam the original champion of a human-centred approach to business success talks about why organisations often fall into this 'compliance' trap, the impact it can have and what can be done about it.

If it ain't broke don't fix it....but is Enablement maybe a little bit broken? Has it really been delivering the results we wanted it to? GTM Buddy's Will Kimmel joins Kate Lewis to talk about what can happen if you fall into the trap of doing it like it's always been done and what changes could be made to address the gaps in your enablement strategy.

There is a lot of discussion at the moment about what enablers need to do to be effective and show their impact and this all starts with understanding and defining the role of enablement in your organisation. In this episode Del Nakhi joins Kate Lewis to talk about why it is important to agree the role and expectations of enablement and especially how they can work effectively alongside sales leaders.

People have been waking up to the importance of mental health for years now and it is an important subject in the world of sales. But does it get the attention it deserves? And in the pursuit of equipping sales reps with the right skills, do we all too often overlook the importance of mindset on success? Chris Hatfield of Sales Psyche joins Kate Lewis to discuss this issue and provides some helpful tips and exercises to help you create high performing teams without the mental burnout.

Data is an important factor in strategic Enablement but often there is a vital part missing to make it useful....context! In this episode, Turnitin's Director of Sales Enablement Anthony Doyle talks to Kate Lewis about how often the all important context is missing that turns data into meaningful information that can inform Enablement activity.

We all know that change is hard (understatement!) and in most cases it carries a lot of risk. In this episode, Arman Dolobjian shares personal insight into lessons he has learned from change programmes and talks through a 5 step framework to success.

A learning culture is important to company success but in an 'always on' world of reactive communication, fire-fighting and instant gratification, companies can fall into the trap of taking a short term view of transformation and never fully reap the benefits of genuine change. Founder of Curious Lion, Andrew Barry joins Kate Lewis to discuss why this can happen and what to do about it.

We all know the positive impact that coaching can have on win rates, average deal size and quota attainment but having the will to coach is not enough to make it a success. In this episode, Paul Butterfield joins Kate Lewis to talk about how to bring a coaching culture to life and how to implement a coaching framework for long term success.

Recently, sales enablement has had an awakening to the need to measure its business impact, including the impact of coaching. In this episode, Coach K joins Kate Lewis to talk about how you can ensure a coaching session is influencing change and how can you bridge the gap from the numbers often found in leading and lagging indicators to a long term change in your SDRs that will help you to achieve success?

In this episode, Kate Lewis is joined by Your Favorite Enabler and co-host of 'Sales and Enablement - The Podcast', Crystal Nikosey to look at why we still see deal and pipeline reviews being mistaken for coaching. They talk about how to equip your Managers to be better coaches and what makes a good coaching culture.

How can you stop planning 'random acts of enablement' around subjective opinions and who shouts the loudest and elevate your activity to achieve measurable revenue impact?  Kate and Kunal discuss the power dynamic around enablement teams, using data in the right way and Kunal shares his own journey to establishing an enablement strategy.

In this episode Kate is joined by the 'Founding Father' of Sales Enablement, author and VP of Sales Effectiveness Services at SparxiQ Mike Kunkle to talk about the important role that competencies play in successfully implementing a new sales methodology. Mike shares experiences from his own Enablement journey as well as mistakes he's seen others make along the way.

Kate Lewis is joined by Founder of Trust Enablement and long-time Enablement advocate, John Moore, to discuss the failings of a 'One & Done' approach to sales training. Why is it important that training is part of a sustained programme of activity and what can be done to help to embed learnings for the long-term.

Who is coaching the coaches?  When you consider the time pressures already on sales managers and the fact that the majority don't come to the role with any formal training and are often not being coached by their own managers, its no wonder that the coaching of your sales team can often go awry.  Kate Lewis is joined by Flow State's Aaron Evans to look at the pitfalls of not equipping your managers with the right coaching skills and what can be done to change this.

How many is too many?  What happens if your competency list is too long?  And which ones should you avoid?  Kate Lewis is joined by Rachel McCourty to discuss the common competency pitfalls that she sees companies fall into and how to avoid them