Getting Sales Enablement Right to Increase Results with Dave Brock, CEO of Partners in Excellence

Sales enablement is intended to help raise performance, but many
efforts have backfired due to departmental silos. And now there’s
a growing gap between what salespeople need and what they’re
getting to improve performance.


For example, Corporate Visions recently surveyed 500 B2B
marketers and sales professionals that 20% of organization
content creators “just do what they think is best” with no
overarching structure at all. And just 27% of organizations are
content that focuses squarely on customers and rather than their
own story.


And all the tools and technologies meant to help boost sales
productivity are now are slowing things down.


What’s the bottom line?


Salespeople are getting overwhelmed and slowed down with
increased complexity, just like the customers they’re selling to.


That’s why I interviewed Dave Brock
(@davidabrock), author of the Sales Manager
Survival Guide, also CEO of Partners in EXCELLENCE. Dave’s
brilliance is his focus on practical simplification. And I’m
excited to bring his thinking on sales enablement and what can be
done to raise sales team performance.
Can you tell us a little bit about your
background?

Dave: Brian, thanks so much. I really appreciate the chance to
continue the conversation we started in Washington, and I
appreciate you inviting me to this.


By background, I actually started as a physicist in my career and
ended up going to the dark side of selling and sold mainframe
computers for IBM for some years. Went up the food chain to more
senior management roles, then left to become EVP of sales for a
technology company as part of a turnaround, later held VP of
Sales or CEO roles in several technology companies.


And now run the consulting company – we help our clients solve
some of the most challenging problems in sales and marketing and
deal with the new buyers. We have a highly collaborative approach
in helping really outstanding people solve really, really
difficult problems.
What is the biggest trend you see affecting your work
and sellers today?

Well, clearly, it’s the convergence of some things that we see in
the marketplace. It’s the new buyer. Everybody’s changing the way
they buy, and learning how we engage these new buyers through
marketing, sales, and customer experience is critical.


At the same time, we see tremendous transformations in business
and business models, whether it’s the digital transformation that
virtually every company is undertaking or just older business
models being displaced with new business models.


We have some of the classics of Airbnb, turning the hotel and
lodging market upside down or Uber turning the taxi and limo
business upside down. We see that the new business models
occurring are driving real stress on customers.


And then the final thing is just overwhelming complexity, just
between the rate of change, the amount of information we’re
deluged with every day. Most of the people I’m meeting are really
struggling with at least one of those three things. I see it
impacting virtually everybody.


Brian: I can relate to those challenges. I think just in talking
about complexity for sellers and marketers, I was having a
conversation with someone earlier, and it’s just an overwhelming
number of tools an average salesperson uses or a marketer uses.
It also creates challenges around collaboration, that internal
collaboration.
How do you get internal collaboration to improve sales
performance?

Dave: The easy answer is to break down the silos and start
talking to each other. It’s easier said than done. We see a lot
of the issues we face regarding internal complexity, and internal
collaboration is just people being well-intended doing their
jobs. Still, somehow their jobs aren’t aligned with each other,
or there are things about their jobs that cause them to conflict
with other people. Simple things like aligning roles and
responsibilities, aligning metrics, some classic value stream
types of analysis.


I just had a conversation earlier today with a marketing
executive and his top management team. We talked about the value
proposition they create for sales, and sales are the downstream
customer of theirs.


Again, we have to rethink our working relationship, rethink the
classic business process re-engineering of our workflows, our
roles, and responsibilities. And really get some alignment in
metrics so that we realize we’re all on the same team, with the
same end goal.


Brian: That’s helpful. And something that’s really come to age
recently is sales enablement.
What’s the role of sales enablement to
help achieve this?

I think I’m on the wrong side of some debates on this. I look at
sales enablement as more a set of processes in a set of
activities than a separate function within the organization.


If you look at what sales enablement processes are supposed to
do, they’re meant to help maximize the salesperson’s ability to
perform. And so, you look at that and say they are a whole
collection of things we can do to do that.


The first is the frontline sales manager and their role in
coaching and developing everybody on their team to perform at
maximum capability. But then these frontline sales managers need
a lot of support in many areas, whether it’s tools and
technology, whether it’s new programs, whether it’s people
selection and performance management, whether it’s training,
whether it’s content, and so on.


So, you start looking at seeing all these things contribute to
enabling the salesperson to perform at the highest level
possible.


Now, who does that stuff? It could be all over the place. It
could be marketing that’s doing some of this stuff. It could be
HR that’s working on a lot of the talent management types of
things. It could be sales operations, or it could be people in
the sales function.


So, I think the discussion around sales enablement is more
powerful when we look at the things that we need to do and then
look at who in the organization can do those most effectively and
most efficiently.


Brian: I like how you talk about it because I often think when I
speak of enablement, I often am looking at marketing and sales.
But, as you’re talking, it’s bringing in the finance team, the
human resources team, so it’s a collective effort, not just one
single group or department. That’s the whole point you were
saying earlier about bringing down the silos. Do I understand
that correctly?
Bringing down the silos that get in the way of sales
enablement

Exactly. I got engaged in debate not long ago about how sales
enablement earns a spot at the CEO’s table. To me, that was one
of the most ridiculous discussions I’ve ever seen.


We now have sales enablement executives that not only want to
have a spot at the Chief Sales Officer’s table, but now they
believe they should have a place at the CEO’s table. The CEO’s
table’s getting pretty crowded.


I think it goes away from the point of what we’re trying to do.
And, I believe that it actually starts building more barriers to
collaboration and working. We’re building to the degree that we
are creating another silo and another set of functions competing
for attention and corporate resources.


Again, I tend to like to look at these as more processes and
workflows and the things that need to be done. And then we look
at who can do those most effectively. And if it a sales
enablement organization, well, that’s really powerful, but we
shouldn’t overlook the other parts of the organization.


Brian: We spent time talking about sales enablement. Marketing
does have a significant role in helping raise the level of
performance for the sales team. As you and I were in D.C., we
talked about how often marketing is looked to as the “leads
people.” We need to think beyond that regarding how they can
impact the efficiency and effectiveness of each sales rep.
How do you think marketing can help raise the level of
performance of sales?

We must change our mindset from marketing being the “awareness
people,” the “create interest people,” the “leads people,” the
“demand gen people,” and so forth, and look at the entire
customer buying journey. Look at what that is and who can
contribute to that.


We have the traditional feeling that marketing does demand gen
and lead gen and tosses those over the wall to sales. And sales
immediately reject all of them as being bad and tosses them back.
But we separate these processes.


I think modern sales and modern marketing are very different. I
like to look at modern marketing and sales as kind of like a
basketball team. On a basketball team, every person has their
defined roles. You have a couple of guards, you have a couple of
forwards, you have a center, and you practice plays, and
everybody tries and plays those roles. You get really expert at
that. But then, in the game, you’re very agile and nimble and
adapt to what’s happening with the competition and what’s going
on with the game.


We need to look at marketing and sales more like a basketball
team. What are our roles? What are our responsibilities? What are
the plays that we execute? Who executes those?
Working as an agile team

But I think we have to be very agile in working with each other
in saying, “Who’s the person that should be taking the shot right
now? Who should be bringing the ball down the court?”


I look at marketing and sales, not as the sequential process
where marketing gets the leads and gives them to sales, and sales
take care of everything throughout, but we work together in the
demand gen process, and we cooperate in the buying process.


There’s a huge amount that marketing can bring to the party with
qualified opportunities. Whether it’s case studies, whether it’s
tools, whether it’s content relevant to where the person is
towards the end of the buying journey, and those kinds of things.
We really need to look at it as an interrelated and integrated
set of processes.


Brian: It makes a lot of sense, what you’re talking about. I
think the challenge is that marketing and sales often are doing
the same things. They might have different words for it.


For example, marketing may call it lead gen, lead generation, or
inbound sales might call it prospecting, social selling, etc.
They’re doing the same things. As I’ve talked to salespeople,
they often feel they’re succeeding despite the marketing, not
because of it. I was talking to someone trying to build his own
pipeline. He was getting leads from marketing, and they weren’t
helping. He was prospecting, trying to figure out how to
cold-call, etc.
Do you think salespeople are getting it wrong with how
they prospect? 

I do think we’re getting a lot wrong about prospecting. One is I
don’t think enough salespeople are prospecting.


Most everybody I talk to is opportunity-starved, but we have a
lot of these kinds of mindsets and mentalities that say, “Well,
it’s marketing’s job to get those leads. And if they aren’t
getting the leads, you know, there’s nothing I can do. Or it’s
the SDR’s role to take those leads and qualify them or do
something with them. And then my job is to take those great leads
that the SDR gives to me.”


I think the first thing we do is change salespeople’s mentality
and say, you know, marketing will do everything they can to get
you the right kind of leads and the right kinds of opportunities.
SDR’s are going to do everything they can. But if the volume
isn’t sufficient, you have to go out and start finding business
yourself. You have to prospect. You have to generate new
business.


You might go to marketing and ask them for help in doing that,
maybe giving you a particular program that you can execute as
well. The other thing, too, is I sometimes think we get our
prospecting models, and particularly the SDR-driven type models,
a little bit backward.
What’s not working with the current sales development rep (SDR)
model

I think we do a disservice to SDRs. In most organizations, the
SDR is kind of an entry-level job to selling. They do something
that most salespeople would refuse to do, which is to call people
they’ve never spoken to before and prospect them. It’s a really
tough job.


But one of the disconnects we have is these poor SDRs often
calling on C-level people.


I get SDRs calling me every day. I feel really sorry for them
because they’ll call me and say, “We believe we can help you
improve your business.” And I say, “Cool. What am I doing wrong?
How should I be developing my business?” and they’re floored.
They don’t know how to carry on that conversation. They shouldn’t
be expected to. If they’re brand new to selling, why are they
calling me a C-level executive, albeit a small company, but a
C-level executive? We’re matching the wrong people up with the
target audience.


As a result, we’re creating terrible first impressions. If
somebody calls me and can’t have a powerful, engaging first
conversation, I’m going to have a negative opinion both of that
individual and their company.


I think we’re missing huge amounts of opportunities by not having
the right people. I wrote an article about a year ago saying,
“Maybe we need to get some of our most talented senior-level
salespeople being SDRs.” If they’re creating that first
impression, and if our target persona is this C-level person,
then those are the people that have the best capability of
setting up a very, very positive first impression and opening up
far more opportunities than a brand new SDR without that
experience base.


Brian: I love that suggestion. It reminds me of before it was
called an SDR. That’s what I started as at 23. I was on the
phone. I was calling C-level people, 23 years old. There was very
little training advice, coaching. It was on the job. Later, I
started a company helping people do that. I worked for a company
that, myself, I was CEO. I made calls with the team on the phone,
and the whole point was to learn, see what they were
experiencing, and understand.


This is really a great transition into talking about this idea of
empathy. That’s the hard part: how can somebody who doesn’t have
experience connect with someone else and understand their
perspective and feeling?
How can sellers be more empathy-based with their
approach to customers?

Dave: I think there are some things. First of all, empathy is
about caring. You’ve got to care about your customers, whoever
those customers are. If you’re only in business to say, “How can
I get an order?” then you’re never going to be successful at all.


You’ve got to care about your customers. You’ve got to care about
their success in achieving their goals. If that drives you, it
changes your whole orientation and your process for engaging the
customer in the conversations you have.


That shouldn’t be a do-good or Pollyanna-ish kind of
mentality.  The only people I’m going to engage are people I
know who have problems that I can solve. I’m not wasting my time
calling on people, engaging them, and caring about them and their
success if they don’t have the problems I can help them solve. It
is very focused on calling the right people that we can do some
things with. And then it’s understanding who they are. It’s
sitting behind their desk or being able to walk in their shoes.


There are a whole number of ways you can do that. I used to sell
to the large money center banks in New York City. To learn about
banking, you hang out where the bankers hang out and hang out at
Harry’s at Hanover Square. I’d learn a lot by just talking to
them over a beer about their businesses, their dreams, and where
their problems were, which enabled me to connect much more
effectively with those in the business.


We’ve got to start hanging out where our customers hang out,
whether it’s discussion groups, whether it’s trade shows. It’s
really learning about where they live and what they worry about
every day. It’s asking questions, and it’s getting engaged in
those conversations. I think along with caring is curiosity. If
you have those two attributes, you’re going to figure out what
the customer’s about. You’re going to know how to engage the
customers. You’re going to understand how your products and
solutions might serve the client and help them—two fundamental
attributes: caring and curiosity.
Our empathy is our marketing/selling intuition.

Brian: That is terrific. I really liked how you brought it
together regarding meeting those elements, then


immersing yourself in the world of your customer, going where
they are.


It’s interesting, as I was listening to you, I don’t know
that the marketers who are reaching out, or making that initial
impression, have actually been able to get in the world of the
people they’re hoping to influence and help to drive change, to
work with them through their journey.


I would say that what you shared, what you did, as a salesperson,
we need to do that in marketing too: get in the world of the
customer and observe. From that, we’re going to have the empathy
or putting it another way, and we’ll have the intuition.


Our empathy is our marketing and sales intuition; to know how to
best move forward in what some of those opportunities are.


Dave: It’s really funny how some of these cycles go, but I
remember maybe 10, 15 years ago, when there were many initiatives
around understanding the voice of the customer. When you looked
at how a lot of those initiatives were implemented, some of them
literally would live for several weeks with the customers, sit
and observe them in their jobs, etc.


Getting marketers out and treating the customers less as an
intellectual exercise or an analytic exercise, but actually
visiting the customers. Spending a few days of watching them
work, talking to them not about what we sell and whether they
like these things that we sell, but talking to them about what
they do, what they feel, and how they think.  And then
bringing that back in and say, “Now we know the customer, and
we’ve seen where they live. How do we take that information and
best leverage it to engage them where they’re at?”


Brian: Fantastic.
What other actionable advice do you have for those who
want to help improve sales enablement? 

Dave: I think it’s a little bit counterintuitive. It may sound
simplistic, but we don’t do it. So many of our initiatives, so
much of our thinking, are driven inward-out rather than
outward-in.


We have our products, and we have our services. We think about
what we want to do and how we want to bring those to market. So
we develop all our launch programs, all our marketing programs,
all our sales programs, from an internally-based orientation,
about what’s most effective and what’s most efficient for us.


Usually, when we execute those, we find we’ve missed one thing:
we’ve forgotten about the customer. We do that may be most
effective and efficient for us but may not be effective or
efficient for the customer.


So generally, I find the fastest way to the best and most
effective solution is always to work your way back in from the
customer.


Who are they?
Where are they?
How do they work?
What drives them?
What do they care about?
What are their dreams?
How do they buy?
How do they self-educate?
How do they learn about things?


Trace those things back into the design the process that meets
them where they’re at, rather than trying to force them to find
us and meet us where we’re at.
You may also like:

How to do lead management that improves conversion
How customer-hero stories help you connect better
Lead Nurturing: 5 Useful Tactics to Get More Opportunities
The Biggest Contributor to B2B Revenue