Episode 17: Why is Sales Enablement CRITICAL with Roderick Jefferson

Sales enablement is absolutely critical, there are no two ways about it! Today’s guest, Roderick Jefferson, is an acknowledged practitioner, keynote speaker, and award-winning author of Sales Enablement 3.0: The Blueprint to Sales Enablement Excellence. Listeners will hear the story of how Roderick coined the phrase ‘sales enablement’, what the term entails pre-COVID and today, and how it differs from training. You’ll learn more about the role, which includes talent acquisition support, role-specific onboarding, teaching business acumen, measurements, leadership coaching, and succession planning. Roderick considers training to be a part of enablement, and sees AI and developments in technology as the next level. He gives us his opinion on ‘Shiny Tool Syndrome’, and tells us why he doesn’t hire anyone who isn’t “carrying the bag” before telling us why he believes that shelfware is the enemy of productivity and where companies can start if they are looking to adopt an enablement strategy. Tune in to hear all of this and more from this highly experienced enablement expert today!

Key Points From This Episode:

• Roderick’s background in sales, running enablement, consulting, and VP of field enablement at cyber security company, Netskope.
• How he coined the phrase ‘sales enablement’.
• The belief that 70 percent of a sale is already done before a salesperson gets involved.
• Sales enablement pre-COVID: breaking the complexity of sales into practical ideas through scalable, repeatable practices.
• Sales enablement today: being woven into the fabric of a company through market strategy.
• How tools, processes, and people need to shift as you move further up the maturity curve.
• Why enablement needs to sit under sales, in the thick of things, to stay in the loop.
• Due to time constraints, the more a company grows, the more they need enablement.
• The option of hiring a consultant for this role rather than an in-house person.
• The difference between training and enablement: enablement is ongoing.
• What a sales enablement job entails, from talent acquisition support to succession planning.
• Why the biggest challenge is acquiring the right talent that fits your ideal profile.
• How to delineate between training and enablement: training is a part of enablement.
• The reason sales leaders should care about enablement: it takes some things off their plate.
• Why Roderick doesn’t hire anyone who isn’t “carrying the bag.”
• How sales enablement people are advocates who create credibility for contributors.
• The next level for enablement: AI overtaking things that were once done manually.
• How salespeople are no longer seen as the fixers of broken things, but key differentiators.
• Why consistency and scalability are the most important things.
• Shiny tool syndrome and how sales enablement asks if a tool will remove selling obstacles or create more and prioritizes accordingly.
• Why shelfware is the enemy of productivity.
• Where companies should start by asking: what does success look like like for you?
• Why you should ask yourself what you are doing well, how you can do it better, and what systems you can implement to move towards automation.
• Why you need someone other than the salesperson to focus on enablement.
• Who is responsible for enablement, from sales leaders to the COO, CEO, or president.
• Advice for implementing enablement: don’t wait until you are bigger!
• Additional advice: don’t give them what they think they need, don’t allow yourself to be a fixer, but create a charter and continue to re-assess it.
• Why you should stop calling them stakeholders and call them internal customers instead.
• The importance of working out your average sales value and your average time from first to second close, with a goal to reduce this and increase revenue.

Tweetables:

“You train animals, you enable people.” — @ThevoiceofRod [0:03:49]

“I wish I had been smart enough to actually trademark the term ‘sales enablement’ but I wasn’t. I have run enablement at Network Appliance, HP, Oracle, EBay, Marketo and SalesForce.” — @ThevoiceofRod [0:03:58]

“Now, enablement is really about being woven into the fabric of the company through market strategy.” — @ThevoiceofRod [0:08:21]

“It’s not enough to be able to increase productivity and accelerate speed to revenue. We’ve got to be able to help our customers and maintain the customers that they have today.” — @ThevoiceofRod [0:08:31]“The larger a company grows, the more they need enablement.” — @ThevoiceofRod [0:12:12]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Roderick Jefferson on LinkedIn
Roderick Jefferson on Twitter
Roderick Jefferson on Instagram
Roderick Jefferson

Sales Enablement 3.0

Applying the Art and Science of Sales EnablementNetskope

Sam Capra on LinkedIn

Sales Samurai B2B Sales Podcast

flexEngage