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Deep Trikannad: Hey, everyone. Thank you. Guys for joining revenue accelerators today with me. I have Bob Britton from sales enablement. Sherpas. Bob, thank you for joining us. thank you, if you can. Please give a quick intro on Who? Who's Bob? What is sales enablement? Sherpas? Sure. So Bob is somebody that's been around for coming up on 3 decades. Now in the sales world. So sales enablement shirt is is my consultancy.
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Bob: and what it is, is, as the name implies, I do. Sales enable it.
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Bob: But sales enablement is one of those things where you ask 10 different companies what it is, you get 13 different answers.
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Bob: And so, because it's usually based upon what the problem dejure is, you know, if they're going to go through a hiring cycle. Then it's all about onboarding. And if they're going to be going through some sort of a technology adaptation that it's all about you know. How do you get people to use the technology correctly? That kind of thing? So it really depends upon what the company is going through at that particular point in time.
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Bob: But the way I define sales enablement there, there's all kinds of
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Bob: really long and convoluted the, you know, definitions out there. I like to keep it short and simple.
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I'd say sales enablement is the identification and mitigation of friction
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Bob: that's impeding top line revenue attainment period full stop.
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Deep Trikannad: I love it
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Bob: so. But that implies a lot. All right. I mean that that that's very broad, all encompass. But that's also kind of the nature of sales enablement, you know, so sales enablement was intended to be when it first got started back around 2,010 or so is really intended to be kind of an orchestrating function in an organization. you know. The example I use to describe it is, we've all seen those racing calls that they use and universities and the Olympics and things.
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Bob: Well, picture that racing call is being the the sales organization. And inside that racing call are all of the connected functions, the disparate functions inside an organization that are there. To quote help, end, quote the organization or the sales organization. So you've got marketing it. Legal, even facilities. You name it. They're all in that boat. The problem is that they're all putting their ores in the water at a different time.
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Bob: They all have a different power stroke. And so this
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Bob: racing skull just the circles in the water, or sometimes it'll leave a flip over right? So who's sitting at the very back of that boat
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Bob: is the Coxon.
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Bob: Yeah, in this scenario sales enablement is that Clxon, the coxin is the one that's making sure all the ores are going into the water, at the same time making sure everybody has the same power stroke. If you think about it, the only ones that are really facing forward. So you know, we're we're looking for the finish line. I'm trying to see where it's going and looking left and right, trying to see what the competition is doing, but it's because sales has become so complex. That function is now necessary.
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Bob: Certainly, you know, the the Cro certainly doesn't. That doesn't have time to do it, and not certainly none of the sales leaders themselves that sales managers have time to do that. So this new function has to be here now because of the complexity that crept into sales.
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Deep Trikannad: No, that's that's a that's a great way and succinct way actually to describe it. so, especially as a sales. So I would suspect that
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Deep Trikannad: you don't. You know the sales organizations that you work with you specialize in are on the complex side, meaning if they're selling widgets? Not so much it would that be an accurate assessment?
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Bob: What if you get to the point where you're commoditized and you put stuff on a marketplace. No needs for really sales enablement. So there is. But it's more like sales. Enablement now is helping marketing connect with the buyer as compared to actually working with sellers connecting with the buyer. So you know, if there's no human being involved, it's revenue production by marketing. If there's a human being involved in this revenue production by sales.
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Deep Trikannad: And and how did you come like if if you don't mind me asking like, How did how long it has sales enablement. Sherp has been around. And prior to that, what was your career? How do you? How did it lead you to doing what you're doing right now
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Bob: claw back about 40 h of my life every week, because it wasn't running my own business So so that was fine. so I did that for about 3 and a half years or so, and now I back back doing my consultancy full time.
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Bob: But prior to that I was with Mt. And Dell services. They'll service services sold out to Mtt. Data. And so I had a large enablement team 12 folks around the world. And I was, I was the. I was the head of that that department.
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Bob: so did a lot of performance, consulting, working with sales leaders that type of thing in the various verticals, and just really helping them figure out what they were doing. that could be improved and getting ahead of it before the problem actually arose. So that's really what I try to do. Try to be proactive, to get ahead of the issues that they are possibly going to be having to come up. And what what issues did you foresee, or what are you trying to mitigate ahead of time?
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Bob: A lot of it has to do with moving from transactional selling toward more consultative selling. especially when you're in the high tech field. A lot of it.
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Bob: High tech sellers will tend to really emphasize the technology itself. But
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Bob: as much as we keep saying it, we still need to focus on the customer. First, we still need to be customer centric. It's difficult for technical sellers to do that. And so it really takes a almost a paradigm shift in order to get them to do that.
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Deep Trikannad: Okay, yeah. So then, so are you.
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Deep Trikannad: So who's your primary kind of stakeholder constituent your Icp within an organization like, is it the sales manager. Is it the head of sales? Pro? Is it vp. Like, or is it? Is it sales Ops like? Who are? Who are the folks that you kind of mainly interface with
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Deep Trikannad: on the day to day.
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Bob: So it it it's going to be the cease with the cro and if not him or her directly somebody right below them.
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Bob: the trick is to develop a relationship with the companies so that they're not afraid to have the ugly baby conversations, because that's really what it takes. And the the hope philosophy here is that you can spend an awful lot of time just developing the sellers and the sales leaders. And that's fine. The problem is that unless you at the same time it fix any of the systemic friction that I was talking about earlier on this should fix the systemic friction
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Bob: all of those initiatives that you did with all of the individual people
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Bob: just kind of dies on the vine, because the system is is not designed to handle it. you know, as a saying goes, you know you put a good person in a bad system. The bad system wins every time. That's something that a lot of people actually forget. And so it this is why it's straddling both strategy and tactics as far as what the sales enable itself actually is interesting. So it's more like, you you kind of go in and fix a process that's broken.
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Deep Trikannad: So whatever the whatever the playbook, whatever the previous playbook is written, or even if it's unwritten, it's kind of word amount. Your your strategy is to go
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Bob: fix that problem and rewrite it effectively so it can scale more efficiently
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Bob: the the contracts or or deal will get down the pike pretty far. And then suddenly the legal department gets involved and the red lines start coming.
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Bob: And I I have seen deals fall apart at the red line issue.
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Bob: Yeah, it. So so it's a matter of how do you get ahead of that process? What's the interface between legal and sales? Is there some way that we can make sure that legal is aware of what the customer is actually going through. What's the customer's buying journey?
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Bob: And how can we reduce the friction and all of that, so that it's almost transparent to to the customer.
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Bob: What does it take for the sales organization to get ahead of that? In other words, what point do they actually start introducing things like the t's and se, so you know, these are the types of things that really need to get to in order to improve the both. The ability to when deals as well as making it easier for the customer to buy
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Deep Trikannad: gotcha. Okay, that's awesome. Is there like, How how do you
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Deep Trikannad: fine, or how did you? You mentioned earlier? c-suite folks, or people directly below them? are kind of your your main partners when you implement these solutions? how do you interface? How do you actually reach out to these guys? How do you like? What? What best practice have you found for yourself
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Deep Trikannad: in terms of identifying? Who to talk to? And how do you actually table what your value proposition is?
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Bob: it's networking mainly. It's it. You can spend an awful lot of time just going ahead and doing the marketing. I I find it more effective just to say, Hey, I'm looking for a company. By the way, my my Icp, as far as a company is concerned, are typically somewhere between 5 or 50 million. And let's say, 2 billion. And what we're looking to do is find them when they're in at an inflection point.
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Bob: They're at 51 to go to 100. They're at 101 to go to 500 501 to go to 1 billion. Because that's the point where they're really looking to do something a little bit different. They're looking now at their Gtm. Strategies. They're trying to see if there's something else that they can do in order to take it to that next level.
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Bob: And that's what I did. Was I helped him brainstorm on that. I I helped him point out the any blind spots that they might have, and I can really just kind of advise them
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Deep Trikannad: that's awesome in in Are you mostly domestic us, or where? Where? Where are you? Most of your clients? They they they're all in the Us. Right now. I I mean doing with Gdrp and stuff like that. It's just a headache. So I try to stay in the Us. Okay, that's fair. That's fair. do you have? I mean, are you mostly on your own. Do you have a team? Do you have like? How does how do you
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Deep Trikannad: implement when you take your when you find a a project and you go like, what does that look like for you individually, personally like? How do you implement? How do you execute on the promises that you've made?
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Bob: I'm an army of one So it it on my website. Script is.com. You'll see a process that I go through. It's a 4 day processes. it's diagnosed. Well, well, first of all, triage diagnosed, prescribe and treat. And so you know, the triaging is just looking to see if they got all the big rocks and plus. Now do you have all, everything in place in order to make this work, and the outcome of that would be a an enablement charter
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and so after we get the charter down is so this is where we're headed. Who are. So it's reporting to what its intentions are. Then we get into the diagnosed phase. And that's where you start pulling apart data. That's where you look at any kind of data source you have. you do focus groups, you do ride alongs or
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Bob: talk alongs or watch along. So wherever you put it nowadays. But whatever it is you're gonna be doing with the sellers? You watch, and you listen for how it is that they're selling. And are they a level 1, 2, 3, or 4 type of seller, one being transactional to being consultative, 3 being much more business oriented before being kind of
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Bob: blaze. A new market kind of thing very few of those out there. But that's what we're doing is we're looking to actually categorize them. And then you can go ahead and you can assess the sales forces to see where everybody is in terms of what their Gtm's. quote, Gtm strategy is
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Bob: and then we can help them actually build teams, you know. So the days of the Renaissance seller, where you had one person that was handling an entire territory, and expecting that one person, in order to be able to resonate with everybody that they had to deal with.
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Bob: That's that's that's insane. That that's like 1980 s. Thinking right? because the number of people in the decision chain has grown from like 4 or 5 to what is it now? 1112, 13. I I I don't even know what the number is anymore. And more, you go up in in
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Bob: revenue size, absolutely, absolutely. And so you know that what we're trying to do is we're trying to just help people understand that you have to be able to speak their language, and you have to be able to resonate with them. And if you are the type of person where you get into the C suite. And suddenly, you know you, you know a couple of lines. You say a couple of things to really that that that sound see Swedish.
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Bob: And then you start to suddenly slip back into technology. That's when this that's when the Cxo is going to say, oh, I know what you are. Now here, a technologist, let me introduce you to whoever, and you're never going to get back into that c suite ever. But if you have a team of people and you have somebody that's actually really adept at speaking to the C suite. And you have your technologies that are talking to the directors and below, and that kind of thing.
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That's when things really can pop for you. But you gotta we gotta know what the competencies are of your people.
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Bob: If you start treating sellers like they're all the same. They're all just coin operated people. Then that's when everything falls apart, because you have to understand the hand that you're playing, it's like sitting down to a poker table, whatever looking at your hands. If you don't do this. So so do you find that leaders like what out of 10, you know, just rough, roughly speaking, at a 10 sales, leaders that you interact with and and and speak with
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Deep Trikannad: on a weekly basis. How many of them actually acknowledge that there is a spectrum of sales performance? There's a spectrum of sales, behaviors, and all of that that they they're not commodity. The sales personnel can't just be swapped out and plugged in again into like they they each bring their own kind of unique strengths and weaknesses
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Deep Trikannad: to sales leaders that you've interacted with? Do they acknowledge that, or is they? Are they treat them like widgets
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Bob: or somewhere in between. it's somewhere in between. They they certainly acknowledged that everybody acknowledges it. It did, just because it's you you have to do that right. It's it's a if nothing else is lip service it to to do that. But in practice what ends up happening is they get hung up in the spreadsheets and the numbers
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Bob: and and so it it just winds up, being much more of a mechanical process rather than a consultative conversation that you're going to be having, you know, so that the the trick is to say, Okay, now you, I heard you say yes, that you agree with this. Now let me show you how to do that, and and whether they can do it or not. Also, again, whoever it depends upon the system, and whether the Cxos are on board with it also do, do you? Do you mostly
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Deep Trikannad: like? Who are you coaching when you, when you when you apply your coaching methodologies, are you coaching the individual reps, or you coach the managers of those reps, or both the combination there. Oh, how do you? How do you ensure that your message is actually making it to the target audience of the set? The either the seller directly or the sales manager like, whatever the message it might be, or even potentially the value proposition to the end customer like, how do you ensure that that message is delivered?
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Bob: Yeah. So you you're coaching both you start with the sales leaders. because if you start there, then everything that you're doing with the sellers themselves on the front line. There's a good chance that the so that the sales leader is going to say, Yeah, I what are you doing? I'm blind, sided by what you just are doing to my people here. Blindsiding is probably one of the one of the top reasons that initiatives die in the vine.
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Bob: Hmm! You need buy in from the top.
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Bob: So So what you need to do is you need to coach them first and make sure their level set on where it is we're going to be headed with this make sure they understand what it means to actually coach. And I, most sales leaders don't know how to coach. I I I'll just say right now they they just don't They people will coach the way that they were coached.
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And typically, the way that people were coached is very directive.
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Bob: But in order to do this correctly, you have to be more Socratic about it. So you really need to. first of all, find out what the goal is. Make sure that the person that you're coaching owns that goal. But
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Bob: where most leaders fall down in the coaching aspect of it is, they don't stick with it long enough. As soon as the seller demonstrates the behavior that they're looking for. Once
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Bob: they stop coaching, they say, Okay, he's got it.
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Bob: Yeah, that that that's not true. And on average it takes about 66 days for a person to really adopt a new habit. So you really need to stick with that particular thing that you're coaching on for about 2 months. I they're gonna get tired of hearing from you, but that's how you make it part of that sellers fabric. So that's what you need to do.
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Deep Trikannad: And do you have? It's like, I mean, I I I forgive me. I haven't looked online, but I'm not sure if you have case days that you can share. But like kind of the results that you tell like when you go in for so the sales enablement sherp as value proposition. Do you have like this is the company, you know, Acme Company before
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Deep Trikannad: Bob, and this is Acme Company after Bob. And what is that Delta tend to look like, and kind of what is some of the what are the benefits of bringing you in.
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Bob: but depends on how they're going to be measuring performance. Every company measures performance a little bit differently. But, generally speaking, you're going to get high, single low double digits performance improvement at a minimum if you can coach correctly, coaching is probably the number one most effective thing that a front line sales leader can do in order to get their team running
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Bob: so as long as they know how to do that correctly, and they don't be a hero.
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Bob: you know. They got to take the hero mentality out of it, and they got to understand how to work with people once they understand how to do that. Then things just start to click. So
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Deep Trikannad: no, that's great. is there? Is there anything you mentioned, you know, 3 decades or so of sales. Experience. is there anything in your travels? That
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Deep Trikannad: kind of is top of mind always when talking through like lessons learned in your career of sales, like what not to do going forward. But you know we're we're all. We all make our own mistakes that we learn from. So what would be a are you okay sharing a story or an anecdote of a mistake that you might have made early in your career, or you know, even recently, but that you learn from. And it's kind of stuck with you going forward.
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Bob: Sure. probably one of the most important ones that the customer really doesn't care about you or your product. They carry about the problem that they have that they're trying to solve. And in order for that to happen, you have to not oversell.
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Bob: You have to listen carefully, and you have to find out what it is that they're having an issue with.
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Bob: And once you've discovered that you take whatever it is that's going to help solve that issue in that issue. Only
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once they see that you can solve that issue, then they're more open to other issues that you might be able to solve for them. But until you solve that first one.
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Bob: Everything's off the table. So that so that's the most important thing. And what you need to do is you need to just cut through what I call the kabuki of sales all of the acting and stuff that we go through all of the formalities. And what have you cut through that as fast as you possibly can. It's different wherever you go in the world, but you know some people just want to get right down to brass tack. Some people want to
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Bob: have tea or something like that before you know whatever it takes. Cut through it as fast as you can, and get to a human, to human conversation
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Bob: and learn how to tell a story, because that is where the gold lies, not in the story you're telling.
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Bob: but in the story that they're going to tell you back. That's where all the gold lies. And so that's that's really what you need to get to. I love that. That's that's fantastic, is there? Bob, thank you so much for taking the time. Is there anything that I we didn't cover that you? You'd like everybody to know I was listening in
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Bob: sales is hard. and it's not going to get any easier. Okay, So you need folks like me. There, there's a lot of that that are out there that call themselves sales enablers. just make sure that you understand which of us are actually looking at the strategically and which them are really, just primarily sales trainers.
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Bob: Okay, so just just make sure you're able to differentiate that a little bit. because those of us that have been around the block a few times and really understand what salesman is in the power of it. We can help a lot so that this
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Bob: promoting the whole, the whole industry here, as far as tells me, open, it's concerned that that's awesome. So so, Bob, how do people get a hold of you if they want to get a hold of you.
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Deep Trikannad: And my email is Bob at Dessie Sherp as that phone. Pretty simple enough that. No, that's great. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today and for everyone listening in We'll catch you next time. Thanks a lot.
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Deep Trikannad: Hey, everyone. Thank you. Guys for joining revenue accelerators today with me. I have Bob Britton from sales enablement. Sherpas. Bob, thank you for joining us. thank you, if you can. Please give a quick intro on Who? Who's Bob? What is sales enablement? Sherpas? Sure. So Bob is somebody that's been around for coming up on 3 decades. Now in the sales world. So sales enablement shirt is is my consultancy.
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Bob: and what it is, is, as the name implies, I do. Sales enable it.
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Bob: But sales enablement is one of those things where you ask 10 different companies what it is, you get 13 different answers.
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Bob: And so, because it's usually based upon what the problem dejure is, you know, if they're going to go through a hiring cycle. Then it's all about onboarding. And if they're going to be going through some sort of a technology adaptation that it's all about you know. How do you get people to use the technology correctly? That kind of thing? So it really depends upon what the company is going through at that particular point in time.
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Bob: But the way I define sales enablement there, there's all kinds of
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Bob: really long and convoluted the, you know, definitions out there. I like to keep it short and simple.
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I'd say sales enablement is the identification and mitigation of friction
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Bob: that's impeding top line revenue attainment period full stop.
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Deep Trikannad: I love it
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Bob: so. But that implies a lot. All right. I mean that that that's very broad, all encompass. But that's also kind of the nature of sales enablement, you know, so sales enablement was intended to be when it first got started back around 2,010 or so is really intended to be kind of an orchestrating function in an organization. you know. The example I use to describe it is, we've all seen those racing calls that they use and universities and the Olympics and things.
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Bob: Well, picture that racing call is being the the sales organization. And inside that racing call are all of the connected functions, the disparate functions inside an organization that are there. To quote help, end, quote the organization or the sales organization. So you've got marketing it. Legal, even facilities. You name it. They're all in that boat. The problem is that they're all putting their ores in the water at a different time.
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Bob: They all have a different power stroke. And so this
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Bob: racing skull just the circles in the water, or sometimes it'll leave a flip over right? So who's sitting at the very back of that boat
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Bob: is the Coxon.
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Bob: Yeah, in this scenario sales enablement is that Clxon, the coxin is the one that's making sure all the ores are going into the water, at the same time making sure everybody has the same power stroke. If you think about it, the only ones that are really facing forward. So you know, we're we're looking for the finish line. I'm trying to see where it's going and looking left and right, trying to see what the competition is doing, but it's because sales has become so complex. That function is now necessary.
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Bob: Certainly, you know, the the Cro certainly doesn't. That doesn't have time to do it, and not certainly none of the sales leaders themselves that sales managers have time to do that. So this new function has to be here now because of the complexity that crept into sales.
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Deep Trikannad: No, that's that's a that's a great way and succinct way actually to describe it. so, especially as a sales. So I would suspect that
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Deep Trikannad: you don't. You know the sales organizations that you work with you specialize in are on the complex side, meaning if they're selling widgets? Not so much it would that be an accurate assessment?
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Bob: What if you get to the point where you're commoditized and you put stuff on a marketplace. No needs for really sales enablement. So there is. But it's more like sales. Enablement now is helping marketing connect with the buyer as compared to actually working with sellers connecting with the buyer. So you know, if there's no human being involved, it's revenue production by marketing. If there's a human being involved in this revenue production by sales.
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Deep Trikannad: And and how did you come like if if you don't mind me asking like, How did how long it has sales enablement. Sherp has been around. And prior to that, what was your career? How do you? How did it lead you to doing what you're doing right now
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Bob: claw back about 40 h of my life every week, because it wasn't running my own business So so that was fine. so I did that for about 3 and a half years or so, and now I back back doing my consultancy full time.
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Bob: But prior to that I was with Mt. And Dell services. They'll service services sold out to Mtt. Data. And so I had a large enablement team 12 folks around the world. And I was, I was the. I was the head of that that department.
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Bob: so did a lot of performance, consulting, working with sales leaders that type of thing in the various verticals, and just really helping them figure out what they were doing. that could be improved and getting ahead of it before the problem actually arose. So that's really what I try to do. Try to be proactive, to get ahead of the issues that they are possibly going to be having to come up. And what what issues did you foresee, or what are you trying to mitigate ahead of time?
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Bob: A lot of it has to do with moving from transactional selling toward more consultative selling. especially when you're in the high tech field. A lot of it.
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Bob: High tech sellers will tend to really emphasize the technology itself. But
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Bob: as much as we keep saying it, we still need to focus on the customer. First, we still need to be customer centric. It's difficult for technical sellers to do that. And so it really takes a almost a paradigm shift in order to get them to do that.
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Deep Trikannad: Okay, yeah. So then, so are you.
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Deep Trikannad: So who's your primary kind of stakeholder constituent your Icp within an organization like, is it the sales manager. Is it the head of sales? Pro? Is it vp. Like, or is it? Is it sales Ops like? Who are? Who are the folks that you kind of mainly interface with
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Deep Trikannad: on the day to day.
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Bob: So it it it's going to be the cease with the cro and if not him or her directly somebody right below them.
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Bob: the trick is to develop a relationship with the companies so that they're not afraid to have the ugly baby conversations, because that's really what it takes. And the the hope philosophy here is that you can spend an awful lot of time just developing the sellers and the sales leaders. And that's fine. The problem is that unless you at the same time it fix any of the systemic friction that I was talking about earlier on this should fix the systemic friction
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Bob: all of those initiatives that you did with all of the individual people
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Bob: just kind of dies on the vine, because the system is is not designed to handle it. you know, as a saying goes, you know you put a good person in a bad system. The bad system wins every time. That's something that a lot of people actually forget. And so it this is why it's straddling both strategy and tactics as far as what the sales enable itself actually is interesting. So it's more like, you you kind of go in and fix a process that's broken.
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Deep Trikannad: So whatever the whatever the playbook, whatever the previous playbook is written, or even if it's unwritten, it's kind of word amount. Your your strategy is to go
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Bob: fix that problem and rewrite it effectively so it can scale more efficiently
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Bob: the the contracts or or deal will get down the pike pretty far. And then suddenly the legal department gets involved and the red lines start coming.
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Bob: And I I have seen deals fall apart at the red line issue.
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Bob: Yeah, it. So so it's a matter of how do you get ahead of that process? What's the interface between legal and sales? Is there some way that we can make sure that legal is aware of what the customer is actually going through. What's the customer's buying journey?
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Bob: And how can we reduce the friction and all of that, so that it's almost transparent to to the customer.
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Bob: What does it take for the sales organization to get ahead of that? In other words, what point do they actually start introducing things like the t's and se, so you know, these are the types of things that really need to get to in order to improve the both. The ability to when deals as well as making it easier for the customer to buy
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Deep Trikannad: gotcha. Okay, that's awesome. Is there like, How how do you
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Deep Trikannad: fine, or how did you? You mentioned earlier? c-suite folks, or people directly below them? are kind of your your main partners when you implement these solutions? how do you interface? How do you actually reach out to these guys? How do you like? What? What best practice have you found for yourself
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Deep Trikannad: in terms of identifying? Who to talk to? And how do you actually table what your value proposition is?
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Bob: it's networking mainly. It's it. You can spend an awful lot of time just going ahead and doing the marketing. I I find it more effective just to say, Hey, I'm looking for a company. By the way, my my Icp, as far as a company is concerned, are typically somewhere between 5 or 50 million. And let's say, 2 billion. And what we're looking to do is find them when they're in at an inflection point.
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Bob: They're at 51 to go to 100. They're at 101 to go to 500 501 to go to 1 billion. Because that's the point where they're really looking to do something a little bit different. They're looking now at their Gtm. Strategies. They're trying to see if there's something else that they can do in order to take it to that next level.
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Bob: And that's what I did. Was I helped him brainstorm on that. I I helped him point out the any blind spots that they might have, and I can really just kind of advise them
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Deep Trikannad: that's awesome in in Are you mostly domestic us, or where? Where? Where are you? Most of your clients? They they they're all in the Us. Right now. I I mean doing with Gdrp and stuff like that. It's just a headache. So I try to stay in the Us. Okay, that's fair. That's fair. do you have? I mean, are you mostly on your own. Do you have a team? Do you have like? How does how do you
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Deep Trikannad: implement when you take your when you find a a project and you go like, what does that look like for you individually, personally like? How do you implement? How do you execute on the promises that you've made?
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Bob: I'm an army of one So it it on my website. Script is.com. You'll see a process that I go through. It's a 4 day processes. it's diagnosed. Well, well, first of all, triage diagnosed, prescribe and treat. And so you know, the triaging is just looking to see if they got all the big rocks and plus. Now do you have all, everything in place in order to make this work, and the outcome of that would be a an enablement charter
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and so after we get the charter down is so this is where we're headed. Who are. So it's reporting to what its intentions are. Then we get into the diagnosed phase. And that's where you start pulling apart data. That's where you look at any kind of data source you have. you do focus groups, you do ride alongs or
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Bob: talk alongs or watch along. So wherever you put it nowadays. But whatever it is you're gonna be doing with the sellers? You watch, and you listen for how it is that they're selling. And are they a level 1, 2, 3, or 4 type of seller, one being transactional to being consultative, 3 being much more business oriented before being kind of
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Bob: blaze. A new market kind of thing very few of those out there. But that's what we're doing is we're looking to actually categorize them. And then you can go ahead and you can assess the sales forces to see where everybody is in terms of what their Gtm's. quote, Gtm strategy is
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Bob: and then we can help them actually build teams, you know. So the days of the Renaissance seller, where you had one person that was handling an entire territory, and expecting that one person, in order to be able to resonate with everybody that they had to deal with.
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Bob: That's that's that's insane. That that's like 1980 s. Thinking right? because the number of people in the decision chain has grown from like 4 or 5 to what is it now? 1112, 13. I I I don't even know what the number is anymore. And more, you go up in in
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Bob: revenue size, absolutely, absolutely. And so you know that what we're trying to do is we're trying to just help people understand that you have to be able to speak their language, and you have to be able to resonate with them. And if you are the type of person where you get into the C suite. And suddenly, you know you, you know a couple of lines. You say a couple of things to really that that that sound see Swedish.
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Bob: And then you start to suddenly slip back into technology. That's when this that's when the Cxo is going to say, oh, I know what you are. Now here, a technologist, let me introduce you to whoever, and you're never going to get back into that c suite ever. But if you have a team of people and you have somebody that's actually really adept at speaking to the C suite. And you have your technologies that are talking to the directors and below, and that kind of thing.
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That's when things really can pop for you. But you gotta we gotta know what the competencies are of your people.
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Bob: If you start treating sellers like they're all the same. They're all just coin operated people. Then that's when everything falls apart, because you have to understand the hand that you're playing, it's like sitting down to a poker table, whatever looking at your hands. If you don't do this. So so do you find that leaders like what out of 10, you know, just rough, roughly speaking, at a 10 sales, leaders that you interact with and and and speak with
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Deep Trikannad: on a weekly basis. How many of them actually acknowledge that there is a spectrum of sales performance? There's a spectrum of sales, behaviors, and all of that that they they're not commodity. The sales personnel can't just be swapped out and plugged in again into like they they each bring their own kind of unique strengths and weaknesses
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Deep Trikannad: to sales leaders that you've interacted with? Do they acknowledge that, or is they? Are they treat them like widgets
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Bob: or somewhere in between. it's somewhere in between. They they certainly acknowledged that everybody acknowledges it. It did, just because it's you you have to do that right. It's it's a if nothing else is lip service it to to do that. But in practice what ends up happening is they get hung up in the spreadsheets and the numbers
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Bob: and and so it it just winds up, being much more of a mechanical process rather than a consultative conversation that you're going to be having, you know, so that the the trick is to say, Okay, now you, I heard you say yes, that you agree with this. Now let me show you how to do that, and and whether they can do it or not. Also, again, whoever it depends upon the system, and whether the Cxos are on board with it also do, do you? Do you mostly
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Deep Trikannad: like? Who are you coaching when you, when you when you apply your coaching methodologies, are you coaching the individual reps, or you coach the managers of those reps, or both the combination there. Oh, how do you? How do you ensure that your message is actually making it to the target audience of the set? The either the seller directly or the sales manager like, whatever the message it might be, or even potentially the value proposition to the end customer like, how do you ensure that that message is delivered?
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Bob: Yeah. So you you're coaching both you start with the sales leaders. because if you start there, then everything that you're doing with the sellers themselves on the front line. There's a good chance that the so that the sales leader is going to say, Yeah, I what are you doing? I'm blind, sided by what you just are doing to my people here. Blindsiding is probably one of the one of the top reasons that initiatives die in the vine.
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Bob: Hmm! You need buy in from the top.
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Bob: So So what you need to do is you need to coach them first and make sure their level set on where it is we're going to be headed with this make sure they understand what it means to actually coach. And I, most sales leaders don't know how to coach. I I I'll just say right now they they just don't They people will coach the way that they were coached.
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And typically, the way that people were coached is very directive.
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Bob: But in order to do this correctly, you have to be more Socratic about it. So you really need to. first of all, find out what the goal is. Make sure that the person that you're coaching owns that goal. But
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Bob: where most leaders fall down in the coaching aspect of it is, they don't stick with it long enough. As soon as the seller demonstrates the behavior that they're looking for. Once
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Bob: they stop coaching, they say, Okay, he's got it.
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Bob: Yeah, that that that's not true. And on average it takes about 66 days for a person to really adopt a new habit. So you really need to stick with that particular thing that you're coaching on for about 2 months. I they're gonna get tired of hearing from you, but that's how you make it part of that sellers fabric. So that's what you need to do.
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Deep Trikannad: And do you have? It's like, I mean, I I I forgive me. I haven't looked online, but I'm not sure if you have case days that you can share. But like kind of the results that you tell like when you go in for so the sales enablement sherp as value proposition. Do you have like this is the company, you know, Acme Company before
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Deep Trikannad: Bob, and this is Acme Company after Bob. And what is that Delta tend to look like, and kind of what is some of the what are the benefits of bringing you in.
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Bob: but depends on how they're going to be measuring performance. Every company measures performance a little bit differently. But, generally speaking, you're going to get high, single low double digits performance improvement at a minimum if you can coach correctly, coaching is probably the number one most effective thing that a front line sales leader can do in order to get their team running
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Bob: so as long as they know how to do that correctly, and they don't be a hero.
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Bob: you know. They got to take the hero mentality out of it, and they got to understand how to work with people once they understand how to do that. Then things just start to click. So
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Deep Trikannad: no, that's great. is there? Is there anything you mentioned, you know, 3 decades or so of sales. Experience. is there anything in your travels? That
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Deep Trikannad: kind of is top of mind always when talking through like lessons learned in your career of sales, like what not to do going forward. But you know we're we're all. We all make our own mistakes that we learn from. So what would be a are you okay sharing a story or an anecdote of a mistake that you might have made early in your career, or you know, even recently, but that you learn from. And it's kind of stuck with you going forward.
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Bob: Sure. probably one of the most important ones that the customer really doesn't care about you or your product. They carry about the problem that they have that they're trying to solve. And in order for that to happen, you have to not oversell.
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Bob: You have to listen carefully, and you have to find out what it is that they're having an issue with.
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Bob: And once you've discovered that you take whatever it is that's going to help solve that issue in that issue. Only
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once they see that you can solve that issue, then they're more open to other issues that you might be able to solve for them. But until you solve that first one.
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Bob: Everything's off the table. So that so that's the most important thing. And what you need to do is you need to just cut through what I call the kabuki of sales all of the acting and stuff that we go through all of the formalities. And what have you cut through that as fast as you possibly can. It's different wherever you go in the world, but you know some people just want to get right down to brass tack. Some people want to
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Bob: have tea or something like that before you know whatever it takes. Cut through it as fast as you can, and get to a human, to human conversation
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Bob: and learn how to tell a story, because that is where the gold lies, not in the story you're telling.
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Bob: but in the story that they're going to tell you back. That's where all the gold lies. And so that's that's really what you need to get to. I love that. That's that's fantastic, is there? Bob, thank you so much for taking the time. Is there anything that I we didn't cover that you? You'd like everybody to know I was listening in
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Bob: sales is hard. and it's not going to get any easier. Okay, So you need folks like me. There, there's a lot of that that are out there that call themselves sales enablers. just make sure that you understand which of us are actually looking at the strategically and which them are really, just primarily sales trainers.
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Bob: Okay, so just just make sure you're able to differentiate that a little bit. because those of us that have been around the block a few times and really understand what salesman is in the power of it. We can help a lot so that this
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Bob: promoting the whole, the whole industry here, as far as tells me, open, it's concerned that that's awesome. So so, Bob, how do people get a hold of you if they want to get a hold of you.
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Deep Trikannad: And my email is Bob at Dessie Sherp as that phone. Pretty simple enough that. No, that's great. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today and for everyone listening in We'll catch you next time. Thanks a lot.
