#623: My Sales Enablement System that 3x'd My Team's Quota Attainment

0:00Kayde Givens: Today, we are sitting down with the VP of Enablement at a billion-dollar company, and she is going to be sharing her enablement operating rhythm. These are the meetings and activities that she runs rhythmically on a weekly, monthly, and quarterly basis to control the chaos of a hundred-person sales organization that has also helped her triple the team's quota attainment. So, Katie, we're going to start weekly, and we're going to start with my favorite thing that I learned from you on the pre-show, which is the shit shield. You have a weekly shit shield that is in the form of a slide. What is this?

0:33There are a lot of things that people want sellers to know or to hear or to understand. And as an enablement, it is my job to determine what comes through that umbrella and what they hear. I also want to ensure that like sales can choose what to listen to and what not to listen to. So instead of being like Slack is an open place for you to give sales whatever they want, I have an intake form. And I'm like, hey, you want sales to know this, see this, understand this? Don't just post it somewhere. My job is to ensure that they actually adopt it. Send it to me. We take it. We parse it down into a weekly slide that we send to our sales leaders to present in their team meeting.

1:08So I take that intake form. And then I determine what should go into these three pillars. Here's what reps need to know. Here's anything that requires action. And here's what's coming. And if it's like, hey, we had an update on our website. It's super cool and everyone needs to know about it. I'm like, maybe people want to know. and if they choose to click it, they choose to click it. We have a new case study. It is here. If you want it, you have it. It is here. It is coming from leaders and it is in their meeting. So on Friday, my team finishes these based on the intakes for the week, sends it out to leaders Friday so that next week as they go through their team meetings, they can have it.

1:39Kayde Givens: The next thing that you have is what you call your protected focus time. Fridays, I have protected time for my team. Starts at 10 a.m., goes till the end of the day. There are absolutely no meetings that happen on that day. If there is a meeting, it basically comes through special permission from me. At 10 a.m., my team, I have an automated Slack. It basically sets up a sprint. And it is like, what are your commitments and what you're going to finish today? The team comes in and puts one or two things. They're like, hey, I have to finish this training deck. And they also have to share what they finished at the end of the sprint.

2:09If you have a training that you've been working on and it's almost done and then you have resources and you finish at 11 a.m. and you share it with the team and you're done, I, great, good. As long as you're doing your job, I really don't care what do the rest of your Friday. Most of the time, that's not the case. Most of the time they're like, hey, I'm working on this. Here's the deck. Can I get feedback from everyone? Everyone gives feedback during the protected time. They're fixing it during the protected time. And by like 4pm, they're like, here's what I did.

2:32Kayde Givens: Let's talk about the next time bucket, which is your every other week, your bi-weekly rhythms. Let's start with the big team meeting that's you and your enablement staff. This is one that I actually have my team run. Probably one of the best pieces of advice have been given by a coach was you're really busy and you just really don't have time to do this meeting well and people feel it how about you let them run the meeting so i have a document it is like how to run a team meeting at the beginning of the quarter we assign who's going to run which team meeting you get to choose your own icebreaker after that we have choose your own adventure so i give them a couple topics i have hey if there is a quarterly goal you have that's fairly beefy and you want to just show it to people, get feedback, you can do it.

3:16If there's another team member that wants to do that, you let them know and they can do it. And they're presenting, they're getting feedback, they're showing everyone what's going on. If you feel like other people need to know, you want a guest speaker? You want to hear from someone else in the org? Do it. You have someone in your network you want to hear from? Do it. Bring them in. We'd love to see it. Or you have a very specific topic that you want to train on, that you feel like you're an expert in? Great. Choose your own adventure on what you think is most important. Then we have a leadership update.

3:43So I always still have time where I'm like, here's what's happening in the organization. Here's what I need to be focusing on. Here's trends that I'm seeing. And then we have a quick wrap up with commitments and a goal check.

3:51Kayde Givens: The next piece that you're doing every other week is you're having one-on-ones with the sales leaders. And it sounds like you're also following the sales rhythms. So can you talk about what sales rhythms, including those one-on-ones you attach to every other week? So I am of the opinion that myself and my team, we are literally part of the sales team. so I have right now an enablement manager who supports our SDRs and our SMBAEs she is in every team meeting for those groups she is in any additional meetings they have sitting in on call blitzes etc like she is part of their team yeah but she doesn't look at her and she's there seeing what's happening same for me I am part of all of the management meetings that happen during the week forecasting pipeline council I am in all of those as much as I can be to just know what's happening in the business.

4:38And then I'm also running bi-weekly one-on-ones. I typically alternate, depending on the size of the sales leadership team, with sales leaders. It's quick. They're actually 25 minutes. Sometimes it stays 25 minutes. Sometimes it doesn't. Ideally, you have that five-minute buffer so you can get to other meetings. But it is like, here's what's trending for your team with the enablement program we have. Here's some things that we've noticed. Here are some open areas where your team is reaching out. What's going on? And what do you need from me? Type of a situation.

5:04Kayde Givens: You run the sales all hands. I love running the sales all hands. Okay. It always starts with the metrics and the leaderboard. Who's crushing quota? How are we doing on our metrics for the quarter? We're looking at our actual goal. We're looking at pipeline goals. And we're looking at a few other things. Wincer lessons learned. This is like quick three to four minutes for a rep or SDR or something awesome that happened. You got to keep them tight. You have to keep them prepared. Guest speaker deep dives. Maximum two guest speakers. Six minutes each. the first three times you run this they're all gonna go over and you're gonna have to cut them off and you look like a jerk you're literally like depending where you're at if it's in person waving in the sidelines like you're at time yeah and then you're like shutting off slides yes six minutes i will send this out the week prior to the all hands and i basically highlight this part one thing to before i dive in we're getting updates that feel like updates for the sake of updates make sure that you present something that reps can actually act on not just fyi or info yeah what's something you can start doing differently this week sometimes i'll send this out and someone's like oh i don't i don't fit into that and i was like okay can you tell me more they're like i was gonna do this and i'm like okay it's not a great fit for here i have a really awesome slide i can put you on and then we're going back into six minutes each and then if there's time i have a tips trick or training motion this can be like hey someone built this really awesome glean agent check it out someone ended up doing this like rapport building on a call, check it out.

6:29Sometimes it's like, we literally played a video of our mom when we launched 30 and PC that he recorded for us. That's really cool. Don't tell anyone. And so there's just like quick little things. Sometimes it's like, Hey, an update on a training thing that I need them to do.

6:41Kayde Givens: It's like kind of my time for like quick enablement motions. And then we have a very like specific wrap up on what's next. This slide literally says, take action to know. See you later. Yeah. Go hit your goals. Nice.

7:01Today's show is brought to you by Align, the AI deal workspace that helps sales teams close complex deals. So here's a tip about multithreading. There are stakeholders in your deals that you don't even know exist, like the VP of Finance, who's viewed your champion's recap twice this week, but no one actually introduced you. That is the type of person who's beacon around your deal and might sneak up to kill the deal at the finish line. And Align's AI surfaces it before it's too late so you can multithread to them. We built a full multithreading playbook powered by Align. It's free in the show notes.

7:30Today's show is brought to you by ConsenSys, which helps your demo keep selling even when you're not in the room. Before I show a demo, I set it up like it might have to work without me. I include these three slides before I drop in. Number one, the biggest problems I learned in Discovery. Number two, how we solve those problems. And number three, a what does success look like today slide. You can steal that exact 30 MPC demo deck template powered by ConsenSys. Go check it out in the show notes.

7:56Kayde Givens: today show is brought to you by pipe drives easy to use and customizable crm with built-in meeting intelligence my favorite discovery question is the multiple choice question which sounds like typically when i'm talking with folks like you they're focused on a b or c which is it for you now a b and c have to be problems that you can solve because that's how you steer the conversation in the direction of places you can help them now pipe drives built-in meeting intelligence helps you focus on your follow-up question not on scrambling to take live notes and we built a full discovery toolkit with them free in the 30MPC closers hub.

8:27Kayde Givens: There's a link in the show notes. Let's go back now up to monthly. So we hit weekly, we hit every other week. What are the monthly rhythms you're running? The first one I think was your cross-functional syncs. Think of the teams that you work with the most. RevOps, PMMs, another one that you work very, very closely with. Those for me are like the big two right now. We are covering any cross-functional goals that are touching. So if we have a big product release, reps need to be trained on it. We all have goals set together and we're going through them and being like what's at risk what's not moving forward is are am i in the way is my team in the way is your team in the way yeah what's stopping this from happening because we have to get it done and we're doing a little bit of like work working through that sometimes it is like hey we have this big initiative who's doing what what does it look like etc so goal alignment and sometimes it is like deep work on like hey you're going to present on the all hands of the product launch this is how we've designed the presentation do you feel good about that next one is you've got gong automations set up that are feeding you information on a monthly basis that informs what you do i guess that month or informs your perspective on the next quarterly sprint gong automations are a big one i like to use monthly to just get a pulse on some of the leading indicators that are happening and like the best way to do that and also just like what customers are saying what reps are saying is to hear it from them and gone, but without listening to a hundred calls a day.

9:50So I have a few set up. One is like a market pulse. This helps with like competitive things that we might be getting. If we're getting hit hard with a competitor, we're able to see like, oh, wait a second. We're seeing X competitor pop up a bit more. And they're specifically focused on this. Is there competitive training that I need to do? And so I have like my overall quarterly training, but there are some like pulse trainings based on initiatives we're seeing that I need to look at. yeah this is an initiative board so we launched command of the message i'm trying to understand what adoption looks like where we have a dip right so we're actively building a 30 npc initiative we come in here and we try to look at different ones that we have so trap setting is another one yeah so right now we are building out score cards and an initiative board for our 30 npc discovery and calling trainings that we're running yeah so that we can come in here and start to get a pulse of what happens month to month and week by week if it comes to me weekly i found that it's like just

10:40Kayde Givens: too much noise. And there's too many like spikes and variances. You can normalize the data a little bit more when you look over a longer time horizon. I'm looking at like revenue. I'm also trying to like pull dashboards on pipeline. And so I'm trying to see like, where are we trending with quota attainment? Where are we trending with pipeline growth? But also where, what are the, what are the conversations that are happening? So if you were teaching me to set this up, I'm a new enablement leader. It sounds like you're looking at a lot and you're a sophisticated enablement leader. What are the top five things that I would want to get from Gong or whatever revenue intelligence platform I'm using on a monthly basis?

11:11I would start with like what your core training initiatives are and I would set up an initiative board.

11:15Kayde Givens: Great. They're great because you can use trackers and you just get the nice monthly view of how these are coming up in conversations. Great. I'd also set up a market board. A market board is going to give you an idea of what's happening in the market. Sure. Competitive conversations, products that are coming in, etc. That's the first one. The next one is at least for Gong there are like AI enablement theme spotters. These are just giving me a proactive pulse on like hey people seem to be struggling with multi-threading people are struggling with negotiation here's why we think that here's some calls to dive into yep and so it is just like skills based the next thing that I would look at is I'm actually gonna go into my teams and start to understand like the basic call metrics that any conversation intelligence platform you have talked to listen ratio number of questions asked and then compare that against benchmarks yes so I typically go in there and then the last one is if you have some sort of form of forecasting I'm diving into revenue and I'm starting to understand different trends that we're seeing across dashboards.

12:10So insights, market, theme spotters that are enablement focused, and then some of the revenue dashboards.

12:17Kayde Givens: I think this teases nicely for what happens quarterly. So we did an episode that came out earlier this week where you break down like your full revenue velocity model, the listening tour, the focus groups that you run when you start at new org and when you're doing big direction setting on a quarterly or annual basis. We're not going to get into all of the weeds and details on this, but on a quarterly basis, could you give me a sense of like, what do you do to determine the direction? And then I want to actually dig into like, there's some things you're doing with like OKRs with your team that I want to ask you about.

12:51Four main areas I'd focus on in quarterly. The first is the QBR motion that the sales team runs and that I have myself and my team run as well with them. And so we are attending their QBRs. We are sitting in on them. We're attending the manager QBRs. I'm presenting the director QBRs. My enablement team members are presenting the manager QBRs. And we are literally giving a pulse of like, what happened last quarter? Well, it didn't go well. What goals are we setting? What do we need to achieve them? That gives us an idea of like where reps are struggling. We have a slide in the QBR that is like, here's lessons learned and what's going well.

13:22We can take those and share them with the team that the reps do. And also here's what I would need to succeed and actually exceed quota. and some of those things are like this process is so painful and it is taking me hours in my day and we're like oh we didn't realize that thank you so there's things we take from there the next is like a metrics pulse check so if we think back on that last episode the revenue velocity model some of those are lagging indicators but we're trying to actually continue to build that trend model so what happened last quarter what did our win rate look like what did our opportunity size look like?

13:54Did we see any movement? What does quota attainment look like? How's pipeline growth, et cetera? Getting a high level pulse of, okay, where is the business and how is that impacting the overall trend line? What's off? What's changed? Is there anything unexpected so that I can dig in and start to do research with my team?

14:15Today's show is brought to you by Align, the AI deal workspace that helps sales teams close complex deals. So here's a tip about multi-threading. There are stakeholders in your deals that you don't even know exist, like the VP of Finance, who's viewed your champion's recap twice this week, but no one actually introduced you. That is the type of person who's peeking around your deal and might sneak up to kill the deal at the finish line, and Align's AI surfaces it before it's too late so you can multi-thread to them. We built a full multi-threading playbook powered by Align. It's free in the show notes.

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15:14Kayde Givens: The worst discovery advice is just be curious and ask lots of questions. Look, our prospects are not showing up to sales calls to answer our questions. They're showing up to get their questions answered and to figure out how we can solve their problem. And this is what Pipedrive does. If you want to get clear, complete sales visibility, you can use Pipedrive's easy to use and customizable CRM that is designed to be simple from day one and stay easy to use as your team grows. We actually put together an entire resource hub with Pipedrive to help you get to President's Club, and you can get them for free in the 30 MPC Pipedrive Closers Hub.

15:45The link is in the show notes.

15:46Kayde Givens: That gives you a pulse of like, okay, this is what we need to fix. You're not immediately going and setting an OKR plan to fix that. The next thing you're doing is you're talking to me about this like enablement capacity model to figure out how much change the org can actually take on. This framework looks at three things. Cognitive load. How much of a reps brain power is this going to take? Learning level. Do we want them to just know it and be aware that it's there and they don't really have to act on it? Do we need them to be confident enough to at least like be able to briefly have a conversation or is it like a discovery training or methodology where like you better master this and it should come up in the field demos coaching etc it is part of our dna and then what is our capacity if we are doing well as an organization i say we can handle about 35 hours a quarter of enablement in some way shape or form if we are struggling that number actually needs to go down because i need them executing more and at a higher caliber so then I take whatever it is I map the learning level I map the cognitive load this also has like how much time it'll potentially require from reps like our discovery training with 30 npc this is a full quarter training correct it's beastie we have this scoring metrics where I'm like okay I have cognitive load I have learning level I have a good guess of like how much this will be so discovery I'm already at nine points of the 35 what else can we fit and I'm taking in the metrics that we've been analyzing.

17:10I'm taking in the QRR requests and everything. And then I'm literally plotting it. So I'm saying, hey, we have a huge AI training and let's all have a product release. Okay. We also have this, where are we at time-wise? So when I present my QBR and before I set my team's goals, if I'm like, we're at 65 hours and everyone thinks everything has to happen. So what are we going to give and take? Because if we go past that 35 hours, at the end of the day, when I'm talking to sales leaders, it's not just like reps burnt out. they're going to stop working as hard and we're not going to hit our numbers.

17:42So it's not just like we can't fit in this much time. It is that we're going to take away time from revenue driving activities if we do too much enablement and too much process change.

17:51Kayde Givens: Let's talk about OKRs. OKRs are probably one of my favorite things because it helps us stay accountable and it helps us also know what we're working on. Every quarter, once we have all of this information and data, I run my team through a very like two to three hour long OKR planning process. Yes. We run this same process across every organization as well. So everyone is aligned. Yes. We're literally looking at, okay, SWOT analysis, what's going well. We're defining one of my favorite methods in this whole entire planning motion is I ask, what are the top five most important things that we could do next quarter?

18:24And every leader that I do in a room with that, it is a pulse check to be like, do we all agree that these are the top five? And sometimes you'll get like 25 different ones. And it's like, we don't actually think we don't agree. And so like pause, let's go back to what success looks like. So we're going through that. And then we are spending some time setting goals. AI has helped a lot here. I have an OKR agent that I've built that basically use all of measure what matters framework to just test us to be like, are you building the right key results? Because sometimes we'll be like, launch a discovery training.

18:52That's my OKR. And you're like, is it now? Let's talk about it. I have my company's goals. I have the core goals that we're working on in GoToMarket. My team should never be working on things that don't align to this in some way shape or form we're working on the wrong thing outside of the fact that i always have enablement objectives that are like upskill enablement or make enablement better because we do a lot of making other people better and then you get your team's engagement survey and they're like enablement sucks because no one enables me and my processes are hard to work through and so there is always a focus on how do we make the team better but then also how do we align back up to the business and what we need and then we're setting OKRs like hey for making the team better I just started this team four months ago and I have two people that have joined and I have one joining in a week.

19:41I need to document all of these processes that I'm talking to you about. I actually have to document them in a way that my team can use them. We have to make sure the team operating cadence is in place across everybody, not just me because they're all running their own motions that we've prescribed. And then we have things like we want to raise average AE discovery call score and gong and S1, S2 conversion from this baseline to the target using X scoring method. So we're very prescriptive of what we're trying to measure. And then my team goes a step further in the next meeting and literally builds out every task.

20:10So I have a huge enablement program outline that they run off of that is like, how do I actually accomplish this step-by-step broken down into little milestones so that nothing's missed. And we actually know where risk exists because if it was just this and it was like, can you do this? They'd be like, I get, yeah, I'll just do it my way. And so then we have micro tasks that lead up to how to actually do any enablement program ever.

20:28Kayde Givens: And then annually you celebrate because you took your team from doing pretty great to your team quite literally 3x their quota attainment with the stuff that you broke down today. So Katie, this was a really, really powerful one. Folks, you're in luck because Katie here is so, so generous with her time, clearly, all of these rhythms, but also she has put together a ton of resources and templates to make your life easier as a sales leader or enablement leader. A lot of the stuff that we covered in this episode, we've got links to grab it all in the show notes. So thank you for watching. Thank you for listening.

20:58Kayde Givens: We'll see you next week on 30 NPC.

21:10Kayde Givens: The worst discovery advice is just be curious and ask lots of questions. Look, our prospects are not showing up to sales calls to answer our questions. They're showing up to get their questions answered and to figure out how we can solve their problem. And this is what Pipedrive does. If you want to get clear, complete sales visibility, you can use PipeDrive's easy to use and customizable CRM that is designed to be simple from day one and stay easy to use as your team grows. We actually put together an entire resource hub with PipeDrive to help you get to President's Club, and you can get them for free in the 30 MPC PipeDrive closers hub.

21:41The link is in the show notes. Today's show is brought to you by ConsenSys, which helps your demo keep selling even when you're not in the room. Before I show a demo, I set it up like it might have to work without me. I include these three slides before I drop in. Number one, the biggest problems I learned in discovery. Number two, how we solve those problems. And number three, a what does success look like today slide. You can steal that exact 30 MPC demo deck template powered by ConsenSys. Go check it out in the show notes.

22:13Today's show is brought to you by Align, the AI deal workspace that helps sales teams close complex deals. So here's a tip about multi-threading. There are stakeholders in your deals that you don't even know exist, like the VP of Finance, who's viewed your champion's recap twice this week, but no one actually introduced you. That is the type of person who's beacon around your deal and might sneak up to kill the deal at the finish line, and Align's AI surfaces it before it's too late so you can multi-thread to them. We built a full multi-threading playbook powered by Align. It's free in the show notes.