Belen Eglez's guest appearances

Belen Eglez

Sales Enablement PRO Podcast

Steve Maxwell

Andy Conduit-Turner

Robert Koehler

Kevin Casey

Emily Garza

Gerald Alston

Rebecca Bell

Tim Ohai

Mike Weir

Bill Parry

Paul Butterfield

Jen Spencer

Chris Wrenn

Amanda Romeo

Daniel West

OwlTail

Jonas Taylor

Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO podcast. I am Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space and we’re here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today I’m excited to have Jonas and Maria Belen from Algolia join us. I’d love for you to each introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience. Belen, can we start with you? Maria Belen Eglez: Yes. Thanks, Shawnna. It’s a pleasure to be a guest on the podcast again. For the audience, my name is Belen Eglez. I’m the revenue enablement manager for the EMEA region here at Algolia. And this means that I’m responsible for representing the EMEA team in the enablement initiatives we deploy and develop. And I’m also responsible for creating relationships with the managers on this side of the world. A little bit about my background, I started as a BDR for a company called Unbabel that’s based in Lisbon. And I quickly realized that I was spending most of my time training reps, creating collateral, developing messaging, onboarding, and even helping with demos and closing. So, without knowing I was already doing enablement. And about three years ago, I joined this world and started the enablement team and I’ve been growing in the space ever since. SS: Well, I’m glad to have you back Belen. And Jonas? Jonas Taylor: Yes. Absolutely. Thank you for having us. I’m stoked to be here. My name is Jonas Taylor. I am a revenue enablement associate at Algolia. I primarily support North America initiatives in addition to owning a few other programs, mainly around analytics. But I find myself collaborating regularly with Belen on global programs and projects as well. I’ve been at Algolia for a little over two years, so my background’s really similar to Belen’s actually. I also started my career in the world of sales development. I was an early employee in our Atlanta office, starting as an inbound SDR. Then I quickly moved into an outbound enterprise biz dev role. I got to the point of doing onboarding, leading trainings, doing one-on-ones for the team and when I reached the crossroads of what was next in my career enablement was the natural step. As competitive as I am, it’s more fun when the entire team performs, and I have not looked back since. SS: So, I’d love to understand from you both, but Jonas, I’ll send this one over to you first. How do you use analytics to define your sales enablement initiatives? JT: Awesome. That’s a fantastic question. So right now, I think we’re in the process of becoming more proactive and more metric-driven as a team, and it’s an ongoing process. I wouldn’t say that analytics right now is defining our initiatives, but they play a huge role in identifying root causes of pain points and they play a role in measuring success. So, there’s still a big piece of that puzzle. Enablement by nature is cross-functional, it’s a supporting function. So, in our early stages as a team we found that we were always in this state of triage, there were always incoming requests from sales and post-sales teams. We didn’t have an onboarding program when we started. There was a lot of change management that required our attention. There were just so many things being thrown at us and all of this turned into a “we need help with X.” And then, so we as a team, we built it for them. It was strictly transactional and purely output driven. I think we are in a much better place today. It kind of takes it back to analytics. Right now, we’re living by exec priorities and that is so that we are hyper-focused in our programs for this quarter. The analytics piece, this is where we’re regularly looking at things like average deal size, conversion rates, win rates and, you know, a ton of other metrics to help us identify top sellers so that we can recreate these best practices throughout the entire org. So, I think what we’re doing really well right now is we’re starting macro. We’re getting a really nice bird’s eye view of what people are doing, and then we put trends, individuals, and teams under the microscope. From there, we’re able to brainstorm the actual “how to” piece of our programs and our OKR’s. MBE: To build on that, I really want to stress that the way we use data analytics today is to help us spot the areas of where we could or should focus to create a positive impact. And I want to highlight one example of one of Jonas’s wonderful creations which is our Ramp dashboard. This dashboard, for example, allows us to understand if these sessions and content we’ve created for onboarding is really working and setting reps up for success in their roles. So, what we do is we look at a baseline and then we try to optimize over time, and we try to improve against prior onboarding classes. So, kudos for that Jonas. SS: Belen, how do you utilize metrics to proactively advise managers across the revenue teams about how their teams are doing? MBE: Sure. So, the main advantage of being more metric focused is bringing to life the idea of the assistant coach and strategic partner to the leadership. We become the strategic partner with the managers and execs because we help them solve problems. So, this is when the conversation changes and we become pretty proactive instead of being reactive, as Jonas said before, and we get to create a solution together. I think it’s safe to say that most enablement professionals speak a lot about ensuring partnership with frontline managers to ensure this behavioral change with the frontline. But the fact that you’re ideating together with them not only makes it much easier to deploy initiatives and ensure their support, but it also shows us that we are working on programs that matter. And at Algolia we have created a tactical framework to accomplish this and really get to that strategic partner. It’s five simple steps. So, the first step is to state the problem. So, we see that this is happening on the frontline, or we see this insight from the analytics. Then the second step is just to ask and to get to the root of that problem. So, ask why they think this is happening or where do they think this problem, or this behavior is coming from. The third step it’s basically, well, it’s subtle, but it’s super important because as an enablement professional, we aren’t always like the subject matter experts as Jonas said before. So, this third step is mainly asking permission to share our ideas or hypothesis, and then expose these potential solutions but in a way that doesn’t come across like we are telling them how to do their jobs. And this tends to lead to a really healthy discussion where we get to ideate and share ideas like on how to sell that problem. So up to now, we have like, we state the problem, we ask questions and we ask permission to share the ideas. So, the last two steps are to confirm alignment, which is also a crucial step because it states that they are actually seeing value in solving this problem. Like most of the time, we will pinpoint a problem, but they probably won’t think that it’s as important as we thought ourselves it was. So, confirming that they are on board and that this is something that they are willing to actually put energies into solving is huge. The last step is to co-build the solution. So, it’s basically set up the next steps of how we will work together to solve that and basically understand what are the building blocks of that solution to get to where we want to be basically, and ensure that they will be engaged and they will help us in the deployment with the front lines. So, all in all now, like metrics serves as conversation starters and pointers for us to focus our attention. However, this collaboration piece is crucial as it helps us determine the size of the problem or confirm that we are actually dealing with a problem. And then it also helps us align on priorities, which is super important for us knowing that we have to serve about 12 different roles. SS: That’s fantastic. I think that that is a really great framework Belen, so thank you for sharing that with our audience. Jonas, I’d love to hear from you. What are some of the core metrics that you use to demonstrate enablement’s impact on the business? JT: For sure. You know, the easy answer is ramp, sales productivity, sales effectiveness, you know, whatever any of those mean. I think it’s relative to the org but things like and we’re really not entirely in control of any of those metrics. For example, you know, our impact is oftentimes a lagging indicator. So essentially enablement we’re changing human behavior and that’s a very slow change. So, if enablement is working really closely with the frontline managers, it can get really difficult to discern between the cause and effect relationship of the rep’s performance. I really don’t want to take all the credit for hiring a superstar rep and saying that, Oh, well, enablement is the cause for them being really good, when they just may naturally be a really great rep or they might have a really, really awesome manager that’s investing in them as we’re working really closely with those managers. So, obviously we care about time to first deal, win rate, sales velocity, and other essential sales forecasting metrics. But I do think it’s naive to say something like our enablement program or our onboarding program improved the win rate by X percent. Because again, there’s just too many teams and individuals interacting with that metric on a daily basis. So, for us at Algolia, what we’re doing is we ask kind of a better question to ourselves is what we’re asking ourselves constantly, “do our stakeholders see value in what we do, do our stakeholders see value in what enablement does?” For us, we’re looking at usage of tools, both managers and IC’s. We’re looking at training session attendance, completion of LMS materials, and then we correlate that with their performance. So, if you see high performers coming out of your onboarding program, or you notice that your best reps across the rev org are engaged with what enablement is producing, that’s a really good sign that you’re doing something right. SS: Absolutely. I couldn’t agree more. I’ve really enjoyed this conversation with both of you. I have a closing question and I pose this to both of you, but Jonas, maybe we can start with you. As your team has such a massive scope as you’ve guys have mentioned across 12 different revenue roles, how do you make sure that you’re tracking and able to impact the metrics that really matter? JT: Yeah. So, from an ongoing standpoint, the first step for us is to define the metrics that we, enablement, have complete control over. We can control onboarding to some extent, we can control engagement with collateral by, you know, constantly nudging people and having an effective like internal comm strategy. We can control training attendance, we can, you know, somewhat control usage and adoption of tools. We really want to have conviction around the metrics that we’re tracking with other teams and the metrics that we’re reporting on. So, the first step being, define those that we own, and then we’re regularly monitoring these. Next, we determine what is good and what’s not good. So, the whole point of enablement is to enable people to be the best that they can be. So, we need to form a profile from an individual rep performance perspective of what is good, and constantly work towards that and leverage these insights in our conversations with managers. When it comes to prioritizing initiatives and building out programs, that’s when we shift to objective key results and top-down priorities coming from execs. We’re tracking metrics that we’re being held accountable for or held to, and we’re prioritizing these and we’re using these to our advantage as well. So, we try not to take on new projects that don’t align to our quarterly OKR’s as a team. In short, we take a holistic approach to metrics. It’s a combination of quantitative data and qualitative observations. Data can only tell so much of the story by itself, but it compliments very well by regular conversations with the front lines and their managers. So, it’s much easier to get to the why behind the numbers and behind any metrics that we’re tracking when we’re constantly interacting with managers and the front lines, kind of always investing in that partnership there. MBE: Yeah. So, to Jonas’s point, we know which are the metrics that matter based on the priorities of the business. To give you an idea, if the execs are saying that they want to focus on improving win rates, well, this is the metric that we will have to be looking at and all our initiatives will be linked to that metric. But just to give you another example, let’s say we want to ensure we confirm that champion on each of the deals. Well, then that means that we are going to be looking at Salesforce contact roles, we will deploy training on how to identify and test the champion, we will interview the front lines on tactics that they use to do that, amongst other ideas. But to boil it down, I think that the fun part about revenue enablement is understanding where we can drive the most impact for the revenue org at that point in time. Sometimes that does mean that we have to cater a little bit more to a specific role for a month or a quarter if that’s where we can create the most impact. However, we often have prioritization discussions and ultimately if the priority is just as important as the current one, we don’t necessarily want to be the hero and spread ourselves too thin because we will lose quality of our work. So, that opens up another discussion of capacity and headcount, and we use metrics as a way to support our prioritization. SS: It sounds like you guys are doing a fantastic job. Thank you so much for joining us today, I really enjoyed our time. To our audience, thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit salesenablement.pro. If there’s something you’d like to share or a topic you’d like to learn more about, please let us know. We’d love to hear from you.

Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO podcast. I am Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space and we’re here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today I’m excited to have Jonas and Maria Belen from Algolia join us. I’d love for you to each introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience. Belen, can we start with you? Maria Belen Eglez: Yes. Thanks, Shawnna. It’s a pleasure to be a guest on the podcast again. For the audience, my name is Belen Eglez. I’m the revenue enablement manager for the EMEA region here at Algolia. And this means that I’m responsible for representing the EMEA team in the enablement initiatives we deploy and develop. And I’m also responsible for creating relationships with the managers on this side of the world. A little bit about my background, I started as a BDR for a company called Unbabel that’s based in Lisbon. And I quickly realized that I was spending most of my time training reps, creating collateral, developing messaging, onboarding, and even helping with demos and closing. So, without knowing I was already doing enablement. And about three years ago, I joined this world and started the enablement team and I’ve been growing in the space ever since. SS: Well, I’m glad to have you back Belen. And Jonas? Jonas Taylor: Yes. Absolutely. Thank you for having us. I’m stoked to be here. My name is Jonas Taylor. I am a revenue enablement associate at Algolia. I primarily support North America initiatives in addition to owning a few other programs, mainly around analytics. But I find myself collaborating regularly with Belen on global programs and projects as well. I’ve been at Algolia for a little over two years, so my background’s really similar to Belen’s actually. I also started my career in the world of sales development. I was an early employee in our Atlanta office, starting as an inbound SDR. Then I quickly moved into an outbound enterprise biz dev role. I got to the point of doing onboarding, leading trainings, doing one-on-ones for the team and when I reached the crossroads of what was next in my career enablement was the natural step. As competitive as I am, it’s more fun when the entire team performs, and I have not looked back since. SS: So, I’d love to understand from you both, but Jonas, I’ll send this one over to you first. How do you use analytics to define your sales enablement initiatives? JT: Awesome. That’s a fantastic question. So right now, I think we’re in the process of becoming more proactive and more metric-driven as a team, and it’s an ongoing process. I wouldn’t say that analytics right now is defining our initiatives, but they play a huge role in identifying root causes of pain points and they play a role in measuring success. So, there’s still a big piece of that puzzle. Enablement by nature is cross-functional, it’s a supporting function. So, in our early stages as a team we found that we were always in this state of triage, there were always incoming requests from sales and post-sales teams. We didn’t have an onboarding program when we started. There was a lot of change management that required our attention. There were just so many things being thrown at us and all of this turned into a “we need help with X.” And then, so we as a team, we built it for them. It was strictly transactional and purely output driven. I think we are in a much better place today. It kind of takes it back to analytics. Right now, we’re living by exec priorities and that is so that we are hyper-focused in our programs for this quarter. The analytics piece, this is where we’re regularly looking at things like average deal size, conversion rates, win rates and, you know, a ton of other metrics to help us identify top sellers so that we can recreate these best practices throughout the entire org. So, I think what we’re doing really well right now is we’re starting macro. We’re getting a really nice bird’s eye view of what people are doing, and then we put trends, individuals, and teams under the microscope. From there, we’re able to brainstorm the actual “how to” piece of our programs and our OKR’s. MBE: To build on that, I really want to stress that the way we use data analytics today is to help us spot the areas of where we could or should focus to create a positive impact. And I want to highlight one example of one of Jonas’s wonderful creations which is our Ramp dashboard. This dashboard, for example, allows us to understand if these sessions and content we’ve created for onboarding is really working and setting reps up for success in their roles. So, what we do is we look at a baseline and then we try to optimize over time, and we try to improve against prior onboarding classes. So, kudos for that Jonas. SS: Belen, how do you utilize metrics to proactively advise managers across the revenue teams about how their teams are doing? MBE: Sure. So, the main advantage of being more metric focused is bringing to life the idea of the assistant coach and strategic partner to the leadership. We become the strategic partner with the managers and execs because we help them solve problems. So, this is when the conversation changes and we become pretty proactive instead of being reactive, as Jonas said before, and we get to create a solution together. I think it’s safe to say that most enablement professionals speak a lot about ensuring partnership with frontline managers to ensure this behavioral change with the frontline. But the fact that you’re ideating together with them not only makes it much easier to deploy initiatives and ensure their support, but it also shows us that we are working on programs that matter. And at Algolia we have created a tactical framework to accomplish this and really get to that strategic partner. It’s five simple steps. So, the first step is to state the problem. So, we see that this is happening on the frontline, or we see this insight from the analytics. Then the second step is just to ask and to get to the root of that problem. So, ask why they think this is happening or where do they think this problem, or this behavior is coming from. The third step it’s basically, well, it’s subtle, but it’s super important because as an enablement professional, we aren’t always like the subject matter experts as Jonas said before. So, this third step is mainly asking permission to share our ideas or hypothesis, and then expose these potential solutions but in a way that doesn’t come across like we are telling them how to do their jobs. And this tends to lead to a really healthy discussion where we get to ideate and share ideas like on how to sell that problem. So up to now, we have like, we state the problem, we ask questions and we ask permission to share the ideas. So, the last two steps are to confirm alignment, which is also a crucial step because it states that they are actually seeing value in solving this problem. Like most of the time, we will pinpoint a problem, but they probably won’t think that it’s as important as we thought ourselves it was. So, confirming that they are on board and that this is something that they are willing to actually put energies into solving is huge. The last step is to co-build the solution. So, it’s basically set up the next steps of how we will work together to solve that and basically understand what are the building blocks of that solution to get to where we want to be basically, and ensure that they will be engaged and they will help us in the deployment with the front lines. So, all in all now, like metrics serves as conversation starters and pointers for us to focus our attention. However, this collaboration piece is crucial as it helps us determine the size of the problem or confirm that we are actually dealing with a problem. And then it also helps us align on priorities, which is super important for us knowing that we have to serve about 12 different roles. SS: That’s fantastic. I think that that is a really great framework Belen, so thank you for sharing that with our audience. Jonas, I’d love to hear from you. What are some of the core metrics that you use to demonstrate enablement’s impact on the business? JT: For sure. You know, the easy answer is ramp, sales productivity, sales effectiveness, you know, whatever any of those mean. I think it’s relative to the org but things like and we’re really not entirely in control of any of those metrics. For example, you know, our impact is oftentimes a lagging indicator. So essentially enablement we’re changing human behavior and that’s a very slow change. So, if enablement is working really closely with the frontline managers, it can get really difficult to discern between the cause and effect relationship of the rep’s performance. I really don’t want to take all the credit for hiring a superstar rep and saying that, Oh, well, enablement is the cause for them being really good, when they just may naturally be a really great rep or they might have a really, really awesome manager that’s investing in them as we’re working really closely with those managers. So, obviously we care about time to first deal, win rate, sales velocity, and other essential sales forecasting metrics. But I do think it’s naive to say something like our enablement program or our onboarding program improved the win rate by X percent. Because again, there’s just too many teams and individuals interacting with that metric on a daily basis. So, for us at Algolia, what we’re doing is we ask kind of a better question to ourselves is what we’re asking ourselves constantly, “do our stakeholders see value in what we do, do our stakeholders see value in what enablement does?” For us, we’re looking at usage of tools, both managers and IC’s. We’re looking at training session attendance, completion of LMS materials, and then we correlate that with their performance. So, if you see high performers coming out of your onboarding program, or you notice that your best reps across the rev org are engaged with what enablement is producing, that’s a really good sign that you’re doing something right. SS: Absolutely. I couldn’t agree more. I’ve really enjoyed this conversation with both of you. I have a closing question and I pose this to both of you, but Jonas, maybe we can start with you. As your team has such a massive scope as you’ve guys have mentioned across 12 different revenue roles, how do you make sure that you’re tracking and able to impact the metrics that really matter? JT: Yeah. So, from an ongoing standpoint, the first step for us is to define the metrics that we, enablement, have complete control over. We can control onboarding to some extent, we can control engagement with collateral by, you know, constantly nudging people and having an effective like internal comm strategy. We can control training attendance, we can, you know, somewhat control usage and adoption of tools. We really want to have conviction around the metrics that we’re tracking with other teams and the metrics that we’re reporting on. So, the first step being, define those that we own, and then we’re regularly monitoring these. Next, we determine what is good and what’s not good. So, the whole point of enablement is to enable people to be the best that they can be. So, we need to form a profile from an individual rep performance perspective of what is good, and constantly work towards that and leverage these insights in our conversations with managers. When it comes to prioritizing initiatives and building out programs, that’s when we shift to objective key results and top-down priorities coming from execs. We’re tracking metrics that we’re being held accountable for or held to, and we’re prioritizing these and we’re using these to our advantage as well. So, we try not to take on new projects that don’t align to our quarterly OKR’s as a team. In short, we take a holistic approach to metrics. It’s a combination of quantitative data and qualitative observations. Data can only tell so much of the story by itself, but it compliments very well by regular conversations with the front lines and their managers. So, it’s much easier to get to the why behind the numbers and behind any metrics that we’re tracking when we’re constantly interacting with managers and the front lines, kind of always investing in that partnership there. MBE: Yeah. So, to Jonas’s point, we know which are the metrics that matter based on the priorities of the business. To give you an idea, if the execs are saying that they want to focus on improving win rates, well, this is the metric that we will have to be looking at and all our initiatives will be linked to that metric. But just to give you another example, let’s say we want to ensure we confirm that champion on each of the deals. Well, then that means that we are going to be looking at Salesforce contact roles, we will deploy training on how to identify and test the champion, we will interview the front lines on tactics that they use to do that, amongst other ideas. But to boil it down, I think that the fun part about revenue enablement is understanding where we can drive the most impact for the revenue org at that point in time. Sometimes that does mean that we have to cater a little bit more to a specific role for a month or a quarter if that’s where we can create the most impact. However, we often have prioritization discussions and ultimately if the priority is just as important as the current one, we don’t necessarily want to be the hero and spread ourselves too thin because we will lose quality of our work. So, that opens up another discussion of capacity and headcount, and we use metrics as a way to support our prioritization. SS: It sounds like you guys are doing a fantastic job. Thank you so much for joining us today, I really enjoyed our time. To our audience, thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit <a href="http://salesenablement.pro" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">salesenablement.pro</a>. If there’s something you’d like to share or a topic you’d like to learn more about, please let us know. We’d love to hear from you.

Episode 106: Belen Eglez and Jonas Taylor on Proving Business Impact with Metrics-Driven Enablement

Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO podcast. I am Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space and we’re here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today I’m excited to have Jonas and Maria Belen from Algolia join us. I’d love for you to each introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience. Belin, can we start with you? Maria Belen Eglez: Yes. Thanks, Shawnna. It’s a pleasure to be a guest on the podcast again. For the audience, my name is Belen Eglez. I’m the revenue enablement manager for the EMEA region here at Algolia. And this means that I’m responsible for representing the EMEA team in the enablement initiatives we deploy and develop. And I’m also responsible for creating relationships with the managers on this side of the world. A little bit about my background, I started as a BDR for a company called Unbabel that’s based in Lisbon. And I quickly realized that I was spending most of my time training reps, creating collateral, developing messaging, onboarding, and even helping with demos and closing. So, without knowing I was already doing enablement. And about three years ago, I joined this world and start the enablement team and I’ve been growing in the space ever since. SS: Well, I’m glad to have you back Belen. And Jonas? Jonas Taylor: Yes. Absolutely. Thank you for having us. I’m stoked to be here. My name is Jonas Taylor. I am a revenue enablement associate at Algolia. I primarily support North America initiatives in addition to owning a few other programs, mainly around analytics. But I find myself collaborating regularly with Belen on global programs and projects as well. I’ve been at Algolia for a little over two years, so my background’s really similar to Belen’s actually. I also started my career in the world of sales development. I was an early employee in our Atlanta office, starting as an inbound SDR. Then I quickly moved into an outbound enterprise biz dev role. I got to the point of doing onboarding, leading trainings, doing one-on-ones for the team and when I reached the crossroads of what was next in my career enablement was the natural step. As competitive as I am, it’s more fun when the entire team performs, and I have not looked back since. SS: Well I’m excited to have you both join us so thank you so much. And it’s very interesting how you both come from such similar backgrounds yet at different companies. So, I’d love to dive in now that you guys are both at Algolia. What does the revenue enablement function look like there? How is it structured to support teams across the entire revenue organization? Belen, if I can pass this to you first, I’d love to. MBE: Sure. Well, our enablement team is quite unique, I believe, for a team of about 150 reps in the Rev Org. We are three enablement practitioners. So, Lish heads the global team and focuses on exec alignment, the North America team, and I myself focus on the EMEA team and Jonas does the balance between both and is our analytics mastermind. And in terms of structure, given the size of the team on both sides of the globe, it made sense for us to create regional roles to accommodate the three main time zones, the majority of the team working. In practice, each of us usually own a specific initiative worldwide. As an organization, it is in our best interest to ensure that we get consistency across our six regions and that we are able to share the best practices that are working with every member of the team, regardless of their location. This helps us to project a brand image that it’s unified and create a successful repeatable process. Being the owner doesn’t mean that we can’t collaborate with each other, of course, or provide feedback or share ideas. It just means that we are responsible for collaborating with all the relevant stakeholders and delivering on time. And this is extremely important because it ensures that when we launch an initiative it actually resonates with both regions. JT: To echo Belen’s points, there’s only three of us at Algolia and we’re supporting like 10+ different revenue roles: AE, SDR, SEs, SAs, CSM, renewals, partners, support. There’s plenty of them. We’re ultimately responsible for really the enablement of all customer-facing roles. This is a massive scope of work and the function itself includes a lot of different styles of work so we’re doing onboarding content management, ongoing trainings, development frameworks. It’s really easy to get lost in the initiatives and all of the tasks. So, in terms of structure, we’ve adopted a quasi-program management model. As Belen said, we’re collaboratively working on different programs. But we do it in a way that it caters to each of our individual skill sets and strengths. But at the end of the day, there’s always an owner for everything and that’s guaranteeing accountability. When it comes to prioritization, we utilize the Eisenhower matrix, which is basically a grid in four quadrants, and it helps us decide and prioritize tasks by urgency versus importance. This compliments where we are right now as a team, we’re maturing and we’re becoming more metric-driven. So, in addition to the Eisenhower matrix OKR’s, objective key results, those are our North Star. When we’re designing programs with a metric in mind, it’s a lot easier to focus and then ensure bandwidth across the entire rev org. SS: I think those are fabulous ways of tracking to make sure that teams are aligned on priorities and are marching towards the same goals. I want to switch gears a little bit though, because you guys do refer to your organization as revenue enablement. And from your perspective, how does that differ from sales enablement and what do you see as the core responsibilities of revenue enablement? MBE: So, in my opinion, everything changes. The scope, the responsibilities, the skill. And this is mainly because we not only focused on the sales rep, but actually the entire rev org both pre and post-sales. So, I think the key here is that we get to be the agents of change for the entire organization. We partner with the C-suite, with the front-line managers, and the main idea is to improve performance and get alignment across the board. If we were to draw a picture with all the teams in the rev org, enablement would be kind of like the cord that ties each of these teams together and allows for communication to flow. One analogy we always use is that the sales teams selling, right, it’s like a team sport. And I like to say that enablement is kind of like the assistant coach. It is our responsibility to understand each role to the court, how they impact the sales cycle, their responsibilities, we have to democratize best practices, create better synergies, and eventually lay down the path to this successful repeatable process, I mentioned before, to achieve sustained growth and our CEO, Bernadette shares this sentiment with us. Finally, in practical terms, I think we need to play devil’s advocate and make sure that every initiative that we launch is relatable to each of the teams and adds value to them, that they are able to act on it as soon as the program is launched. Jonas, I don’t know if you want to add something. JT: Yeah, absolutely. Yes, for sure. The primary difference is the scope. So, take sales enablement, for example, and multiply those responsibilities and roles that you’re supporting by X, that’s what we do. We’re supporting an entire customer-facing org and that’s not to say that sales enablement or revenue enablement is like harder than the other. But if you want to accelerate revenue enablement, you have to be really, really good at engaging your SMEs, your subject matter experts. I’ve never been a CSM, I’ve never been an SE, I’ve never been an SA, but we’re supporting these roles and we’re enabling these roles. And so, to be good at this, I think you really need to have a level of like intellectual humility. So being able to say, hey, I don’t know how to do something, but I know that I am good at engaging people and connecting people to the people that do know how to do it. So, it’s super important to leverage your managers and reps that are really good at what they’re doing. So, when you’re partnering with them to utilize their expertise or mastery of a subject, it makes it much easier to build revenue inclusive programs at scale. And that’s what I see. I think that’s what we all see at Algolia is one of the core responsibilities of revenue enablement, and it’s supporting the entire revenue organization, not just sales. So, everything we do is to support the underlying goal of customer-centricity. When we produce better sellers, it naturally creates a better buyer experience. And when we enable other customer-facing teams, customers experience the benefits of having a partner, not just a vendor. SS: Not just a vendor, but a partner. That’s fantastic. Now you mentioned creating a revenue enablement methodology. What are the core components of that methodology blend? MBE: Yes. So when our CRO asked us to train our reps on a methodology, we realized that all of the popular ones out there,  Challenger, SPIN, even MEDDPICC, that’s the one we use, were pretty much focused on the seller or presales in general. But as being revenue enablement, and trying to tie all of these teams together, we couldn’t just focus on a methodology that applied for half of the organization. We needed to have a common umbrella that connected both parts, right? Both pre and post-sales. And that’s how we came up with our custom methodology, which is called C2P2. And C2P2 stands for curiosity, connection, and positive paranoia. These are the three pillars that we use to guide our reps on how to approach each of their interactions with customers and prospects, but also internally with their colleagues and all of these, with the idea to become, as Jonas said before, a more customer-centric organization. So, I’ll briefly explain which of these pillars means. So, curiosity means that reps have to be genuinely interested in what our customers or prospects have to say. It means that we have to do research to prepare for calls, we have to ask better questions so that we can probe and get to the root of their challenges and understand really what it is that they’re trying to achieve. And finally, that we actively listen to what they are telling us and not just like ticking a box of like, oh, okay I asked that question, moving on to the next one. In terms of connection, it’s the ability to create healthy relationships with customers and with the colleagues. And these usually come naturally when you master that curiosity piece, because you need to be really good at delivering information and collaborating with people around you. And finally, we have positive paranoia, and this is more a sentiment of avoiding the “magical thinking” or “happy ears”, right? So many reps in customer-facing roles have this. Basically, positive paranoia is the state of mind that ensures we’re being proactive and we’re testing our assumptions of knowledge. Are we really talking to the champions? Do we really understand the impact we’re doing to the business? Does the customer see their ROI? Right, so many times we hear reps being confident that they are going to close the deal but then it doesn’t happen while positive paranoia addresses that. So, like when I look back, you know, people buy from people and with the recent COVID situation, this is even more important now than ever. We need to develop empathy for our customers and our colleagues as we’re all going through these strange times and the idea behind this methodology reflects that. Of course, we had no idea at the time that a pandemic was underway but their principle around this methodology was to ensure we had this empathy for the buyer and their journey and walk in their shoes. SS: I love that Belen, and I think you’re absolutely right. Empathy is so critical right now. I want to talk a little bit about how you guys went about creating and implementing this new methodology across the entire revenue organization. And Belen, if you don’t mind, I’d love to hand it back to you. MBE: Sure. So, to create this methodology, we contracted an external consultant. Her name is Misha from HumbleGrit Sales. I was super happy because she was my mentor when I first joined enablement. So, I was super happy to work with her and she did an amazing job. She helped us conduct interviews with our rev org, with the individual contributors. So, like with the reps, with the managers, with the execs, and basically, we wanted to understand where we win, where do we lose, and most importantly, the how, right? What are the skills and actions that make us succeed? In the end, we boil it down to those three pillars that I just mentioned. And so, the next step was to ensure that their vocabulary that we chose for the methodology resonated with all the teams and that they all felt that it could be applicable to their roles. So, for deployment, basically what we did, we gathered the global team at our first ever RKO, this is the revenue kickoff. And, this happened this past February, and since then, we’ve created consistency by focusing on a different part of C2P2 every month. So we would relate the topic of interest for that month with a letter or with a pillar and we would make the rep practice applying that skill to that topic. For example, the past April was collaboration between pre and post-sales under the connection pillar. And we talked about how we can better communicate and collaborate to provide not only the best customer experience, but also to find new opportunities for the business. SS: So far, I’d love to hear what has been the impact of implementing this custom methodology. Jonas I’d love to hear from you. JT: Absolutely. The immediate changes in behavior we’ve seen have been super positive. However, it’s a bit too soon to measure the full impact of our new methodology. It’s only been a few months since the revenue kickoff and when you throw in things like COVID-19 in the mix, the data can easily be misinterpreted. However, there are a few trends that we’ve noticed, and we do have some key takeaways as to what we’re seeing right now. I think number one from a quantitative perspective, we’re noticing improvements around talk time ratios and number of discovery questions being asked on calls. We use a call intelligence software to record calls, and these are a few of the metrics that we’re keeping an eye on. So, the methodology acts as a really nice reminder, the soft skills required in sales getting back to the basics, right? Things like active listening, asking follow-up questions to uncover the pain, asking clarifying questions to align on next steps. All of these things are really important and they can easily be overlooked, even though they’re essential to getting information that matters out of your buyers. So, I think that’s number one. Another thing we’ve seen is that there’s been a huge morale boost. So, when you give everyone in the revenue organization a common goal, which in our methodologies case is customer-centricity, it provides alignment around a shared mission to create the best buyer experience possible. This shared sense of purpose has definitely helped with morale, which is super important now in these times of everyone being remote and separated from their colleagues. It’s a really positive thing to be able to say to yourself my role means something and here’s why. You’re part of something bigger than a number. And the third piece that I think Belen did a really good job talking about earlier is that we now have a common language as a team. And so, one piece of our methodology is internal connection. So, we have amazing people from all sorts of sales and SaaS backgrounds, and the fact that we now have standardized criteria for what a champion is, this is huge, you know. We’re in the context of like, I think just enablement in general, as we’re shifting towards this more integrated view of revenue, it’s not just sales. Curiosity isn’t just for salespeople. CSMs need to be more curious in their roles as well to create better relationships with champions while customer-centricity is no longer only for CSMs it’s for everyone. SS: I love that. And I think by that is amazing that you guys found a methodology that works across the revenue organization so kudos to you guys on that. Thank you so much for joining us today, I really enjoyed our time. To our audience, thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders visit salesenablement.pro. If there’s something you’d like to share or a topic you’d like to learn more about, please let us know, we’d love to hear from you.

Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO podcast. I am Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space and we’re here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today I’m excited to have Jonas and Maria Belen from Algolia join us. I’d love for you to each introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience. Belin, can we start with you? Maria Belen Eglez: Yes. Thanks, Shawnna. It’s a pleasure to be a guest on the podcast again. For the audience, my name is Belen Eglez. I’m the revenue enablement manager for the EMEA region here at Algolia. And this means that I’m responsible for representing the EMEA team in the enablement initiatives we deploy and develop. And I’m also responsible for creating relationships with the managers on this side of the world. A little bit about my background, I started as a BDR for a company called Unbabel that’s based in Lisbon. And I quickly realized that I was spending most of my time training reps, creating collateral, developing messaging, onboarding, and even helping with demos and closing. So, without knowing I was already doing enablement. And about three years ago, I joined this world and start the enablement team and I’ve been growing in the space ever since. SS: Well, I’m glad to have you back Belen. And Jonas? Jonas Taylor: Yes. Absolutely. Thank you for having us. I’m stoked to be here. My name is Jonas Taylor. I am a revenue enablement associate at Algolia. I primarily support North America initiatives in addition to owning a few other programs, mainly around analytics. But I find myself collaborating regularly with Belen on global programs and projects as well. I’ve been at Algolia for a little over two years, so my background’s really similar to Belen’s actually. I also started my career in the world of sales development. I was an early employee in our Atlanta office, starting as an inbound SDR. Then I quickly moved into an outbound enterprise biz dev role. I got to the point of doing onboarding, leading trainings, doing one-on-ones for the team and when I reached the crossroads of what was next in my career enablement was the natural step. As competitive as I am, it’s more fun when the entire team performs, and I have not looked back since. SS: Well I’m excited to have you both join us so thank you so much. And it’s very interesting how you both come from such similar backgrounds yet at different companies. So, I’d love to dive in now that you guys are both at Algolia. What does the revenue enablement function look like there? How is it structured to support teams across the entire revenue organization? Belen, if I can pass this to you first, I’d love to. MBE: Sure. Well, our enablement team is quite unique, I believe, for a team of about 150 reps in the Rev Org. We are three enablement practitioners. So, Lish heads the global team and focuses on exec alignment, the North America team, and I myself focus on the EMEA team and Jonas does the balance between both and is our analytics mastermind. And in terms of structure, given the size of the team on both sides of the globe, it made sense for us to create regional roles to accommodate the three main time zones, the majority of the team working. In practice, each of us usually own a specific initiative worldwide. As an organization, it is in our best interest to ensure that we get consistency across our six regions and that we are able to share the best practices that are working with every member of the team, regardless of their location. This helps us to project a brand image that it’s unified and create a successful repeatable process. Being the owner doesn’t mean that we can’t collaborate with each other, of course, or provide feedback or share ideas. It just means that we are responsible for collaborating with all the relevant stakeholders and delivering on time. And this is extremely important because it ensures that when we launch an initiative it actually resonates with both regions. JT: To echo Belen’s points, there’s only three of us at Algolia and we’re supporting like 10+ different revenue roles: AE, SDR, SEs, SAs, CSM, renewals, partners, support. There’s plenty of them. We’re ultimately responsible for really the enablement of all customer-facing roles. This is a massive scope of work and the function itself includes a lot of different styles of work so we’re doing onboarding content management, ongoing trainings, development frameworks. It’s really easy to get lost in the initiatives and all of the tasks. So, in terms of structure, we’ve adopted a quasi-program management model. As Belen said, we’re collaboratively working on different programs. But we do it in a way that it caters to each of our individual skill sets and strengths. But at the end of the day, there’s always an owner for everything and that’s guaranteeing accountability. When it comes to prioritization, we utilize the Eisenhower matrix, which is basically a grid in four quadrants, and it helps us decide and prioritize tasks by urgency versus importance. This compliments where we are right now as a team, we’re maturing and we’re becoming more metric-driven. So, in addition to the Eisenhower matrix OKR’s, objective key results, those are our North Star. When we’re designing programs with a metric in mind, it’s a lot easier to focus and then ensure bandwidth across the entire rev org. SS: I think those are fabulous ways of tracking to make sure that teams are aligned on priorities and are marching towards the same goals. I want to switch gears a little bit though, because you guys do refer to your organization as revenue enablement. And from your perspective, how does that differ from sales enablement and what do you see as the core responsibilities of revenue enablement? MBE: So, in my opinion, everything changes. The scope, the responsibilities, the skill. And this is mainly because we not only focused on the sales rep, but actually the entire rev org both pre and post-sales. So, I think the key here is that we get to be the agents of change for the entire organization. We partner with the C-suite, with the front-line managers, and the main idea is to improve performance and get alignment across the board. If we were to draw a picture with all the teams in the rev org, enablement would be kind of like the cord that ties each of these teams together and allows for communication to flow. One analogy we always use is that the sales teams selling, right, it’s like a team sport. And I like to say that enablement is kind of like the assistant coach. It is our responsibility to understand each role to the court, how they impact the sales cycle, their responsibilities, we have to democratize best practices, create better synergies, and eventually lay down the path to this successful repeatable process, I mentioned before, to achieve sustained growth and our CEO, Bernadette shares this sentiment with us. Finally, in practical terms, I think we need to play devil’s advocate and make sure that every initiative that we launch is relatable to each of the teams and adds value to them, that they are able to act on it as soon as the program is launched. Jonas, I don’t know if you want to add something. JT: Yeah, absolutely. Yes, for sure. The primary difference is the scope. So, take sales enablement, for example, and multiply those responsibilities and roles that you’re supporting by X, that’s what we do. We’re supporting an entire customer-facing org and that’s not to say that sales enablement or revenue enablement is like harder than the other. But if you want to accelerate revenue enablement, you have to be really, really good at engaging your SMEs, your subject matter experts. I’ve never been a CSM, I’ve never been an SE, I’ve never been an SA, but we’re supporting these roles and we’re enabling these roles. And so, to be good at this, I think you really need to have a level of like intellectual humility. So being able to say, hey, I don’t know how to do something, but I know that I am good at engaging people and connecting people to the people that do know how to do it. So, it’s super important to leverage your managers and reps that are really good at what they’re doing. So, when you’re partnering with them to utilize their expertise or mastery of a subject, it makes it much easier to build revenue inclusive programs at scale. And that’s what I see. I think that’s what we all see at Algolia is one of the core responsibilities of revenue enablement, and it’s supporting the entire revenue organization, not just sales. So, everything we do is to support the underlying goal of customer-centricity. When we produce better sellers, it naturally creates a better buyer experience. And when we enable other customer-facing teams, customers experience the benefits of having a partner, not just a vendor. SS: Not just a vendor, but a partner. That’s fantastic. Now you mentioned creating a revenue enablement methodology. What are the core components of that methodology blend? MBE: Yes. So when our CRO asked us to train our reps on a methodology, we realized that all of the popular ones out there,  Challenger, SPIN, even MEDDPICC, that’s the one we use, were pretty much focused on the seller or presales in general. But as being revenue enablement, and trying to tie all of these teams together, we couldn’t just focus on a methodology that applied for half of the organization. We needed to have a common umbrella that connected both parts, right? Both pre and post-sales. And that’s how we came up with our custom methodology, which is called C2P2. And C2P2 stands for curiosity, connection, and positive paranoia. These are the three pillars that we use to guide our reps on how to approach each of their interactions with customers and prospects, but also internally with their colleagues and all of these, with the idea to become, as Jonas said before, a more customer-centric organization. So, I’ll briefly explain which of these pillars means. So, curiosity means that reps have to be genuinely interested in what our customers or prospects have to say. It means that we have to do research to prepare for calls, we have to ask better questions so that we can probe and get to the root of their challenges and understand really what it is that they’re trying to achieve. And finally, that we actively listen to what they are telling us and not just like ticking a box of like, oh, okay I asked that question, moving on to the next one. In terms of connection, it’s the ability to create healthy relationships with customers and with the colleagues. And these usually come naturally when you master that curiosity piece, because you need to be really good at delivering information and collaborating with people around you. And finally, we have positive paranoia, and this is more a sentiment of avoiding the “magical thinking” or “happy ears”, right? So many reps in customer-facing roles have this. Basically, positive paranoia is the state of mind that ensures we’re being proactive and we’re testing our assumptions of knowledge. Are we really talking to the champions? Do we really understand the impact we’re doing to the business? Does the customer see their ROI? Right, so many times we hear reps being confident that they are going to close the deal but then it doesn’t happen while positive paranoia addresses that. So, like when I look back, you know, people buy from people and with the recent COVID situation, this is even more important now than ever. We need to develop empathy for our customers and our colleagues as we’re all going through these strange times and the idea behind this methodology reflects that. Of course, we had no idea at the time that a pandemic was underway but their principle around this methodology was to ensure we had this empathy for the buyer and their journey and walk in their shoes. SS: I love that Belen, and I think you’re absolutely right. Empathy is so critical right now. I want to talk a little bit about how you guys went about creating and implementing this new methodology across the entire revenue organization. And Belen, if you don’t mind, I’d love to hand it back to you. MBE: Sure. So, to create this methodology, we contracted an external consultant. Her name is Misha from HumbleGrit Sales. I was super happy because she was my mentor when I first joined enablement. So, I was super happy to work with her and she did an amazing job. She helped us conduct interviews with our rev org, with the individual contributors. So, like with the reps, with the managers, with the execs, and basically, we wanted to understand where we win, where do we lose, and most importantly, the how, right? What are the skills and actions that make us succeed? In the end, we boil it down to those three pillars that I just mentioned. And so, the next step was to ensure that their vocabulary that we chose for the methodology resonated with all the teams and that they all felt that it could be applicable to their roles. So, for deployment, basically what we did, we gathered the global team at our first ever RKO, this is the revenue kickoff. And, this happened this past February, and since then, we’ve created consistency by focusing on a different part of C2P2 every month. So we would relate the topic of interest for that month with a letter or with a pillar and we would make the rep practice applying that skill to that topic. For example, the past April was collaboration between pre and post-sales under the connection pillar. And we talked about how we can better communicate and collaborate to provide not only the best customer experience, but also to find new opportunities for the business. SS: So far, I’d love to hear what has been the impact of implementing this custom methodology. Jonas I’d love to hear from you. JT: Absolutely. The immediate changes in behavior we’ve seen have been super positive. However, it’s a bit too soon to measure the full impact of our new methodology. It’s only been a few months since the revenue kickoff and when you throw in things like COVID-19 in the mix, the data can easily be misinterpreted. However, there are a few trends that we’ve noticed, and we do have some key takeaways as to what we’re seeing right now. I think number one from a quantitative perspective, we’re noticing improvements around talk time ratios and number of discovery questions being asked on calls. We use a call intelligence software to record calls, and these are a few of the metrics that we’re keeping an eye on. So, the methodology acts as a really nice reminder, the soft skills required in sales getting back to the basics, right? Things like active listening, asking follow-up questions to uncover the pain, asking clarifying questions to align on next steps. All of these things are really important and they can easily be overlooked, even though they’re essential to getting information that matters out of your buyers. So, I think that’s number one. Another thing we’ve seen is that there’s been a huge morale boost. So, when you give everyone in the revenue organization a common goal, which in our methodologies case is customer-centricity, it provides alignment around a shared mission to create the best buyer experience possible. This shared sense of purpose has definitely helped with morale, which is super important now in these times of everyone being remote and separated from their colleagues. It’s a really positive thing to be able to say to yourself my role means something and here’s why. You’re part of something bigger than a number. And the third piece that I think Belen did a really good job talking about earlier is that we now have a common language as a team. And so, one piece of our methodology is internal connection. So, we have amazing people from all sorts of sales and SaaS backgrounds, and the fact that we now have standardized criteria for what a champion is, this is huge, you know. We’re in the context of like, I think just enablement in general, as we’re shifting towards this more integrated view of revenue, it’s not just sales. Curiosity isn’t just for salespeople. CSMs need to be more curious in their roles as well to create better relationships with champions while customer-centricity is no longer only for CSMs it’s for everyone. SS: I love that. And I think by that is amazing that you guys found a methodology that works across the revenue organization so kudos to you guys on that. Thank you so much for joining us today, I really enjoyed our time. To our audience, thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders visit <a href="http://salesenablement.pro" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">salesenablement.pro</a>. If there’s something you’d like to share or a topic you’d like to learn more about, please let us know, we’d love to hear from you.

Episode 105: Belen Eglez and Jonas Taylor on Enabling the Entire Revenue Org

Jenna Cronin

Episode 36: Jenna Cronin and Maria Belen Eglez on Sales Enablement as a Strategic Consultant