on demand webinar

State of Revenue Enablement 2023

Quota attainment is down. Sales cycle length is up. Let’s face it, 2023 has been a slog for many GTM teams. However, amid the challenges lie silver linings; companies are prioritizing spend on sales tech, content is more influential than ever, and value selling is helping sellers bust through economic roadblocks.

Dr. Mary Shea

co-CEO, Mediafly

Kevin White

Director, CRM, Sales Process & Technology Enablement Sealed Air

Whitney Sieck

VP Revenue Enablement, DemandBase

Cameron Brain

CEO & Co-founder, Everyone Social

Summary

In this webinar we dissected the state of revenue enablement with just-released, exclusive insights that will help you turn 2023 challenges into 2024 opportunities.

We shared findings from our 2023 State of Revenue Enablement to help you understand:
  • How to adapt new buyer preferences and behaviors.
  • How to deploy content to drive buyer engagement.
  • What top-tier revenue intelligence looks like.
  • How value programs can overcome increased purchase scrutiny.
  • Generative AI use cases to prioritize for immediate and future impact.

Episode Transcript

00:00:03.980 –> 00:00:31.280
Matt Flug: Hi, everyone my name is Matt Fluug. I’m just gonna be in the background today. But just wanna let everyone know that this session is going to be recorded. And we’ll be sending out a sample, or we’ll be sending out the actual research. From media flies. First party research after the webinar today. With that for your questions in the chat or the QA. Section, I’ll be monitoring that. And I will turn it over to Mary and our fantastic panelists.

00:00:32.140 –> 00:00:46.169
Mary Shea: Well, thank you so much, Matt, and thank you all for joining us today. I am beyond excited to welcome the best in the business here today. So let me spend a few moments to welcome and introduce you to our panelists

00:00:46.270 –> 00:00:57.580
Mary Shea: first. I’d like to start with Cameron Brain, who is the CEO and co-founder of everyone. Social. Cameron’s a serial software entrepreneur leader. He hails from

00:00:57.590 –> 00:01:15.730
Mary Shea: Seattle, although he spent a lot of time building and developing his company in Utah, and his company’s called Everyone Social Cameron. You and I’ve known each other for almost a decade, I think, at this point so thrilled to have you join. And if you could just tell us a little bit about everyone social and what the company does.

00:01:15.780 –> 00:01:25.280
Cameron Brain: Sure. Yeah, thank you, Mary. It’s always always a pleasure doing anything with you and the team, and super excited to be a part of this. So thank you?

00:01:25.410 –> 00:01:32.969
Cameron Brain: yeah, we are a employee advocacy, brand advocacy platform. So we help companies activate their people

00:01:33.060 –> 00:01:44.759
Cameron Brain: to connect and engage and share on social and and that being really kind of the most efficient and authentic way to be on social people to people. And so, as you might imagine.

00:01:44.940 –> 00:02:03.720
Cameron Brain: many of our clients use us with their sales teams, and in some cases it in a in a pretty large and kind of scaled way. So salespeople becoming closer to marketing. Just a lot more organizational overlap. We see it our clients and excited to get into the research today that you guys have put together.

00:02:04.190 –> 00:02:08.830
Mary Shea: Thank you so much, Cameron, and let’s move to Whitney. Whitney. Seac is

00:02:09.150 –> 00:02:29.500
Mary Shea: probably, I think, one of the top revenue enablement leaders, practitioners globally in the world. She is a sought after keynote speaker. She’s a the head of revenue enablement at Demand base. We’ve had the opportunity to work together in the past. So it’s wonderful to have you with us here today, Whitney.

00:02:29.790 –> 00:02:55.020
Mary Shea: Thank you so much, Mary reunited, and it feels so good it surely surely does, and this will be the first of many, I think. And hope hope we find ourselves in the same city one of these days, so we can have a coffee or a Chardonnay. But anyway, tell us about a demand based. I think it’s a pretty well known brand, at least in in the tech world. But tell us a little bit about the company so that everyone knows and has some context from where you’re coming.

00:02:55.150 –> 00:03:20.900
Whitney Sieck: Yeah, absolutely. So I’m vice President revenue enablement at demand base and demand, based as a leader in account based marketing software, go to market and sales, intelligence tools, B, 2 B advertising and B 2 B data. So our mission is to transform the way that B Twob companies go to market. So it’s a mission that I’m incredibly passionate about being an enablement and helping that transformation internally within our organization.

00:03:21.030 –> 00:03:50.599
Mary Shea: Yeah, so that’s gotta be so motivating for you. And we feel the same way at mediafly, because, you know, we’re helping sellers, and everyone in the Goto market team be more effective. And what could be better than that in life? So I can hear your passion. Well, last but not least, I’d like to introduce Kevin White, who is with sealed air, and he is one of our customers, and I’m absolutely thrilled to introduce him to you. He’s director of Crm sales process and technology enablement at sealed air.

00:03:50.600 –> 00:03:57.569
Mary Shea: And Kevin, why don’t you tell us a little bit about your company and what you do day to day.

00:03:57.890 –> 00:04:25.899
Kevin White: Sure. So again, thanks for the invite. Glad to be here with everyone, I mean, I think people traditionally know seal. There now, now, see, really, as as a packaging company. Right? We have a lot of power brands out there like cryovac prismic liquid box. My my personal favorite, is double wrap. Everybody’s familiar with the pop, pop, pop! Right but we are kind of transitioning or reinventing ourselves into more of a product driven

00:04:26.020 –> 00:04:39.870
Kevin White: or from a product driven company to this new era of like automation and digital and packaging solutions. Right. My part of this whole role, right is partnering with both internal external

00:04:40.080 –> 00:05:03.869
Kevin White: customer facing leadership teams to kind of create value and leverage a lot of the expertise in the different areas throughout the business. In order to drive insights and gain some things to obviously hit that keyword of revenue growth. Things like that. So I’m excited to be here. Thanks for getting the memo on the green shirt. Well done, 2,

00:05:03.890 –> 00:05:32.500
Mary Shea: anyway. Thank you all for that background and for being here. And thank you everyone in the audience. I think it goes without saying that 2023 has been a pretty challenging, selling environment. But if you know me and any of my work well or a little bit well, you know that with challenge I always see opportunity and with challenge and opportunity combined. I see lots of opportunity for innovation. We talk a lot about innovation on the technology side, and we’ll certainly touch on that today, but

00:05:32.500 –> 00:05:40.990
Mary Shea: I think it’s really a time for innovation, and how we go to market. You already heard, you know, Kevin and and Whitney sort of allude to that already.

00:05:41.480 –> 00:05:51.480
Mary Shea: So with that, let’s kinda get into it. You know, research is one of my favorite things to do in life and yesterday. I’m really pleased that we released our

00:05:51.550 –> 00:06:10.920
Mary Shea: state of revenue enablement 2023. We’ll do one of these reports every year, so you can look for it consistently. And just to give you a little bit of background. What we did was we actually partnered with a third party research provider Danata, and they surveyed over 300 North American

00:06:10.920 –> 00:06:26.330
Mary Shea: revenue enablement and revenue practitioners and leaders across a range of industries at primarily large companies, large complex global brands for the most part. And I really designed the survey along with my colleague Matt, who you heard at the beginning

00:06:26.330 –> 00:06:53.809
Mary Shea: to really suss out or get to the heart of what some of these new trends are in buying and selling, and how organizations that support sellers and everyone in the Gotome market team are adjusting and adapting both from their technology strategy to process to a range of different topics. And one of the things I think you’ll find, and we’ll we’ll share some data today, and then certainly all have the report after is that

00:06:54.120 –> 00:07:17.910
Mary Shea: the best companies now are really starting to enable not just their direct salesforce, but you know, everyone in the go to market organization. Anyone who touches or interacts with a customer. And I see Whitney nodding her head. You know vigorously over there. So thank you for that support. I mean, I see I see a world, Whitney, and we may not be there today. I’m going a little bit off topic, Matt. So bear with me. But

00:07:17.910 –> 00:07:40.060
Mary Shea: where you can almost see, like your your legal team, your pro, your team that deals with procurement, getting enabled as well right, because everyone wants a seamless, frictionless experience, and no one on the buy side wants to tell someone on the supplier side that same story over and over again. Once you’ve told it, you want it to be memorialized and everyone to be on the same set of mail 3.

00:07:40.100 –> 00:08:03.320
Mary Shea: So anyway, it’s such an exciting time, anyway. What we found I’ll share with you a couple of things from the survey is that companies that are tracking to exceed their targets for 2,023. And this is self-reported, but it seems like folks are being pretty honest here. Number one. They’re enabling, not just sellers. They’re enabling everyone who is market-facing

00:08:03.320 –> 00:08:13.729
Mary Shea: erez agmoni. We also found that 75% of enterprise organizations are spending more than a million dollars on revenue enablement revenue technology and 250

00:08:13.760 –> 00:08:22.619
Mary Shea: we were in New York meeting with a soon-to-be customer yesterday, and they are spending multiple millions in in this realm.

00:08:22.860 –> 00:08:43.750
Mary Shea: The other thing we’re seeing is that. And we’ll talk a little bit about this at the end is that companies that are exceeding or tracking to exceed their goals are leaning into analytics and content analytics and deriving insights from bio behavioral activity. And then the final thing I want to touch on, and we’ll get into this later as well

00:08:43.750 –> 00:09:02.919
Mary Shea: is that companies that are tracking to exceed their revenue targets are experimenting with generative generative AI. So both on sort of the marketing and enablement side. And you know, certainly we’re still very nascent there. But there are a lot of things that this new technology can do to help us save time and ultimately

00:09:03.140 –> 00:09:07.730
Mary Shea: interact with customers and prospect in more meaningful ways. And by meaningful, I mean.

00:09:08.020 –> 00:09:32.590
Mary Shea: not this. Hello, Whitney. I hope this email finds you well and in good health. No, you’ve got to go in over the top and customize it, but certainly it can save, you know, 30 to 40 to 50% of your time. So anyway, that’s just a little bit of preamble on the research. We’ll let you all dig into it later. But let’s dive into some topics here with some of these experts. And

00:09:32.700 –> 00:09:52.059
Mary Shea: you know, when I was an analyst at Forrester. We spent a lot of time debating. You know. What? What does sales enablement mean? And now we’ve kind of put that behind us, and we’re talking about revenue enablement instead of sales enablement. We’ve undergone this shift of terminology. And I think it’s important to kind of talk about why

00:09:52.060 –> 00:10:16.739
Mary Shea: and what the impetus for that change was. But I can tell you that the leading research firms, both Gardner and Forrester, have closed the chapter on sales enablement, and they’re now referring to it exclusively as revenue enablement, and Whitney as someone who’s involved in the society that was formerly known as a Sales Enablement society tell us. Tell tell our audience here today, and folks on Melissa back 200.

00:10:16.830 –> 00:10:24.790
Mary Shea: How do you define revenue enablement? And and why is it important for companies to really shift their mindset away from sales enablement to revenge.

00:10:24.870 –> 00:10:48.279
Whitney Sieck: Yeah, absolutely. I’m really excited about this shift enablement in general to me is about maximizing human potential at scale. And this shift to revenue enablement expands that impact from just your traditional sellers to focus like you mentioned earlier on the entire customer journey and the outcomes that those engagements provide.

00:10:48.410 –> 00:10:54.469
Whitney Sieck: And so it’s so critical. And this in particular, for space organizations

00:10:54.600 –> 00:11:10.429
Whitney Sieck: moved from this growth at all costs momentum and strategies to really focus on efficiency. Right? We hear, do more with less all the time, and customer retention and expansion. That’s the group that has the spotlight right now.

00:11:10.430 –> 00:11:36.150
Whitney Sieck: And so our teams, our revenue enablement teams, are agents of change within a business, and you can’t have true transformation unless everyone’s along that journey with you. So I am so excited to see this shift start to spread like wildfire, and for companies to be on board with calling it what it is. Because I think for a while, like SEO stopped people from using the term revenue enablement for a bit. Yeah.

00:11:36.210 –> 00:11:50.179
Mary Shea: yeah, absolutely fantastic. And I was actually, feverishly taking notes there, because I really loved a couple of things that you said which is really thinking about it as maximizing human potential. That’s absolutely, you know. Wonderful.

00:11:50.200 –> 00:11:51.980
Mary Shea: So thank you for that.

00:11:52.170 –> 00:12:00.870
Mary Shea: Kevin and Cameron. Let’s start with Kevin. Tell tell us a little bit about what revenue enablement means at your organization and how you’re thinking about it.

00:12:01.780 –> 00:12:27.040
Kevin White: Yeah, I mean for for me, right? And and here at see I look at. It is kind of the same way of like, it’s not sales and service. It’s not sales enablement anymore. Right? It’s like, how do we create an alignment between it, all of these different parts of the organization that are literally interacting, both directly or behind the scenes with customers, whether it’s sales reaching out to that finance. Hr. Legal. It supply chain.

00:12:27.040 –> 00:12:37.050
Kevin White: Who then responds, and then we respond back to the customer. Right? It’s it’s the partnership and the operational effectiveness that if you don’t have it between marketing sales and service.

00:12:37.150 –> 00:12:55.089
Kevin White: II just don’t. I just don’t know if you’re gonna get to where you want to go right like I have the thing of instead of do more with less. It’s drive, more sort of doing more. Just drive more, whether it’s driving, change or driving, whatever your keyword is, or buzzword you wanna throw in there. But that’s kind of how we’re looking at it.

00:12:55.530 –> 00:13:16.019
Mary Shea: Awesome, awesome. And and Cameron, I know. Everyone social works with very, very large, complex global organizations. How are your customers thinking about revenue enablement? Are they thinking about it in those in the in the way that we just discussed, or are you bringing them along?

00:13:16.300 –> 00:13:42.310
Cameron Brain: You know it depends on the client, as as everyone here knows. And you know, there’s nothing sweeter than working with a real visionary organization where you know, even as the vendor you learn more about where things are headed from them. Then you’re necessarily even bringing to the table. We have some clients that are very large that I would put in that category, but we also have some clients that are very small. You know hundreds of employees where

00:13:42.310 –> 00:13:48.350
Cameron Brain: kind of enablement is really being forcefully driven by the CEO, which I think is a great kind of

00:13:48.370 –> 00:13:56.290
Cameron Brain: you know, Petri, dish for like what could be possible right? There’s there’s, I think, challenges around kind of scaling and so forth. But

00:13:56.340 –> 00:14:23.320
Cameron Brain: I mean, Mary, you know our view is we as a company, didn’t really build our till the tool for one particular group. Our our view is, everyone in the company is connected with people that your company wants to reach current customers, prospects, partners, analysts. I just presented today, on the whole value of social as it relates to employer branding and and future hiring. They’re all there. Your people are all connected to them. So so our view is.

00:14:23.320 –> 00:14:35.950
Cameron Brain: everyone has a role to play. Of course, not the least of which is, you know, sales and everyone directly attached with dollars. So definitely seeing it moving in that direction. But it’s, you know, still early adopter days. I think

00:14:36.660 –> 00:14:55.909
Mary Shea: it certainly is. And I think that’s why it’s really important to have conversations like we’re having today, and why I’m so appreciative of the leadership that everyone on this panel provides the industry and the market. So thank you. Thank you for that Cameron and and Whitney and Kevin. Let’s talk about insights and analytics and content

00:14:55.910 –> 00:15:25.689
Mary Shea: mit Ctl, and you know. So the research found that companies that are actually monitoring their content consumption analytics. And by that we mean how buyers and sellers are in, you know, engaging with content. When I think about customers, I think about your your, your salesforce, and your folks who are actually using and getting that content quickly and modifying it according to brand guidelines and delivering it in an immersive fashion, and then on the buy side, the buyers who are consuming it, sharing it, spend time on it, going back to certain pages.

00:15:26.460 –> 00:15:36.740
Mary Shea: What? What? What we found now, as we’re in a period of pretty significant transformation is that now only about 5%

00:15:36.910 –> 00:16:06.359
Mary Shea: of a buyer’s time is actually spent directly with a seller. I’ve been talking about this for a long time, and II keep telling almost anyone who’s willing to listen to me that the time that the seller has to impact and influence that deal in the favor of your company is narrowing and narrowing, and as a result of that the level of engagement needs to be so much higher. There’s no Mulligans really, in this world. And so, you know, that’s been a very important theme and topic. But as we think about content.

00:16:06.410 –> 00:16:09.680
Mary Shea: the way I’m starting to think about it is that

00:16:10.130 –> 00:16:14.940
Mary Shea: content needs to do the selling for your organization when you’re not

00:16:14.980 –> 00:16:30.620
Mary Shea: in the room. And so we’re seeing now from Gartner’s research that the sales process is 95% of it is taking place without the seller and without the seller being in the room. So, Cameron, how? How does everyone social help

00:16:30.690 –> 00:16:40.720
Mary Shea: Sellers? And I guess everyone in the organization is you’ve read Dan Pink’s book like everyone’s selling right? How how does it help? How does your company help

00:16:40.860 –> 00:17:08.069
Cameron Brain: stay top of mind in between those big macro milestones that happen. Yeah, I mean, I love that. I mean, I feel like that number puts everything in perspective, right? So like, you know, a buyer is out there, maybe looking for some things. You know. Buyers there, there’s no law that requires a buyer be rigorous about, you know, looking at all the solutions, so they may be looking at you. They’re probably looking at competitors they’re spending, I think the figure was like less than 5 on average.

00:17:08.349 –> 00:17:29.829
Cameron Brain: And then, you know. So you figure they’re looking at 3 or 4, or whatever you may have the exact numbers. But you know, basically that translates to 80% of their time being kind of like a self guided tour of, you know, research and and consuming content and things. And so I think the things that we see from. We do this ourselves as a company, but we see it as well with our with our leading clients is.

00:17:29.830 –> 00:17:50.910
Cameron Brain: you know, they’re looking at those 2 buckets in terms of how can they? How can they better influence the 80% of time that people are just floating out there? Right? Content social like. I think it always need to be questioning. You know where the frontier is, because if you’re doing the thing that everyone else is doing. It’s reversion to the mean, you know, in terms of performance.

00:17:50.910 –> 00:18:01.570
Cameron Brain: And then, as far as that 5%, that window, I mean, we’ve had, you know, and I’m sure many on this call have this experience, too. We’ve we’ve had, you know, multi $100,000 deals that

00:18:01.880 –> 00:18:21.689
Cameron Brain: really, in reality it came down to one call right. One review presentation. Rfp, you know. Th, they take different forms. But you know it was a lengthy process that that was was very short. So how do you make it, count? Leading up to that? And then, of course, in the moment, you know, when you actually do have that opportunity, so

00:18:22.030 –> 00:18:30.489
Mary Shea: I’ll I’ll pause there. Yeah, that’s that’s really wonderful. I love that. And we’ll circle back to this, the concept of the on-site meeting and the role that’s playing and

00:18:30.520 –> 00:18:41.659
Mary Shea: sales cycles. I’m really looking forward to hearing from from Whitney and Kevin. On that, and and some of the trends that are happening there. But, Kevin, let’s go back to the analytics.

00:18:41.700 –> 00:18:49.000
Mary Shea: how does seal their approach? Content analytics. And you know it’d be interesting sort of where you

00:18:49.090 –> 00:18:52.880
Mary Shea: where you are today, and and and what your end game is as well.

00:18:53.120 –> 00:19:13.930
Kevin White: My end game. I never have an end game. No, I mean, I mean, listen, playing on part of what Cameron just said, too. Right like in in today’s world. And as a former seller, right? I mean, I spent years in the field. So I today’s world. I think people are not only looking at content analytics as we are.

00:19:13.930 –> 00:19:39.170
Kevin White: for 2 reasons. One is like, how do you effectively gain new customers with content in the pre-sales world? But then maintaining customers right like to me? Part of it is also just utilizing, content to maintain the relationship. So you’re not having to spend a lot of the sales reps time. But in my mind, in a way that we’re looking at the content specific back to your question, like, without really good content

00:19:39.170 –> 00:19:51.819
Kevin White: analytics. And Mary knows this is almost like a teed up question for me, because I am a I am a a massive proponent of content. Analytics, as my famous phrase is, like, it’s the nucleus of everything

00:19:51.820 –> 00:20:16.229
Kevin White: like without really good content analytics. You can’t have things like proper coaching and good marketing efforts. Attribution. I mean, I start to look and and think of all of this areas around sales, planning and targeted promotions from the portfolio departments, and all of these things that literally, without the ability to know how our customers are interacting and not only external. But I look at the internal people as customers.

00:20:16.230 –> 00:20:27.299
Kevin White: right? How are internal people interacting with the content and understanding? What are they using, and how are they using it? Ii just don’t think you can be an agile company in today’s world if you’re not

00:20:27.330 –> 00:20:32.320
Kevin White: tracking content analytics as far as future state. I mean, that’s why I’m

00:20:32.340 –> 00:20:39.510
Kevin White: I’m happy to be part of your ecosystem, right? Like I think the future is almost unknown in some of the content analytics.

00:20:39.540 –> 00:20:48.839
Kevin White: I think the things that are gonna be available 3 years from now. We can’t even think of today, which which is, gonna be really exciting right for for people and geeks like myself.

00:20:48.850 –> 00:21:07.129
Mary Shea: Yes, we will have much to talk about over the upcoming years, for sure. Well, let’s let’s stay with the content, Tom topic, you know, we asked our survey. We’re still fond. It’s about what the top challenges that that they had when it comes to content management. When I say content management, I mean the ability to for individuals to quickly access

00:21:07.130 –> 00:21:20.660
Mary Shea: mit Ctl and modify and deliver content, and then have rich signals delivered back to the business and to content creators. So they know what content is moving the dial, and which one what content is ultimately contributing to wins but 250

00:21:20.900 –> 00:21:32.680
Mary Shea: you know some of the some of the big challenges is it takes too long to to find it. You know, when I was at Forrester, we did research that found that the average seller spent about 9 HA week

00:21:32.680 –> 00:21:48.860
Mary Shea: mit Ctl and trying to find content that could be emailing their friend or trying to pull it off of one of their devices. And, you know, going back and forth. And so when you have a large sales force, you can imagine how that adds up and the lack of productivity that’s caused there. But the other thing, when we talk to marketers is a real

00:21:48.860 –> 00:22:03.169
Mary Shea: challenge around, enabling brand consistency, especially when you have an increasingly large distributed salesforce or use ecosystem partners right? The further and further away from you get from the epicenter the less consistent. Your brand is 100

00:22:03.170 –> 00:22:19.219
Mary Shea: and then obviously there. For companies that have compliance issues. That’s a huge challenge. Whitney, how how do you think about some of these challenges? And how have you and your, you know, helped your teams overcome them in, you know, currently and in the past.

00:22:19.290 –> 00:22:35.119
Whitney Sieck: Yeah, I mean, all of these hit home for me, Mary, like these are common challenges that I feel like I’ve experienced here, as well as at pre previous companies as well. One of the themes that I glean from it is actually trust, trust in content.

00:22:35.120 –> 00:22:52.159
Whitney Sieck: and it sounds like a really soft challenge to add on. But motivation and inspiration are critical for changing hearts and minds to drive adoption right. And so when you are fixing some of these challenges, you’re solving some of the trust issues that reps may have with content.

00:22:52.160 –> 00:23:09.150
Whitney Sieck: And my team right now is on a mission to what we are calling. Shield the field, and we’re cutting the noise and some of the decision fatigue that comes along with having so many options out there to choose from. And so we’re, I mean just to be cute again. We’re going back to basic without being basic

00:23:09.590 –> 00:23:24.429
Whitney Sieck: to take it one step forward. Sellers are also looking for really prescriptive guidance. On what content to use when and they want proof that it leads to content influenced revenue results.

00:23:24.570 –> 00:23:41.840
Whitney Sieck: And so what we’re doing tactically is we’re bringing our content marketing into the customer journey workshops. And we’re identifying what are the value add gives that we provide the team at each stage, and we’re gonna be closely monitoring their utilization

00:23:41.870 –> 00:23:51.710
Whitney Sieck: and their correlation to close one deals. And I think by making your marketing teams true Co. Owners of the enablement content management tool

00:23:51.720 –> 00:23:54.020
Whitney Sieck: is really critical to success.

00:23:54.250 –> 00:24:18.699
Whitney Sieck: We recently built a vision for a 3 year roadmap maturity model. And we used design thinking principles to identify what the impact could be on a variety of different experiences from the users themselves to managers, to enablement leaders, and then to the marketing experience, too. And what this does is it gives us the shared North star

00:24:18.770 –> 00:24:22.929
Whitney Sieck: to action against and truly optimize our investment.

00:24:23.930 –> 00:24:41.020
Mary Shea: Wow! I’m ready to just like, come over and come work for you. But I actually love my job here. But you’re you’re so inspiring. And there’s just a couple of things I love about what you said. You know. Shield the field, have a North star and build trust. I was talking with a customer yesterday, and

00:24:41.020 –> 00:25:00.320
Mary Shea: I think their salesforce has a lot of fatigue from so many different tools, so many different asks, and you have got to rebuild, trust, and really invest in some of the change management and show them what the with them is right. If if a salesperson doesn’t know what’s in it for them? It’s very difficult to drive adoption.

00:25:00.780 –> 00:25:10.440
Mary Shea: That’s absolutely right. Yeah. So, so, Kevin, how? What are what are some of the the top challenges that you know you’re working on with your team. And and how are you overcoming them?

00:25:12.580 –> 00:25:16.379
Kevin White: I mean, it’s it’s kind of the same area, right? I mean here we’re

00:25:16.590 –> 00:25:28.969
Kevin White: we’re not. Only we’re siloed in a lot of areas as it comes from a technology. We’re a big company right in in in. We’re we’re transforming. We are slimming down. We’re trying to automate as much stuff as possible.

00:25:29.070 –> 00:25:56.709
Kevin White: In order to alleviate the reps. I mean, II reading through the survey results. You’re just like you’re nodding your head at a lot of these things like, Yeah, they don’t have good cell. They don’t have a lot of selling time. They’re overly burdened on all these areas. Like we’re not. We’re not collecting the correct data, or we’re collecting the correct data. And we’re not. We’re not driving the right insights out of the data to actually drive tactical decisions. I mean, E, analytics is becoming this thing that’s just like a buzzword

00:25:56.710 –> 00:26:07.969
Kevin White: analytics. Right? But to me it’s it’s what insights are we able to pull out of it? Either my team or other parts of the company. In order to drive tactical decisions to to grow

00:26:08.540 –> 00:26:15.980
Kevin White: the full stop we just need, we need to be able to grow. All companies want to grow right. And I think that’s where the the

00:26:16.010 –> 00:26:22.960
Kevin White: the analytics and the ability to capture information in a way that benefits everybody

00:26:23.000 –> 00:26:31.550
Kevin White: and then deliver it to a sales rep so they can go out and utilize it in their in their world. Is only going to be beneficial.

00:26:31.720 –> 00:26:47.129
Mary Shea: Yeah, absolutely. I think you know as you think about the sales rep, and and that’s probably a whole other rep webinar that we talk about how the sales rep is changing. But you’ve really got to package it up in a way that is consumable quickly. And they can actually action. The insights that you’re giving them.

00:26:47.140 –> 00:26:58.709
Mary Shea: So thank you for that. So when I think about analytics, of course, we can have analytics without data. And that brings me to sort of our next macro topic here, which is, you know.

00:26:58.970 –> 00:27:20.829
Mary Shea: revenue intelligence. So the ability to really drive a leading revenue enablement organization. You’ve got to have intelligence. And so, you know, during my time as an analyst at Forrester. It was about 7 years, I noticed, over and over and and and in industry as well. Everyone wants to collect data. And so we’re starting to see the lines between, you know, revenue tech

00:27:21.230 –> 00:27:34.040
Mary Shea: enablement intelligence are starting to blur. You’re seeing, you know, a lot of vendor overlap and I’m sure we’ll see much more consolidation in in the future.

00:27:34.610 –> 00:27:35.370
Mary Shea: but

00:27:35.650 –> 00:27:38.050
Mary Shea: let’s talk a little bit about

00:27:38.100 –> 00:27:48.720
Mary Shea: about it, about intelligence. You know our study. We found that a top challenge amongst revenue teams is silo data, or people using different sources of data.

00:27:48.760 –> 00:28:11.650
Mary Shea: And it’s really challenging. What we found was that the top performers, or 70% of respondents from the recent survey are actually prioritizing den vendors who can provide a single data lake or unified source of data, because the days of being able to pull and extract from different silos that it’s not unnecessary. And every time you’re doing a bilateral sync.

00:28:11.670 –> 00:28:26.479
Mary Shea: you’re, you know. There you possibly have errors. Right? So let’s start with you again, Kevin, knowing that you have a pretty large complex organization. And even you use multiple Crm systems, which

00:28:26.530 –> 00:28:36.960
Mary Shea: may be the bane of your existence. But, you know, tell us a little bit about how you’re dealing with this silo data challenge. And is it? Is it a conundrum for you?

00:28:37.170 –> 00:28:49.419
Kevin White: Yeah, I mean, it’s it’s one of those things where, like, I think sometimes people, you know, when when I talk to them, and they start looking at the way that we do things, you know. Again, I did not overly repeat too much of what I just said it.

00:28:49.740 –> 00:29:07.580
Kevin White: Large company, right we are. We are absolutely in a in a current state, where we are slimming down or transforming the tech stack. Right? Be, but in lieu of that happening, the end game. Whenever that will be, we are very much siloed right? And because of that, you know, we, we have

00:29:07.840 –> 00:29:32.089
Kevin White: silo data that we’re finding ways to pull together right? So that we can manipulate it offline. I mean it. It just becomes a burden of of how do you drive all of this information together to actually utilize it? Right again? You can’t be my favorite word of agile. Because in today’s world, that’s literally what we all live in and and we just can’t do things that

00:29:32.100 –> 00:30:01.789
Kevin White: I think need to be done, or we’re working on. Because if you’re taking weeks to manipulate the data by the time you’re done, you’re you’re not using live data. So the next thing. You know, you’ve made actions, or you’ve made decisions off data that is not live right? And we are leaps out of where I thought we would be. And we’re certainly on a really good path to get where we need to be. But yes, having multiple Crms and a few other technologies on Prem is definitely a

00:30:01.790 –> 00:30:14.299
Kevin White: an issue. The only other thing I’ll say is what I find interesting between the the survey and some of the other commentaries so far is it’s also interesting that like, there’s global data. And there’s regional data.

00:30:14.390 –> 00:30:26.559
Kevin White: right? And I think we’re starting to identify that there are certain data points that have to be standardized globally with an allowance for some regional differentiation between them. Right?

00:30:26.650 –> 00:30:45.369
Mary Shea: That’s a really great point. I mean, it’s the same thing in in in marketing, right? You have to have sort of consistency at a holistic level. But if you don’t have practitioners in the field of whether it’s in Asia or continent in Europe, or what have you? You’re going to be missing? Some of the message. So thanks. Thanks for bringing that in.

00:30:45.370 –> 00:31:03.279
Mary Shea: Well knowing that I’ll like to sort of envision the future. Let’s let’s take a little bit of a journey. I’m gonna ask Whitney to take it with me. What does data, Nirvana look for you like for you, Whitney, and being really honest, where is demand based on this continuum of having clean, complete robust

00:31:03.280 –> 00:31:32.689
Whitney Sieck: fire seller behavioral data. Oh, man, I mean, II wish I could fix my face because I’m sure through this last conversation, like I’ve started itching. But data, I feel, is like the bane of enablement existence like you mentioned. But it is so critical in making the leap from a reactive to strategic function, and so I’m only 5 months in at demand base. We do have a long way to go towards Nirvana, and you heard me mention earlier, like the maturity model concept.

00:31:32.720 –> 00:32:00.650
Whitney Sieck: I mean, right now, I’ll take us moving from ad hoc chasing of metrics to moving to repeatable reports as a win. And yeah, I really, I understand the need and the value here. So I actually have a dedicated resource on my team to our enablement tech stack and our analytics. And what we’ve done is we started with establishing, like, what are the baselines identifying? What data do we currently have? And

00:32:00.650 –> 00:32:10.879
Whitney Sieck: what we found is that we have access to a lot of lagging indicators, but those don’t necessarily help us understand, like how to pivot and adjust our approach.

00:32:10.880 –> 00:32:36.970
Whitney Sieck: And so, like my conference joke is like enablement needs leading indicators to be able to make those adjustments. But what we end up with is lacking. Indicators most of the time where we may not currently be tracking something. So the steps we’re taking are to become absolute best friends with our Rev. Ops team and to calibrate with leaders on what good looks like, and a consistent way to measure that success and set really clear expectations.

00:32:37.250 –> 00:33:02.739
Cameron Brain: Amazing. Yeah, really, I really love how you’re thinking about that. And and Cameron, I know you know you, you and I’ve had many, many philosophical conversations over the years, or your thoughtful person. How how do you and your your customers think about about data and intelligence? What’s on your mind right now, definitely leading indicators? I mean, I think, our focus is, you know, in particular, trying to

00:33:02.890 –> 00:33:32.680
Cameron Brain: shed more light on what’s actually happening on the networks themselves. You know our domain, of course, being being social, all the tools, you know have been there. If someone engages with your stuff out there and ends up back on your site and fills out a form, or, you know, does anything. Those those bits have have been there from cookies to utm parameters to, you know, Crm, marketing, automation, etc., to to understand when they arrive on your site. But so much of you know we’re talking about that like, how do you influence the 80 right

00:33:32.710 –> 00:34:02.390
Cameron Brain: networks themselves? D prioritize content? That includes links, you know. They don’t want their members to simply see everything that takes them outside of Linkedin, or takes them outside of X or Facebook or whatever. So a friend of mine kind of termed the future of he’s he’s re huge pioneer in the world of it, as SEO. We kind of term the future 0 click marketing. Right? So posting images, posting videos, posting long context, we all do this right on Linkedin, and we see the results. We see the increased engagement, because.

00:34:02.390 –> 00:34:07.780
Cameron Brain: literally, algorithmically, it prioritizes that above other types of content. So

00:34:08.040 –> 00:34:13.399
Cameron Brain: I think, you know, helping companies understand in particular sellers, you know. Understand?

00:34:13.429 –> 00:34:32.380
Cameron Brain: For their given accounts. What are these people doing out on the networks? Because, frankly, by the time they get to your site, or they may never come to your site or do the thing that you really wanted them to do from a conversion perspective. I think one of our clients put this best it was Amazon, and they said,

00:34:32.380 –> 00:34:46.149
Cameron Brain: we over rotated on demand, Jen, the last few years, which you know, I take that as kind of a statement across pretty much every company that that we work with, they said. Right now, our priority for the next year is awareness, like we need to reach the people.

00:34:46.150 –> 00:34:56.520
Cameron Brain: And this is Amazon, right? If Amazon has an awareness problem, everyone has an awareness problem, there’s just so much noise. There’s so much content that no one is ever gonna see or take action on.

00:34:56.520 –> 00:35:20.570
Cameron Brain: You know. How do you effectively connect with the people that you’re trying to reach? And then how do you know it? Right from a data perspective? So that’s that’s really our focus is is really working with sales teams to help them understand of all this stuff they’re putting out there. You know. How is that driving connections? How is that driving engagement? And using that as really a leading indicator for them to potentially, then take action through an outreach or something more direct.

00:35:20.840 –> 00:35:23.590
Mary Shea: Yeah, awesome, awesome. Thank you for that.

00:35:23.780 –> 00:35:47.730
Mary Shea: So let’s move on to talk about growth. And you know, Whitney mentioned sort of focused a little bit on the install base and driving growth through the you know, that’s a very popular strategy. Right now, when you find yourself in an environment where it’s the economic headwinds are, you’re facing the economic headwinds. The other thing we’re also facing is really the increasing digitization of the entire

00:35:47.730 –> 00:36:12.020
Mary Shea: buying and selling process. So if you when you read my report, you’ll see that 60% of revenue practitioners and leaders now are plurals what we call in marketing Gen. Z. Or or millennials, right? Digital natives, folks who are very comfortable with self discovery and engaging in digital formats. Gartner says that. You know, in the future, most of these interactions between sellers and buyers are gonna take place in digital

00:36:12.120 –> 00:36:18.260
Mary Shea: selling rooms. I mean, it’s very exciting. And then simultaneously, as you think about the

00:36:18.290 –> 00:36:41.610
Mary Shea: growth at all costs behind us, and more sustainable pragmatic growth that companies of all shapes and sizes now are embracing. It’s it’s tough for sellers. It’s tough for sellers. Whitney, Kevin Cameron, sell cycles are longer. You’ve got more buyers that are involved in the process with competing in different agendas. Often they’re usually distributed because no one’s really in headquarters.

00:36:41.630 –> 00:36:52.289
Mary Shea: And then what we’re finding is that procurement and finance are inserting themselves early and often into deal cycles. So

00:36:53.040 –> 00:37:06.800
Mary Shea: I wanna talk about, you know, and and maybe we’ll start with you, Whitney, cause I’m I know you’ve been thinking about this probably for a while. Now, how have have has the organization that you’re part of, and and other ones previously changed their go to market approach. As a result of these

00:37:06.830 –> 00:37:09.639
Mary Shea: dynamics that are full on in play.

00:37:10.830 –> 00:37:37.949
Whitney Sieck: Well, I think we’re still in progress right like this year is really this transformative time where we’re all evaluating like, how do we go about that? What strategy do we want to deploy? Because if we try to approach these problems with the same strategies that we’ve done in the past, which is what Ceos cr sales people are familiar with. If we try to put those same solutions in play. We’re not gonna see the same results, because this is a different beast we’re dealing with.

00:37:37.950 –> 00:37:52.410
Whitney Sieck: But it’s a bit invisible. So the way that we’re navigating this is we’re watching really closely at velocity over productivity. To understand, like, where in the sales process do we need to focus. And where do we need to pivot?

00:37:52.410 –> 00:38:11.340
Whitney Sieck: So I think that’s the biggest strategy I have right now, that’s been a shift. But the other thing is, you know, taking a look at like, how do you balance organic growth and inorganic growth within a company like there’s other strategies and other levers you can pull in order to continue to hit that motion

00:38:11.810 –> 00:38:24.099
Mary Shea: really like that in when we think about our own growth at mediafly, we’re really looking at really 3 primary streams which is consistent, repeatable over production on the organic side, so primarily direct sales.

00:38:24.290 –> 00:38:31.939
Mary Shea: we have a channel that we’re igniting with wonderful partners. Sap is one that we can speak of. It’s been a long term partner of us.

00:38:32.000 –> 00:38:52.930
Mary Shea: We’ll be investing more in the Channel for sure. In the upcoming times, and then M. And A, we continue to, you know, bring on companies that can increase the value, both the depth and breadth of value that we’re providing to our customer base. And yes, M. And A can also add incremental AR to the business. So very, very well, said.

00:38:52.930 –> 00:39:04.219
Mary Shea: yeah. So so, so, Kevin, talk to us a little bit about sort of this cost reduction cost ability, types of environment that we find ourselves in, and how does it translate it? It’s still there.

00:39:05.480 –> 00:39:11.159
Kevin White: I mean, you know we we’ve had a few conversations on this in general. I mean, I look at it.

00:39:11.710 –> 00:39:19.379
Kevin White: There’s 2, really. There’s 2 areas right? There’s one of them in my mind. There’s cost reduction right? Then there’s also cost ability

00:39:19.410 –> 00:39:29.730
Kevin White: or or maintaining the cost right overall. Right? The customers are not looking again. I’m I’m an old sales guy, right? So customers are not looking to necessarily reduce their spend.

00:39:29.830 –> 00:39:44.329
Kevin White: But they’re not necessarily looking to increase it either. Right? It’s more of a status quo. How are they going to continue to do what they need to do without having any of those variables change right? I do have to say, going back to one of the things, though, about like

00:39:44.420 –> 00:39:54.380
Kevin White: the way we engage with new customers, or even existing customers. Right is is taking it out of the sellers again, sellers only there’s only so many hours in a week.

00:39:54.440 –> 00:40:21.779
Kevin White: Right, and and I’m a big proponent. My boss knows this of the the Pre. And post sale like, are we doing enough? No, I don’t think I would ever say, we’re doing enough either way. But to me it’s the pre and post cell activities right? Because I mean, I’ll be frank post Covid post now, and into what you just said at the kickoff of this section here, with the the digital meeting rooms like an in person meeting

00:40:21.940 –> 00:40:28.610
Kevin White: with a customer in today’s world has got is worth 2 or 3 x what? It used to be

00:40:28.830 –> 00:40:52.299
Kevin White: right because you have to find a way to get them through your content, or your emails, or what your conversations to be excited enough to go through the rigamar role of getting them into your building. So then, in our world, in our industry to do the analysis, to do the Pva’s to do these things. Because if if you can’t do the exciting part, I don’t think you’re gonna get into the building.

00:40:52.300 –> 00:41:00.520
Kevin White: And in person meetings today I don’t know. To other people are just. They seem harder, and when you get it. You feel like you’ve almost won.

00:41:00.860 –> 00:41:03.540
Mary Shea: and you haven’t even won yet.

00:41:03.680 –> 00:41:30.270
Mary Shea: I know. Well, we salespeople do like to feel good. So I think feeling like you’ve won is a good thing. Kevin. But yeah, it’s it’s such a. This is a fascinating topic, and it kind of brings me back to 2,017 when I was at Forrester and I wrote a blog, and then a report following that that really looked at the future of the Onsite meeting, and my prediction then, was the Onsite meeting would have. It’s on sku

00:41:30.270 –> 00:41:51.030
Mary Shea: buyers would actually pay for that meeting because they would be so rare and unusual, and that they would be driven by the buyer, not just a metric that the sales manager put in salesforce. And so the salespeople actually had to deliver that metric in order to not get, you know, in trouble in their pipeline meetings. And of course, you know, if you read Forrester, you know half of what we do. There is is

00:41:51.060 –> 00:41:57.330
Mary Shea: spark provocative conversations. But I think it’s really interesting, Kevin, because.

00:41:57.830 –> 00:42:15.330
Mary Shea: you know, companies are closing 7 figure deals, and I’m not saying they’re doing it without a meeting. But there may have one or 2 meetings where there may be 30 to 40 that are happening digitally and virtually. And how much more productive is that for everybody? I think it’s actually a really, really good thing.

00:42:15.360 –> 00:42:37.850
Mary Shea: Cameron, talk about talk about your business. How are you seeing on site off site meetings play out in your business. And and what do you all do to keep the momentum going? Yeah. Well, I think some great comments here. I think we’re focusing on channel for sure conversation about a year ago with a very sophisticated hedge fund

00:42:37.860 –> 00:42:42.210
Cameron Brain: that basically just said, we’re telling all of our companies like

00:42:42.490 –> 00:42:52.259
Cameron Brain: prioritize channel. Right? That’s kind of thing. You know better together. Not all of us are consolidated solutions. So that’s certainly, you know a way to kind of combat that

00:42:52.270 –> 00:42:58.429
Cameron Brain: I think. I’ve spent the last week and a half doing in person meetings. And

00:42:58.480 –> 00:43:25.450
Cameron Brain: I you know, as as a part time seller myself, I absolutely love doing them. It does take, I think, some amount of innovation to kinda make it happen. I mean, for for many of these needs there are existing customers. But innovation is kind of the word that comes to mind for me and for our clients in terms of really all aspects of the business. I mean, this is a period of time where everyone on this call everyone I talk with, especially in the technology world.

00:43:25.580 –> 00:43:35.010
Cameron Brain: has to fight for survival and success. You know, growth is challenging. Retention is challenging.

00:43:35.010 –> 00:43:58.400
Cameron Brain: and you know, we’re not simply, I think, gonna do that by reordering the deck chairs right? Like some things have to change some approaches have to be revised. You said something in the chat, Mary, that you may be talking about something slightly different, but but this to me, is on top of my minds, on the top of many of our customers. Mind the future of enablement being a C-suite that has proven to be just a

00:43:58.400 –> 00:44:08.079
Cameron Brain: really really fantastic arrow in our quiver in the quiver of a number of our clients. you know. If the question is, how do you get someone’s attention?

00:44:08.490 –> 00:44:27.490
Cameron Brain: No one wants to talk to anyone more than the CEO, and that sounds perhaps like extremely statistical for me to say that. But on a statistical basis, right? If you’re if you’re sending outbound communications. The results have been just absolutely tremendous. So that’s that’s one, perhaps little tactic that we see very successful right now.

00:44:28.580 –> 00:44:52.440
Mary Shea: Great great comments and I’ll I’ll just sort of jump in there as well again, not to seem egotistical myself. But we’ve had to really rethink and restructure our demand. Gen, approach. Yeah, given the new dynamics that we’ve been talking about today as well as many that we haven’t even touched on. And one of the things that we’re doing is actually, we’ve got a team that’s reaching out to set

00:44:52.440 –> 00:45:21.950
Mary Shea: 2030 min. No, commerce calls with me directly, and I’m you know, directly involved in helping the team generate leads and opportunities. Conversation. 90% of the time does not go into anything that has to do with media fly, but we often find a common ground, and that results in some next steps there. So yeah, really interesting to to hear you say that Cameron and we’ve got to think very, very creatively in this world where it’s really difficult

00:45:22.100 –> 00:45:26.140
Mary Shea: to to win business with standard tactics.

00:45:26.860 –> 00:45:36.880
Mary Shea: Well, we’re going to be wrapping up here soon, and I want to leave a little bit of time hopefully for some audience questions. But I think I’d be very remiss if we had a webinar, we didn’t talk about

00:45:36.890 –> 00:45:43.830
Mary Shea: generative AI So I mentioned and referred to the study we’ve got

00:45:44.060 –> 00:46:00.950
Mary Shea: looked at 44% of organizations that are experimenting with generate generative AI are more likely to hit their targets for 2,023 than those that are not. I’d love to just do, maybe a quick speed dating round here on.

00:46:01.130 –> 00:46:06.350
Mary Shea: you know, 2 to 3 things that your organization is doing with Gen. AI to either help

00:46:06.520 –> 00:46:20.669
Mary Shea: create better experiences for the buyer, or more insights for the business, or, quite frankly, save time for your practitioners. So, Whitney, what what are you all doing with with Genai.

00:46:20.690 –> 00:46:39.539
Whitney Sieck: Gosh! We’ve been hearing about AI and our enablement tech roadmaps for forever. And I think with the rise of Chat G. Ppt. Even we went from that being like a feature thinking thing to the here and now reality in a blink of an eye. And Cameron mentioned innovation. Our team host, innovation hour on a monthly basis.

00:46:39.540 –> 00:46:53.069
Whitney Sieck: where we focus on net new approaches and strategies. And so we’re exploring generative AI, we’re identifying opportunities, creating proof of concepts and knowledge. Sharing back with the group on these opportunities.

00:46:53.070 –> 00:47:03.470
Whitney Sieck: our own tool has predictive sales, dashboards which help identify which opportunities to pursue and are most likely to convert. But outside of that we’re doing things like

00:47:03.470 –> 00:47:26.280
Whitney Sieck: using. The zoom recaps. The gong recaps for action items and QA functionality. We’re challenging our vendors to articulate their AI visions. And specifically, we’re evaluating AI that impacts sales velocity which I talked about earlier and seller efficiency in particular, on the enablement side. We’re doing things like leveraging chat, GPT. For

00:47:26.280 –> 00:47:34.330
Whitney Sieck: things like ghost writing communications, content creation. Clarifying some of our instructions around activities

00:47:34.330 –> 00:47:38.630
and then using things like mid journey to create really unique visual components as well.

00:47:38.770 –> 00:47:41.650
Mary Shea: Awesome. Awesome. Cameron. What are you all doing?

00:47:42.940 –> 00:48:09.109
Cameron Brain: Well, I’m gonna be a little contrary, and on the topic of AI. I think I think there’s there’s a tremendous amount. I mean AI. There’s no doubt in my mind that it’s it’s gonna change absolutely everything. You know, in our world outside our world, every aspect of our of our life’s personal and professional. I think you know very often, as Larry Ellison said, the tech industry, you know, has more trends than the fashion industry.

00:48:09.160 –> 00:48:14.310
Cameron Brain: People see things, and and in particular, you know, like, hey? I can click this button and get some content.

00:48:14.570 –> 00:48:32.250
Cameron Brain: And there’s this mad dash, right, chat, gpt, and and you know, generative, whatever and you know that that’s not even like you. You haven’t even started the race at that point. So II would. I would just say, from AI investment standpoint.

00:48:32.460 –> 00:49:00.070
Cameron Brain: you know, we’re thinking about it this way. We see our clients thinking about this way, you know, playing a little bit longer term game, you know. Not. I mean, obviously, budgets are super tight right now. So making sure that you’re dealing with vendors, or if you’re building something yourself, you know you’re building it in a way that you know, is is going to continue to produce value in the, you know, kind of in as an annuity as opposed to just click the button. Generate the text, because to your point, Mary.

00:49:00.280 –> 00:49:20.929
Cameron Brain: there, there are some efficiency gains, I think, with with some of the current kind of sales, tools and marketing tools, and so forth. But there’s one thing the world doesn’t need is less personal content, right? Less authentic content, like we’re talking about. Oh, my God! It’s so much harder to reach the buyer. How do we do that? How do we? How do we get them to respond to our email, or how do we.

00:49:20.930 –> 00:49:48.139
Cameron Brain: you know, perhaps get them to respond to a text, or engage with our content on social, or whatever the last thing you wanna be doing is. And and frankly, Brian, how is it? Hallahan, the the founder of of High Spot? Or I’m sorry. Hubspot. I just saw an interview he did with a leading AI venture investor the other week, or he was saying the same thing. He’s like AI is not gonna be about content generation. It’s gonna be about lots of other things. But

00:49:48.140 –> 00:50:16.160
Mary Shea: anyways, that’s that’s my soap box on AI. Well, we had to have one and thank you for for for Stefan onto that Cameron and let’s go to Kevin. Wh? What are you all doing now? You’re you’re in a little bit of a different situation, because you’re not from a provider organization who’s using generative AI and embedding into their tools. But how? How does a traditional business like yours, experiment, or think about generative? AI,

00:50:16.270 –> 00:50:24.759
Kevin White: yeah, I mean, first, Cameron, let me just say thank you for using the word contrarian. Appreciate the the level up in the vocabulary. That’s great.

00:50:24.760 –> 00:50:48.490
Kevin White: II mean. Listen, companies like ours at least. Right. Are we looking at it? Sure, I mean, is it? Is it part of the future state of certain areas embedded in the company similar to what Cameron was absolutely right, meaning, like customer service customer tracking customer, maybe some utilizing it, for so the some of the Sales development wraps, or the Sdrs for the initial outreach, or, you know, doing things with it

00:50:48.620 –> 00:51:13.380
Kevin White: that does not take away from the personal side of what we still find. Very, very important, right? We are a selling organization in in I, where we will go with it. I think we will be a lagger in some of this space. And from a full geek perspective, I love the idea of it all again. I think this is one of those areas where, 2 years from now, if we all regroup.

00:51:13.470 –> 00:51:24.840
Kevin White: it’ll be fascinating to be talking about where that is now embedded into how companies like, See, at least is utilizing it for manufacturing. Go to market

00:51:24.880 –> 00:51:44.040
Mary Shea: type plan. Yeah, fair fair enough. And and thank you for that lens and and perspective. And yeah, appreciate. Appreciate that. Well, we’re gonna wrap up here in a couple of minutes, and I want to leave everyone with a couple of words from our incredible panelists. So

00:51:44.160 –> 00:51:51.329
Mary Shea: let’s start with Whitney. What’s one? If you have one final thought that you’d like to leave the audience with today. What would that be?

00:51:52.450 –> 00:52:01.469
Whitney Sieck: I think my my main like hope for everyone is that you don’t feel trapped in doing things the way that they’ve always been done.

00:52:01.630 –> 00:52:26.599
Whitney Sieck: Offer alternative solutions and challenge leaders who are trying to solve these market challenges the same way that we did 5 years ago, I think what really sets enablement apart as a strategic partner is being able to have those challenging conversations to push boundaries and to bring new ideas and perspectives to the table. So, you’re doing the right thing by being on this webinar to hear what’s happening in this

00:52:26.600 –> 00:52:32.529
phase and stay in touch with your community to hear what’s working now versus what has worked in the past.

00:52:32.850 –> 00:52:45.799
Mary Shea: Fantastic advice? Cameron, what piece of advice do you have for our audience here today. Yeah, I would just say, be bold. You know, I’m gonna go meet with sales leadership at Ibm tomorrow.

00:52:45.820 –> 00:53:12.950
Cameron Brain: And you know, they’ve been a big proponent of social selling. They have thousands of global sales reps, and they’re making some bold moves. I think, like this is this, just is not the environment that is going to reward marginal improvements on the tactics and practices that we’ve used in prior years. I think it’s time to to really identify kind of like where the opportunities are, and and do some things that other people are not.

00:53:13.720 –> 00:53:15.389
Mary Shea: I like that. Be bold.

00:53:15.830 –> 00:53:35.199
Mary Shea: Well said alright, Kevin, bring us home. What do you have? I’m gonna throw in another word that collaborate like internally and externally right. I mean, this is somewhat of a newer space, even to me, meaning like we are traditionally a sales enablement. Part of the wing. Right? I’m working with my boss and others to grow. The revenue. Rev. Ops. All this.

00:53:35.220 –> 00:53:56.769
Kevin White: grow it outside of the sales arms. Whitney, right, would would look at. And I think the more we can collaborate, not only internally like with your Co. Workers and your in your other Dev departments and divisions. But I find that going outside into the world of Linkedin and some of these other groups that I’m now joining like it the amount that I can learn to then bring back to my leadership team

00:53:56.770 –> 00:54:14.449
Kevin White: as potential ideas to try things or kind of pivot. Even the smallest change, I think, is now having a bigger impact than we realize right in in the organization. So I’m gonna throw the word of collaborate out there as the layman on the on the call.

00:54:14.520 –> 00:54:42.969
Mary Shea: Be bold, and leave the status quo behind. Very sage advice from some of the best in the business. I couldn’t have enjoyed this conversation more. I’m so grateful to our panelists, Whitney Cameron and Kevin for joining us. Thank you for sharing so generously your expertise and experience with our audience. And thank you. Everyone join us here today as well as for the folks that are listening in the playback and read the report, and let me know what you think and have a great rest of the week. Thanks, everyone.

00:54:43.590 –> 00:54:46.840
Cameron Brain: Thanks, Mary, thanks, everybody. Thanks everyone.

00:54:46.960 –> 00:54:48.070
Whitney Sieck: Thanks. Y’all.

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