Episode Summary
Enablement-related roles are growing in popularity, and people are increasingly becoming interested in the field. But, not many know what this role involves and the requirements you must meet to land it.
Therefore, it is critical to familiarize yourself with those who have already paved the way to becoming enablement professionals by helping others reach their career goals.
Lauren Goldfinger, a shared services enablement manager at Salesloft, joins host Christina Brady in this episode of Taking the Lead. The two discuss what the enablement role involves, how companies and especially leaders should approach employee training, and how to go from a good to an excellent manager by acquiring proper coaching skills.
”One of the most important pieces of a leader’s job is coaching. It is also often the first thing they don’t do [because] of time and priority and commitments and resources. But it is critical. And there is so much data that supports how well teams perform, how much better teams and individuals perform when they are being coached,” concludes Lauren.
Guest Profile
- Name: Lauren Goldfinger
- What she does: Lauren is a shared services enablement manager at Salesloft.
- company: Salesloft
- Noteworthy: Lauren is a passionate and innovative learning and development leader on a mission to deliver purposeful learning and enablement experiences that shift mindset and behavior.
Key Insights
- Enablement doesn't solely focus on the product. As Lauren explains, enablement is often product-driven, but the success of your offering will depend not only on how your team presents the product or services and the tools required to use them but also the soft skills you will train them. However, a company’s approach to enablement depends on its size and resources. ''If you have a small team, and you need to focus on the most important ways to enable it, it's probably going to be more of the foundational basic stuff to push out to sales reps to help them be successful. The larger your team, the more ability you have to move into some of those other areas of enablement or training.''
- The success of your employee training depends on methodology. Although many employees see training as pointless (experience is queen), more and more companies acknowledge the benefits of educating their staff on things specifically associated with their role, capabilities, and often, personality. Therefore, it is critical to determine your employees' learning habits — some people learn from listening and observing, others need more time to process the material before executing — to reach the desired outcomes. ''You do have to start with the basic training. [...] So you do get that familiarity with this as a thing now, but then the reinforcement piece is the piece that's important. You have to take reinforcement training levels deeper to start at a very broad and high level, and then you're saying, 'Let's do a smaller training that's focused on how you will use it specifically in your role. Then maybe let's do role-plays, deep dive practice, and learning labs and put you in immersive scenarios that you deal with.'''
- A manager should aim to be an inspiring coach. Running a team involves a lot of responsibilities, but many slip under the radar. Managers don't put enough effort, time, and resources into training their teams. However, the shift toward this segment could move mountains. Also, some fear that they will not be good at it and will end up losing employees or harming a particular project. But, ''the better coaches and managers are, the closer they are to truly knowing what their people need. So if you're spending time with your team members, truly ask them, 'How are things going? You know, let's talk about this discovery call you did. What didn't go well? What would you change?''' says Lauren.
Episode Highlights
As a Business Role, What Does Enablement Encompass?
Although recognized as an essential role, enablement is still a confusing field for many. So, here’s how Lauren explains it.
”Five years ago, I moved into sales training, and there was a line between what sales training did and the enablement team that sat within the PMO did. So that’s where I started to understand, ‘Okay. I’m going to do training, maybe initially, almost like a go-to-market training but on things like soft skills and competencies. And then, my enablement counterparts who sit in the business are going to do reinforcement, and take that to scale, and make sure that the field is using what I had taught initially.’
And then training came in and said, ‘But wait, you need more than just product information, and you need more than just systems and tools training. Selling is different now; let’s train on methodology, frameworks, and on all of those soft skills that you need.’
That, to me, is now what I’m trying to do. I think that enablement needs to do all of that. It has to be the product launches with the job aids and the go-to-market training, but it also needs to be, ‘How do I sell? What is value selling? What is my methodology? How do I prove myself credible? How do I lead with insight?’ That’s a big piece of it. So now, I feel like enablement needs to, if it does not already, encompass all of it.”
Is a Teaching or Development Background a Prerequisite for Becoming a Successful Enablement Professional?
The misconception about enablement professionals is that they usually come from a background in development, but as Lauren says, they come from various fields like marketing or sales. But does someone with a development background have better chances of becoming successful in enablement?
”That’s a challenging question to answer because I do feel like having a learning and development background gives me a bit of an edge because I bring what I feel is a different perspective. So I would say yes, but I think it takes a well-rounded team with well-rounded skills to think through all of the different facets of how you enable.
It’s not just going out and training people. It’s not just about understanding how the brain works and learns. But you need the X salespeople and X sales leaders to say, ‘Well, this doesn’t resonate with the field,’ or, ‘I didn’t do it this way,’ or be able to come to a training and bring that firsthand credibility that maybe I can’t always bring.”
Role-Plays Are Critical in Enablement
The thing differentiating today’s business worlds, especially the millennial generation, is the constant search and need for learning and development. Although adults adopt new learnings differently, role-playing has proven effective in sales and enablement.
”There are so many ways to make role-plays less scary. So one is to give them the scenario in advance so they have time to think about it and maybe practice on their own. Another way would be to put them in small groups.
So small group role-plays are where you have three or four people, give them a script, and so they’re reading back and forth and role-playing that way. Or they’re answering questions and coming up with answers together as a group, and then they can come back and read out or role-play to a larger group.
I think it’s less intimidating if you say, ‘Okay, here’s the activity,’ and maybe you don’t say the word role-play. You say, ‘Here’s the activity, you’re going to go into small groups, and you’re going to practice. And then you’re going to come back, and you’re going to designate one person to go and do the thing with the whole group.”‘
