Enablers! It's time for yet another edition of This Month In Sales Enablement with all the resources you need to stay up to date with the Sales Enablement space including insights, reports, jobs, and more! Brought to you by Devon McDermott and Felix Krueger.
- to this newsletter
- Watch the recording of the TMISE February live stream
- Keep on scrolling for a list of this month's resources
Insights
"People say, data is king. But I would say correlation is God. Because without correlation, that alignment and that language you speak to business executives is missing, is what they want hear, which is they're not hearing enough of evidently based on the layoffs we're seeing. You're not connecting the value." - Kunal Pandya, Senior Director, Global Revenue Enablement at Userzoom
7 Steps to Maximizing Enablement's Business Impact
Do you want to take your Sales Enablement business impact to the next level? Make sure to watch the on-demand webinar: 7 Steps to Maximizing Enablement's Business Impact.
"Some research from Strategy& which is PWC's consulting arm in 2019 found that 59% of senior leaders believed they had a strong culture in their organizations. But only 26% of their employees did. So it is something that senior leaders can be in denial about." - Damien Lorschy, APJ Sales Strategy, Operations and Enablement at AWS
Social Buzz
SEC Sales Enablement Salary Survey
SEC is back with another enablement community survey, this time working to cultivate salary transparency in the enablement space!
The end goal of this study is to provide tangible data to help the enablement community negotiate a more competitive salary for a new role or navigate a data-backed pay increase conversation in an existing role.
Resources for Job Seekers
Are you looking for an Enablement job? Check out the latest Sales Enablement job board (brought to you by Steffaney Zohrabyan) or add yourself to the Enablement Squad Talent Directory.
Communities for networking: WiSE, SES, SEC, Enablement Squad
Recruiters specialised in Enablement talent: Enablematch
Article: My 59-Day Career Search Advice (by Mike Kunkle)
Understand which industries have been affected by layoffs: https://layoffs.fyi/
50% Job Seeker Discount
Did you know that job seekers receive a 50% discount when joining The Building Blocks of Sales Enablement Learning Experience? Check out this post for details.
Resources for Hiring Managers
Are you looking for top Enablement talent? Message Steffaney Zohrabyan to add your job to her job board or check the Enablement Squad Talent Directory.
Recruiters specialised in Enablement talent: Enablematch
Are there any other resources we should include? Let us know in the comments below!
Articles
Using AI to Improve Employee Performance & Engagement
“Repetitive tasks can be offloaded to robots to allow teams to focus on what’s important to them.”
AI is now more accessible than ever and if harnessed correctly, has the potential to increase time spent on the activities that move the needle in businesses such as creating operational efficiencies, increasing productivity, ultimately saving money, time, and precious resources!
The article highlights the essential areas where the use of AI facilitates a healthier work environment and in turn, happier employees.
An Oracle survey cited in the article uncovered that “companies using AI in their workflows had shorter workweeks, and their employees took longer vacations.” With 27% of respondents stating their mental health was better, while stress levels were reduced.
Bottom line–AI is going to be (and in many cases already is) the tool business professionals NEED in order to level up and create the space to work smarter, not harder. I look forward to hearing how AI can help knowledge workers focus their time, effort, and brainspace on the tasks and initiatives that really matter in the future.
Read the full article here.
ChatGPT may be coming for our jobs. Here are the 10 roles that AI is most likely to replace.
OpenAI's ChatGPT has been found to be capable of answering customer support questions, creating training documents, and providing answers around corporate strategy, according to Amazon employees. The chatbot has also been used to generate written content, with the media industry starting to experiment with AI-generated content. However, users have found that the bot can generate misinformation, incorrectly answer coding problems, and produce errors in basic maths. While some jobs such as market research analysts, traders, and customer service agents are susceptible to AI-driven change, Anu Madgavkar of the McKinsey Global Institute has said that human judgement still needs to be applied to avoid error and bias and that the majority of work done by content creators is not automatable.
Jobs predicted to be replaced by AI:
- Coders, computer programmers, software engineers, and data analysts
- Advertising, content creation, technical writing, and journalism
- Paralegals and legal assistants
- Market research analysts
- Teachers
- Financial analysts and personal financial advisors
- Traders
- Graphic designers
- Accountants
- Customer service agents
(This summary was written by ChatGPT by the way:)
Opinion: A lot of these jobs listed include operational aspects of Enablement such as data analysis, content creation, market research, and teaching. It becomes obvious that Enablement teams will increasingly consist of strategic thinkers with stakeholder and change management skills and operational aspects will be supported by AI or fully automated.
You can read the full article here.
Book Review
When Women Lead by Julie Boorstin
The big idea: Author Julie Boorstin, former Fortune Magazine writer and on-air presenter for CNBC shares the definitive guide to the power of having women in leadership positions.
“When Women Lead” is chock full of science and data backed stories of female founders and leaders: Challenges they faced, how they overcame them, and how women in leadership positions bring unique skills, abilities to the table to thoughtfully and methodically solve problems, develop teams, and grow businesses.
The insights Julie shares are delivered through the stories of a number of female entrepreneurs and thoughtfully integrated research studies giving the reader a data backed roadmap for breaking through bias and stereotypes to achieve success!
Highlights:
- Companies with higher female representation exhibit higher corporate performance! This is because women manage in a less hierarchical, more collaborative and more interactive way!
- In general, women are underrepresented in leadership positions, but studies show women in the C-Suite and director level positions are far more likely to drive strategic sustained change in the businesses they are a part of.
- Growth vs fixed mindset and the difference in how men and women are empowered to think and grow: From a young age, many women are encouraged to have a fixed mindset–e.g. that their intelligence and talents are unchangeable; whereas men are encouraged to have a growth mindset–meaning their intelligence and skills can be improved with the right amount of effort. So, as they get older, many women shift to a growth mindset and consistently try to develop themselves–instead of proving themselves they were focused on IMPROVING.
- The power of DE&I in leadership and in an organization. Instead of checking the boxes - it must be deliberate and data driven. Diverse teams produce better outcomes and “companies that commit themselves to diverse leadership are more successful! “
How enablers benefit: As we’ve learned from the many reports we’ve reviewed ~57% of enablement professionals are women… But all will benefit from this book–either in practice or as an informed ally to drive meaningful change in how women are treated and empowered to succeed as leaders in any business.
I’d recommend this book to ALL aspiring leaders regardless of gender, as well as anyone sitting in a leadership role or C-Suite in the start-up space.
Devon's Rating: 
Order the book here.
The Building Blocks of Sales Enablement Learning Experience
Are you still trying to reinvent the wheel?
The underlying principles of Enablement have been around for decades. Yet a lot of Enablers are still developing approaches from scratch making the same mistakes others have made before them. Over and over again.
Think about it...
Tens of thousands of professionals have attempted to solve the same challenges you're dealing with right now. Some of them failed. Some of them succeeded. Very few of them succeeded multiple times AND captured their proven approach to share it with the world.
Mike Kunkle is one of these very few.
He's been an Enabler for 30+ years (he's old, he says, and cites dinosaurs as enablement stakeholders) and has captured his proven approach in an extremely successful framework called "The Building Blocks of Sales Enablement."
"The Building Blocks of Sales Enablement is rooted in a deep understanding of the messy reality that confronts today's sales enablement leaders: complex, interdependent systems that govern today's modern commercial organization, and the chaos that is the customer buying experience. Mike Kunkle's intimate understanding of these dynamics delivers a clear and actionable framework that will propel growth for all revenue leaders."
- Nick Toman, Co-author of The Challenger Customer and The Effortless Experience, and President of the Growth Accelerator at SBI, The Growth Advisory
How successful has this building blocks framework been, you ask?
Here are just three (of many) sample results:
ENTERPRISE, PUBLIC, B2B FINANCIAL SERVICES FIRM
- Result: Achieved a $398MM accretive revenue increase in one year from final project completion.
MID-MARKET, PRIVATE, MANUFACTURER
- Result: Improved average profitability per sales rep by 11% in only 4 months.
SMB SaaS, PRIVATE, CONVENTION MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE
- Result: Increased sales productivity (revenue per rep) by 47% in 9 months.
Mike and I have now translated The Building Blocks of Sales Enablement framework into a learning experience that helps a new generation of enablement teams fast-track their journey to sales enablement mastery and business impact.
Our combination of group coaching sessions, actionable video lessons, materials, resources, networking opportunities, and templates makes mastering sales enablement best practices faster and easier than it has ever been before. And, you'll will learn things are not taught elsewhere that have been proven-effective at delivering business impact!
So if you want to stop reinventing the wheel, maximize business impact, and fast-track your career, consider joining a growing community of enablers at The Building Blocks of Sales Enablement Learning Experience.
By the way, we don't suggest that you commit without trying it first. We offer full refunds within the first 30 days of your membership if you don't believe this resource will allow you to increase the impact of your enablement function. No questions asked.