Revenue Enablement Society - Stories From The Trenches

Ep. 78 - Keenan - The S.P.E.E.D. Revenue Enablement Model

May 22, 2024 Revenue Enablement Society and Paul Butterfield
Ep. 78 - Keenan - The S.P.E.E.D. Revenue Enablement Model
Revenue Enablement Society - Stories From The Trenches
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Revenue Enablement Society - Stories From The Trenches
Ep. 78 - Keenan - The S.P.E.E.D. Revenue Enablement Model
May 22, 2024
Revenue Enablement Society and Paul Butterfield

Have you ever wondered why some sales teams consistently hit their targets while others struggle? Keenan, CEO of A Sales Growth Company and acclaimed author behind "Gap Selling," rejoins me on the podcast to unravel the secrets of enabling high-performing sales teams with his innovative S.P.E.E.D. model. 

Gain insights into creating enablement impact by prioritizing actual sales performance outcomes and aligning strategies with critical business metrics sales leadership uses. 

Learn about integrating the three layers of training, skill development, and forecasting into your enablement framework and how to embrace the shift from traditional enablement to a results-driven approach. With the S.P.E.E.D. model, enablement teams will empower sales teams to succeed by focusing on what truly matters—the tangible impact on business metrics and organizational growth. 

Keenan and I unpack:

  • The details behind the S.P.E.E.D model and why it works
  • The three layers of S.P.E.E.D. that align enablement to revenue success
  •  The critical sales metrics all Enablement teams need to internalize
  • How to assess the current state, identify gaps, and make improvements

Keenan is the CEO/president and chief antagonist of A Sales Growth Company. With over 20 years of sales experience, he has long influenced, learned from, and shaped the sales world. Keenan calls it as he sees it and lets nothing and no one go unnoticed. 

He is the celebrated author of Not Taught: What It Takes to be Successful in the 21st Century That Nobody’s Teaching You and Gap Selling: Getting the Customer to Yes: How Problem-Centric Selling Increases Sales by Changing Everything You Know About Relationships, Overcoming Objections, Closing and Price.

Gap Selling has been voted among the sales community as one of the best sales books ever.

Father of 3 amazing girls, PSIA Certified Level 2 ski instructor (see, more coaching), and avid Boston sports fan, Keenan keeps crazy busy when he’s not focused on A Sales Growth Company.

Please subscibe on Apple, Spotify or Google.

Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

Have you ever wondered why some sales teams consistently hit their targets while others struggle? Keenan, CEO of A Sales Growth Company and acclaimed author behind "Gap Selling," rejoins me on the podcast to unravel the secrets of enabling high-performing sales teams with his innovative S.P.E.E.D. model. 

Gain insights into creating enablement impact by prioritizing actual sales performance outcomes and aligning strategies with critical business metrics sales leadership uses. 

Learn about integrating the three layers of training, skill development, and forecasting into your enablement framework and how to embrace the shift from traditional enablement to a results-driven approach. With the S.P.E.E.D. model, enablement teams will empower sales teams to succeed by focusing on what truly matters—the tangible impact on business metrics and organizational growth. 

Keenan and I unpack:

  • The details behind the S.P.E.E.D model and why it works
  • The three layers of S.P.E.E.D. that align enablement to revenue success
  •  The critical sales metrics all Enablement teams need to internalize
  • How to assess the current state, identify gaps, and make improvements

Keenan is the CEO/president and chief antagonist of A Sales Growth Company. With over 20 years of sales experience, he has long influenced, learned from, and shaped the sales world. Keenan calls it as he sees it and lets nothing and no one go unnoticed. 

He is the celebrated author of Not Taught: What It Takes to be Successful in the 21st Century That Nobody’s Teaching You and Gap Selling: Getting the Customer to Yes: How Problem-Centric Selling Increases Sales by Changing Everything You Know About Relationships, Overcoming Objections, Closing and Price.

Gap Selling has been voted among the sales community as one of the best sales books ever.

Father of 3 amazing girls, PSIA Certified Level 2 ski instructor (see, more coaching), and avid Boston sports fan, Keenan keeps crazy busy when he’s not focused on A Sales Growth Company.

Please subscibe on Apple, Spotify or Google.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Revenue Enablement Society Stories from the Trenches, where enablement practitioners share their real-world experiences. Get the scoop on what's happening inside revenue enablement teams across the global RES community. Each segment of Stories from the Trenches shares the good, the bad and the ugly practices of corporate revenue enablement initiatives. The bad and the ugly practices of corporate revenue enablement initiatives Learn what worked, what didn't work and how obstacles were eliminated by enablement teams and go-to-market leadership. Sit back, grab a cold one and join host Paul Butterfield, founder of Revenue Flywheel Group, for casual conversations about the wide and varied profession of revenue enablement, where there's never a one-size-fits-all solution.

Speaker 2:

Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Revenue Enablement Society podcast, stories from the Trenches, the podcast where for over four years now, we've gone around the world we've looked for enablement professionals that are doing new things, doing it differently, shaking it up and bringing them here to talk about it, and sometimes we talk about what didn't go well, but we always try to keep it interesting. We're doing a little thing differently this time. The person that we've got coming as a guest he's actually number one, first time that I've had a guest on twice on this podcast Now. The last time was, I think, two years ago, so that should tell you something. He's got to be somewhat interesting. Number two he's somebody that you probably know but wouldn't expect to think about when you think enablement. So with that I want to welcome Kenan. Kenan is the author of Gap Selling and he is also the CEO of a sales growth company. Kenan, welcome back for the second time.

Speaker 3:

Thank you, baby, appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2:

You know I could not have you with. What you've been up to I'd love to talk to you about today is the new ebook that you released a few weeks ago now. That is for enablement, folks. I mean, yes, other go-to-market leaders will benefit from it as well, but it is a book about enablement for enablement, and you call your model speed and that's an acronym, so let's start with that. What does speed stand for?

Speaker 2:

sales performance execution enablement and delivery, love it. Some big stuff in there. We got sales performance, you got right. So so, number one, if the sales team's not performing, nobody's doing their job, right, um, but then you've also got that delivery model. Yes, and that's where so much of the challenge is in enablement, from what I've seen, and we'll get into that. But what again? You've seen tremendous success with gap selling. It's just a phenomenal runaway success, both the book and the methodology. So what inspired you to sit down and write an e-book about enablement? Where'd that come from?

Speaker 3:

It came from a couple of things, I would say. The holistic motivation was I was getting frustrated with sales, with our sales training and gap selling not being as productive or as effective as it could be or, even worse, even more so it came from a lot of the sales processes I went through. So I went through a number of sales cycles and I mean, look, even us, we have a well over 40% win rate. But I don't care who you are, you're never going to win 100%, right? I mean, what's his name? Ted Williams. Last word hit 400. So you know, I don't try to argue or suggest it because we're getting 100% win rate now. It just doesn't work like that. Argue or suggest it because we're getting 100% win rate now, it just doesn't work like that.

Speaker 3:

We have a pretty high win rate here and what struggled, what I struggled with, is a lot of the ones we lost. It was driven by enablement. The ones we lost when enablement was involved was it was enablement's inability to actually see how training and a methodology and sales skills would move the number. And there was too much talk around certifications and too much talk around learning and development and too much talk around attendance of the trainings and the content of the training, which is valuable, but it was just wasn't enough depth in connecting that to the outcomes that should happen. And so, in areas that we would see people and organizations fail unequivocally every single time, if an organization failed, that had enablement or was doing anything that related to improving skills quality, was the lack of a type of model of framework that connected the upfront training and skills development all the way to the end of the of the sales process, a cycle from a forecasting and delivery perspective.

Speaker 2:

So I just got frustrated yeah, um, I don't remember who I heard this from first, but what you somewhat you described, uh, I've heard people talk about as butts in seats and smiley sheets. Yeah and yeah, I mean. I mean, if people don't show up for the training, then you're not going to get anywhere. But that should not be the big measurement that you're looking at and feeling good about. 100% no, because people show up. I mean, you grew up in sales. I grew up in sales. I imagine you sat in your fair share of absolutely useless trainings multiple times. I used to hate that. You know it's like I could be doing something else. I could do anything else but this 100,000% you nailed it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So one of the things that, to my mind, sets this apart from other enablement models or frameworks, however people choose to think about it is the three layers and the fact that not just that there are three layers, but the three layers. And the fact that not just that there are three layers, but the three layers that you identified, I feel like make this a holistic approach that maybe people aren't thinking about. So let's start with that, walk us through the three layers and just a little bit of background on those, please.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so the three layers. What I recognized is to your point again about the butts in seats, right. And so I sat back and I thought to myself, well, what's going on here? Why are we so focused on the butts in seats and why are we so focused on the learning and development piece, when the goal or the original thought about enablement was improving the sales results? Right? And so I sat back and said, well, okay, well, how would we measure that? How would we test that? And what I came up with is there were three distinct elements or areas within a sales organization that allow an organization to see where they are in the training and to test out how well their salespeople are doing. So the first one I think we nailed, and that's the skills management layer, and that is, from a sales enablement perspective, that is by far the most robust. It is everything from onboarding, the choosing of the methodology, building the playbooks, building the LMS system, the building, the certification.

Speaker 2:

You know it's, it's, it's all the training, it's all of the skills development, probably what most people think of when they think of enablement, at least at first.

Speaker 3:

Yes, yeah, but that wasn't up because, well then, what happened? So then I recognize there's something called the opportunity management layer, and you could almost say that's the arena, that's game time, right, and I've realized that there just wasn't enough attention being paid to that part of it and I liken it very much to professional sports. They spend a lot of time on coaches, nutritionists, trainers, playbook development, etc. But then when it goes into game time, there are people in the game who are watching the players play. They're assessing their play based on what they learn. They're assessing their play based on what they were taught in the playbook. They're assessing their play based on their ability to read the defense, and they're doing it in real time.

Speaker 3:

When the players come off the field, they pull up videos. When the players come off the field, they sit with their coaches. They're saying you missed this block, did you notice this? Look at your feet work. Did you miss the defensive feet work? Did you miss the defensive read? Did you miss the offensive read? Like they're doing it in real time and through that real time they're able to recognize what they need to work on when it's practice time again. So they go back to practice time, skills management, development and they put them in the appropriate area strength development, diet, route, running, whatever it is and they work on that so they can, when they go back into game time, they improve. Just you know what I'm saying.

Speaker 3:

And so enablement just wasn't paying enough attention to that and when they were, they still weren't capturing the actual behavior change they wanted.

Speaker 3:

They weren't, or I found very few were measuring the behavior change. Very few put processes in place to create benchmarks for the behavior change and so, even though they're doing all the skills changing, they weren't pulling it through to the opportunity management layer. And then the last layer is the forecasting layer and that's sort of like that's a sales operations type of thing and that's really managing what's the output right? Are we seeing the output? Are we seeing in terms of forecasting? Is the forecasting accurate? Do we have processes in place to ensure we're forecasting the right things? So those are the sort of the three buckets, and then in between them all is the identification of what we call bid data, buy input data. Basically, buy input data is defined as the information the buyer gives the salesperson. I will say that again because it's very important the information the buyer provides the salesperson, not what the salesperson assumes thinks interjects, but the buyer actually tells them. That then allows the buyer and the salesperson to determine if the cost of inaction is greater than the cost of action.

Speaker 2:

So, and those are going to be the predictable customer inputs that are to be expected in most, if not every sales cycle and making sure that those reps are capturing that. Yeah, I mean, I have found that to be true. Without those customer inputs, it's really just a rep's opinion, which means then a manager's applying a fudge factor based on the track record of this rep's success, and the CFO is probably applying another fudge factor because nobody really knows. It's just a bunch of opinions and then the opinions get worse as they go off the chain or they get less informed. And the other thing I love about you mentioned in your sports analogy there is whether you didn't say if they lose the game, they do that real-time analysis, they do that whether they win the game or lose the game yeah because even when you win, did you win in the way that you planned?

Speaker 2:

did you execute at the level that you could have? Okay, great, you won by two tds. You could have won by four. Why didn't you? Right? So you're always so. Let's Okay, there's so much here, let's get into this, and you may choose to cover this by layer, however you think. But what are the challenges? And I know you've been talking to a lot of sales enablement leaders, some folks I know, some folks that I don't, and so would love it. What are you hearing from them? That are the challenges you're hearing from them that you feel like this is going to help cover? What are you hearing in the field?

Speaker 3:

Oof. Okay, so I got to. I got to tread lightly here. Mm-hmm, I'll let you coach me, paul.

Speaker 2:

All right, I'll let you coach me, me well, I mean, what are you? What are you hearing from the enablement folks you've talked to? I know you've talked to some that are yeah, they're people I know are really smart at this stuff, but what challenges are they seeing?

Speaker 3:

so reason I'm treading lightly here is when I show the speed model.

Speaker 2:

The response is overwhelming but the composite overwhelming positive.

Speaker 3:

Me yes, overwhelming positive yeah, okay, and and people who have been doing it for years, you can see the gears turning and you can almost see them like damn it. Why the hell did I come up with this? Like like it's so clear when I show it to them, but yeah, right, and so they buy in, they love it and they're bought in, right. But when I don't show the speed model and we're talking about the problems, the reason I have to tread lightly is most of enablement doesn't recognize they're the problem.

Speaker 3:

I would agree, right, and so I'm. Just I'm trying to be respectful, because these people are passionate about their jobs, right, but the bottom line is they don't really understand that they're the problem. And so what happens is I'll ask questions, like you know, whether it's in a sales process or in a consulting environment or just in a dialogue. I'm like so, hey, what is your team's win rates? Oh, I don't know. I got to check on that, right. Oh, okay. Well, what is your team's quota attainment over the last three years? Ah, yeah, I got to check on that. I said, well, even if you check or they give it to me, like, okay, so you made it and you've grown two or 3% year over year.

Speaker 3:

What's the breakdown roughly? Is that, is that everybody's making quota, or is that only 30% making quota and the other 70%, but that 30% is carrying them? Oh, yeah, I'm not. Average sales cycle oh, I have to check into that. So you see, what's your average contract value? I have to check into that. So you see where I'm going here. They don't know, or they are not attached to the metrics that matter to a sales organization. So then I simply have to ask well then, how do you know what you're doing is working. What are you trying to move? And the answers are things like you said when you started the show the number of people becoming certified. But if there's certifications increase, are you seeing an increase in any of those metrics?

Speaker 2:

we have no idea are they the right certifications?

Speaker 3:

you can get certified in a lot of stuff that's not going to help yes, exactly, and so really what I'm seeing and it's not what they're me is they're frustrated that they don't see are perceived as being valuable, but then when you ask them the questions, they don't know the answers to the things that the CRO or the CEO would deem as valuable in their impact. In hitting that, still focused on far too much about learning and development, skills development and behavior change, without any way of building the systems that will assess it, measure it and provide them to retrain reskill and grow it.

Speaker 2:

You know, if you had said that two years ago I mean just about two years ago it probably would have seemed, like you know, heretical, right? Because there were some of us, there were some of us out there I'm one of them, my friend Siobhan, I mean. There are others that came from a background of sales leadership. So we understood that enablement doesn't exist for any purpose other than to enable the sellers to actually make more money, right Period. But if you didn't come from that background, that wasn't necessarily intuitive and so, as of a couple of years ago, you probably would have rocked a lot of people's worlds, even saying what you just said.

Speaker 2:

For a variety of reasons, including economic contraction over the last two years, the majority of the enablement community now realizes that Now, this is just my opinion. Community now realizes that Now, this is just my opinion, but it's a fairly informed one that you have probably 70 to 80% of them that understand things need to change, but maybe aren't really sure how to go about it and maybe we take some of these things for granted. If you grew up in sales, if you've led sales teams, you understand sales math and you're probably already just inclined to want to know those numbers. But if you didn't, you got to go learn that you know. Maybe you don't know where to start, I don't know, but I'd say there's probably a 70%. Then I would divide the rest of that group into halves. One half that is doing it the way that we're talking about and the final group don't realize they have a problem. I think there is.

Speaker 1:

I really still think there's some of that out there.

Speaker 2:

You know, uh, I I still see far too many companies posting uh sales name on positions, but then when you read the description, it's like a sales trainer from 1996. Yes, you know so. So, yeah, there's. So there's still that problem too.

Speaker 2:

But but for that bulk of people I, you know, and I mean I've read you gave me a sneak preview of speed. I've read it, I've looked at I feel like, for that majority that realizes something needs to change and there's a lot of discussion about this on LinkedIn my opinion is this is going to give them a framework to start to execute that right, because you got to have a starting place right and by doing a speed assessment, you're going to know where your starting place is. Because I think most enablement leader in that 70, 80%. What is your pitch to me as to why I should invest some time in reading the speedy book? What am I going to get out of that?

Speaker 2:

So I'm the, you know I'm one of those people that recognizes it needs to be. I need to be more tied to the revenue outcomes, I need to be more plugged into that, and I've made a few steps in that direction, but still I don't know exactly what to do. How can speed help me? Are you head of enablement? Yes, yeah. Well, let's just stick with head of enablement, because it's a lot tougher to do that if your boss doesn't get it.

Speaker 3:

You're head of enablement? Yeah, do you know what your annual operating budget is, mr Head of Enablement? Assuming that they have their own operating budget, then do you know the cost of your operating budget or do you have a rough idea of what your cost of your division is? Yeah, okay, do you know what the return on investment of that is that you?

Speaker 2:

can point to because of enablement.

Speaker 3:

You've created x. You do know what that is okay, so it's a question.

Speaker 2:

Oh well, when I was running an enablement team, I could have told you.

Speaker 3:

You asked me you asked me what was my pitch so I'm in role play right now.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, okay, gotcha, gotcha, all right, so I'm sorry.

Speaker 3:

So I'm enrolled because I just can't pitch you. I need to know two or three things of information. Got it, got it. Okay, let's do this. So the first one is mr enablement person, do you understand what your total, either operating budget, is and or your total cost of your enablement team?

Speaker 2:

I do total cost of your enablement team. I do. Okay, what is that? I've got 20 folks. I'm going to say probably about two and a half million a year. Two and a half million.

Speaker 3:

Can you show each year what the incremental benefit of you working for you and your enablement on this company could be through sales? Can you show that?

Speaker 2:

We kind of know what you know. There are some things. For example, we introduced, you know, better qualification framework and we felt, like you know, we saw some uplift there. But we don't have any direct correlation.

Speaker 3:

Okay, so understanding you don't have direct correlation, even though it directionally looked like your efforts worked. In that moment, when it looked like they worked directionally, was your organization pretty excited.

Speaker 2:

Well, the name of a team was excited and, to be honest, the sales leaders some recognized that we had a contribution to that, some didn't. It was mixed.

Speaker 3:

So was it frustrating that only some felt you had a contribution in that? Sure, okay, if you experienced that in other areas, besides just the qualification process, and you're continually rolling out initiatives that you believe are not, either you can't directionally show the benefit or others don't believe it, then I think there's some value in reading the speed model. Okay, the speed model is literally designed to provide you with a full life cycle process to of what to implement, where to implement it and how to show that it's actually working and that you can demonstrate your impact in your effort to the um, to the outcomes.

Speaker 2:

Boom, and I think that last piece so thank you that last piece should be what everybody just latches onto with a death grip, because one of the things I've learned over the years is, if you're the head of a name especially, it is on you to understand the things you're talking about and to be communicating that to the executive team and doing it in their language. What do they care about? How are they getting measured and how are you helping them get there? Because they really don't care about a lot of the other stuff that we were talking about a few minutes ago, and that's one of the gaps that I've seen in a lot of enablement teams is they, for a variety of reasons, don't know how to talk to their executives in executive speed, and so I would just add that in as well. But the nice thing about speed is, if you're executing it, from what I've seen, you're going to almost won't be able to help yourself because you're going to be measuring things that they care about and just make sure that's what you're talking to them about.

Speaker 2:

They don't care how many people showed up for training. You got frontline sales leaders to help you herd those cats. You get up. You get up to talking to the CRO. They really don't care right. They just want to know what's it what? What's it doing for me? How is it impacting me? Um, you've had a chance to share this ebook and and do some uh some actual workshopping with some folks in the enablement community. What kind of feedback are you getting from them?

Speaker 3:

The feedback is like I think I shared earlier, is pretty overwhelming. I mean, I don't want to be, in relative terms, people not running around, you know, freaking, jumping and doing cartwheels but the general response has been wow or no, oh it's about time, or this is exactly what we need, right, so it's somewhere in that different Some people lead with, and then there's also a little bit about God. To your point, it's what I've been doing, but I never really had a way of describing it and I didn't really have a way to check it. So I see this as a way for me to even even I've been doing it to, to, to make sure I'm doing it right and shift some things on certain efforts and act as a validator. But, generally speaking, not one person has come back yet and said, yeah, this doesn't hit the mark, not even close.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I think I shared this with you when I first got finished reading through it For the fact that you haven't actually run an enablement team. It really is very good. I mean, if I didn't know you and I read that I would just assume you must've executed this. You know at least once. Um, but I'm going to attribute some of that to the fact that you literally wrote the definitive book on listening and understanding business problems and root causes, and it sounds to me like you've just been using those skills in the enablement world and you got a good handle on it. Now, besides the book, you've also got an assessment model. So let's talk a little bit about that so people can understand what that resource is and how they might use it. So I've read the book. I understand the speed model. Now what?

Speaker 3:

I should. I should have my own stuff in front of me because I suck at doing things from memory. But the speed model has. We talked about the three layers and within each layer there are what we call speed model requirements. So at the end of the day, if people want to take the speed model and tweak it and do whatever they want, they're entitled to it. But we're very clear on what we believe is a must within executing the speed model. In other words, like you can't be in the speed model and do not do these three things. One is you know, pull the bid model all the way through, right, and we tell you where the bid model should go. Another one is having a methodology. You have to have a methodology in the speed model. If you don't, it's not the speed model.

Speaker 3:

Go, do something else, because there's still a lot of organizations that blow my mind, that do not believe the methodology is important. Right, right.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, let's just do random shit and see what sticks.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So within each one of those and I'm trying to call this up right now, just so I can not try to guess under each of those we say there are anywhere from. I'm gonna butcher this freaking here. It is anywhere between five and twelve or eight, um, what's the word? I'm looking for sub elements to the model. So, for instance everybody bear with me, don't be mad I want to make sure I get- this right.

Speaker 2:

So you've got like core requirements, it sounds like, but then there are variables that are attached to each of those core requirements.

Speaker 3:

Yes, and so under that right. So let's just say I know for fact, like under sales sorry, under the skills management there is the adoption of a methodology, there is certification, there is identification of the bid data, there is training for business acumen, there's training on the product, there's training on the bid data, all these things right. But then from there, to know if you're doing that, then I tell you what should be part of a certification. To know if you're doing that, then I tell you what should be part of a certification. What should be part of the speed, I'm sorry of the big data, what should that control? So I go really, really deep, right, and helping people understand that I'm not trying to do this high level. So when okay, here's a good example. I found it right from skills management, sales, I'm sorry, sales methodology, company LMS certification process, documented buyer input data, ideal customer profile training, customer business problem training, product training, business acumen training, key sales metric training Notice, right there. Key sales metrics training, right, sales manager coaching and framework. So those are your 10 sub elements or elements that make up the skills assessment or the skills management layer. From there, there's anywhere from three to five descriptions or process requirements for each one of those. So the point being is, we're trying to take this from a framework to an execution layer, and so we tell you exactly what needs to be part of, let's say, the bid data, the documented bid data section. We tell you exactly what that is.

Speaker 3:

So you can't say, oh yeah, we got the bid data Check. I force you to say, ok, well, does it include this, this, this, this and this? And you have to say oh, oh no, it doesn't. Yes, oh no, it doesn't yes, ooh no, it doesn't See what I'm saying. So I'm taking you on a journey to get very what are they called? Prescriptive, prescriptive, okay. And then from there I go even a step further and you can't just say yes or no. You have to either say I don't have it, I have it and the team uses it with management, enforcement. In other words, we make them. So it's not voluntary, right. The team uses on its own. The team uses with development and support. So this isn't we're forcing you, it's you're using it and we're helping you use it better, right. And then, finally, we use it with development, support, management, and it's integrated into all the layers of the speed model, right? So you asked a great question.

Speaker 2:

So it's a maturity model. I'm sorry, it's a maturity model You're starting to get into with this.

Speaker 3:

I'll go with that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, when are you? And then you've got the. You know the answer to those five or six questions will give you a sense of where you are.

Speaker 3:

Yes, on that maturity scale, okay, yes, so, and it defines it as well. I've learned that often not just in sales enablement a lot of different disciplines. You ask somebody if they have something and they'll say yes, but then when you dig in and make them define, define or show it, they don't really have it Right, like oh, here's a perfect example. Do you have good? Um, it's going to be cheesy, but everybody knows my metaphors. Do you have really good oral hygiene? Oh, I have great oral hygiene. Okay. Do you brush your teeth three times a day? Oh, no, only two. Do you floss two times a day? No, only once. Do you brush for at least one minute on each row? No, see what I'm saying? So we have this tendency to do is think we've defined what good looks like and no one's even set that up. So that's what we've done here as well. It's not just here's what it is, but we're going to define it for you Love that.

Speaker 2:

If you don't have a gold standard, then how do you know if you've hit it or not? Right, yeah, you got it. Which, to me, is the biggest reason for methodology. When I talk to people, you know and they're like well, you know, we got this or that, but we don't know about a full methodology. And you know it's like well, again, if you don't have a standard, how are you coaching? What are you coaching to?

Speaker 1:

how do you, how do?

Speaker 2:

you know, yeah, so so many reasons well put. So how can? I'm sure we've got a number of listeners right now that are that are just you know, they're really getting curious about this. How should they, or best way for them to engage and start to learn the speed model, what resources are out there and where do they find them?

Speaker 3:

I mean as far as I know, not as far as I know. I mean as far as the speed model is concerned, there's only one place. You got to come to me not me but you got to come to ASG, right. So I mean you go to ASGcom. Sorry, you can go, I think. No, we don't own that one. You can go to sales growth, sales growthcom or sales growth companycom. Take your pick and you can find it in our resource center and look, you can always. It attached is the assessment so you can read it and take the assessment. You can take the assessment and then read it. So it's not hard to find on DM me and LinkedIn or something. I'll send you a link to get it. It's easy. We're also doing a on the 30th I think that's next Thursday we're doing a live webinar on the speed model, so that'll be the first public introduction. We've done a handful of private ones with sales enablement folks, but now we're doing a public one. So you can hit me up or go to my page. You'll find an invitation to that. So you can hit me up or go to my page and find an invitation to that. So I think there's a lot of ways.

Speaker 3:

One thing I would like to say. This is what I would like to say whether or not you're deciding if you should try the speed model or do anything else in enablement, the main question I have for you the litmus test to determine if there is room or opportunity for improvement or growth inside your enablement organization is one have you documented and shared with your entire enablement team what the four key metrics are you're trying to move? Okay, it is. Every person in the organization Know what they are, know where you are and how far you are from where you want to be, and I will tell you that those are quarter attainment and or revenue.

Speaker 3:

Again, I'm flexible on that one, but I prefer quarter attainment, overall quarter attainment for the entire team. Win rate, percentage, average contract value, sales cycle length. Those are your four. You want to add others? That's great. But if your organization does not know where you're sitting today against those, you do not know what they were last year and you do not know what they were the year before. So a three-year trend rate and you do not know what the two-year or one-year I'll go one or two-year trend rate moving forward is, then it's time to come to Jesus and have a conversation about your team and build from there.

Speaker 2:

That makes a lot of sense, and I've already said what I think of it, so I would just add my two cents to that. Go out, download the book. It's not, there's not a charge, right. It's out there, it's available for anybody that wants it. Go download it and get a hold of me or Kenan, and let us know what you think, because I think you'll be impressed. Kenan, thank you, appreciate you coming back, appreciate the investment you're making in the enablement community with the speed model, and we will talk to you again soon. To everybody else, thank you for giving us another half hour of your time, and we'll be back in two weeks with another guest. Stay safe till then.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for joining this episode of Stories from the Trenches. For more revenue enablement resources, be sure to join the Revenue Enablement Society at resocietyglobal. That's resocietyglobal.

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Head of Enablement and Executive Communication
Feedback on Enablement Model and Assessment