The True Global State of Revenue and Sales Enablement 2021

state of sales enablementThe Trust Enablement leadership team, plus good friend Felix Krueger, set down for a first-of-a-kind global roundtable on the state of sales enablement.

Coming from the Northern and Southern hemispheres, from the East and the West, we shared our perspectives on the State of Sales Enablement from each region and globally.

There was a lot of great insight anchored around insights recently shared from Felix.

While you’ll need to give a listen to get the complete picture, some of the topics included:

  • The maturing of Enablement is demonstrated by an increased focus on business metrics
  • Increased awareness and focus on the overall health and welfare of people in our businesses – not just revenue results but also mental health, delivering on personal goals
  • An increased focus on micro-coaching as well as microlearning
  • The every-growing effectiveness and inclusion of tech and AI in onboarding

Give a listen to learn more from the team.

Are you looking for a place where you can learn to apply Enablement based upon where you work, your challenges, your culture? Join the Trust Enablement Community to bring best practices and insights to life in your business.
Audio Transcript

Pooja Kumar
Hello, and welcome to coffee collaboration and enablement, a podcast for trust enablement. This is a super special episode because we’re a bit like the United Nations over here. And we bringing together a truly global point of view on the state of sales enablement. I have here with me today. Some very, very special people. We have the board members of trust enablement. Britta. Hello, who is the founder, hello. And Dave, who is here with us virtually but not quite here. But Dave now from South Africa. brittas from duck region, john is representing the US for grilley Global Davis from South Africa. I look after trust enablement for India and ASEAN. And we have a very special guest who’s joining us from Australia Felix Kruger. Now, Felix runs a also runs a podcast called the state of sales enablement and also runs Krueger marketing. Together the five of us have done while four of us on video, but the five of us put together the content for this have done well over 100 hours of interviews, I actually didn’t bother counting it out. I’m sure it’s almost more than 200 hours, but I was being safe. Well over 100 hours of interviews around the world. And we’ve spoken to various industries, sales enablement, leaders and sales leaders across industries. So we think we have a little bit of a point of view on the world of sales enablement. We also have Felix who has done so Felix has also done a very interesting body of work and collected data and created a paper called the state of sales enablement, which is what we’re going to reflect on and then talk about how that plays into into what we see around the world. So let’s start with some introductions around the virtual table. We have starting with Felix, would you like to introduce yourself?

Felix Krueger
Yeah, thank you Pooja. So first of all, I would like to thank you all for the invitation. So I’m really stoked to be here. I think trust now your mind is such an awesome, such an awesome community. And I’m really glad glad to be able to contribute to that. So thank you for all the work that you do to contribute to sales enablement as a as a profession. So, as Paul just said, my name is Felix Krueger and I run a business called Cougar marketing. And we are a outsourced sales enablement service provider. So we essentially work with businesses who don’t have a source, internal sales enablement function on enabling them, enabling our sales team. And we also work with businesses that do have a sales enablement function to expand their capacity and get more work done on the sales enablement front. And my background is in technology and media. So I have held sales enablement, positions in the Australian media media industry at Fairfax Media, which is the publisher of The Sydney Morning Herald and the age and at the time, I was responsible for enabling a Salesforce of over 200 people and we also had revenue responsibility of over 25 million annually. So and and then after that, I moved on and founded my first business. So I was a co founder of a business called which 50 media which is the publisher of a digital transformation news website for senior executives and which really allowed me to delve deep into kind of the thinking of senior decision makers in the in the digital space, and the technology space. And we work really closely with brands like IBM, Oracle, Adobe, really closely with their sales and marketing teams on better reaching and better communicating with those senior decision makers. After we sold that business, I then started quicker marketing, which is the business I run today. So yeah, and here I am.

Pooja Kumar
How are you? Wow, what a huge amount of experience. Thank you very much. JOHN, would you like to introduce yourself?

John Moore
Felix, I don’t want to follow Felix that was really cool. Um, people don’t care about me, they shouldn’t care about me. This is about all of you out there. But I’ll say the following. We started trust enablement, geez, maybe two or three years ago, whenever we all got together and recognized that there was a real need to raise up the collective education and collaboration across the space. I currently work at a vendor company. This is not about the vendor company. It’s never been about the company. So I’ll hold off For me, but I have a lot of experience in my day job around enablement. And I have a lot of passion experience in trust enablement for raising up the profession overall. So I’ll keep it that simple.

Pooja Kumar
Thank you, john. And trust enablement is where Britta and myself and Dave also. Also, I don’t know if we say work we enjoy. And we’re on the board of trustee enablement, so that we can do exactly the same thing. But Britta Could you talk about it? Could you talk a little bit about yourself as well?

Britta Lorenz
Well, hello, everyone. Well, guess I have some quite big shoes to fill here. Now, if I have to introduce myself after Felix and john. I think I’m with john for about a year now on the board as well. And I’m super happy that I was able to join trust enablement. At our company, I’ve been the employee number one and also run the enablement internally. So I went through every single department within PDA group and I know how it feels I know how it feels if you have to be out dermatitis floor, I know how it feels if you’re inside. So I think that are quite some good fundamentals to do enablement as well. I have enabled internals, I have enabled partners I have enablement them for customers like so success, so across the board, and I’m just super happy to be here and listen to everybody’s experience and learn something new and more from Felix what I’ve always enjoyed every day when I see it also on LinkedIn and everywhere else.

Pooja Kumar
Thank you brother. And I’m Pooja I look after the areas of ASEAN and India for trust enablement. I’m the host and and top collaborate for ASEAN and India. And we have with us virtually also Dave nel who looks after. So when I say virtually he’s not really here. But he has provided some points. He was unable to make today’s session but has provided some points for us to reflect about enablement in South Africa so that we could have a well rounded perspective. Both Dave and I have worked in sales and sales enablement for a very long time. Both of us have a coaching background as well. And we are here and really care about the space of sales enablement. And I here to raise up or you know, our mission is to raise up the profile of sales enablement. So that’s us, I think together we’ve got a lot of experience in sales enablement. Let me ask the first question of Felix, then Felix, could you tell us about the research that you’ve done and the paper that you’ve written or the work that you’ve done, created around the state of sales enablement? 2021?

Felix Krueger
Yeah, sure. So first of all, by the nature of my business, because I’m running a advisory firm in a sales enablement space, we have the advantage that pretty much everything we do is research, right? Like as qualitative research, because we talk to, of course, our clients, we have sales conversations, we network, we consume a sales enablement content every day of the week. So every every day, we learn something new, right? But what we have specifically done with the state of sales enablement, 2021, was, we essentially did an analysis of all the research that is out there by the most reputable resource or sources of research. And we have essentially selected the most valuable insights from these research pieces to really make sense of the whole selling sales enablement space, where it’s heading, what the challenges are, and what’s enablers around the world can actually learn, learn from those inside. So this is our attempt to, of course, stay on top of our game and be really leading in our thinking around sales enablement. But it’s also a great tool for us to contribute to the South Asian community. And essentially, cut through the noise that is out there around sales enablement or the endless information that is out there and do the curation job for the community, for them to better understand the space where the professionals heading and what they can potentially do better and their jobs as well. And so what we the kind of sources that we have looked at just to give you an ideas, so we’ve included research from McKinsey company, Miller Heiman, group sales enablement, pro LinkedIn, Gartner at Salesforce and more. So those, those are kind of the kinds of sources that we’ve used. And as I said, Let’s highly data driven and it is designed to complement the qualitative insights that we gain by interacting with the markets and to the podcasts that we were running as well. kill

Britta Lorenz
their legs. May I ask you a question right here? The sources you mentioned, what were the most represented regions? Or was it across global? Or did something stand out that something was missing? But did you find it from that point of view?

Felix Krueger
Yes, most of them are global. In some cases, with the very large vendors, or with the very large businesses like LinkedIn, there was local data available specifically for the Australian market, which is also utilized to to paint a a region specific picture. But generally speaking, it was mostly global, which I think also has to do with the with the sample size that those research pieces aim to achieve. And, you know, I mean cells and even becomes more and more common, but I think it is very hard to paint a realistic picture with a limited sample size.

Pooja Kumar
So what are the three trends? Do you see some say, I did have a look at your piece of work, and there was a lot of great content in there. What are the three sales enablement trends that you use currently see specifically?

Felix Krueger
Yeah, sure. I mean, I think I think there’s a there’s a whole lot of trends going on. But just just for the purpose of this session here, I have, I’ve pulled out the three most striking ones, I think, which are also probably most insightful and also actionable for the audience. So the very first one that we’ve the insight that we’ve extracted was that buyer centricity is still mostly a myth in a lot of organizations. But it is kind of masked by the circumstances of COVID-19, which means that is very few repercussions for organizations that aren’t buyer centric, if you’re in the right category. Yeah. So I’ll elaborate a bit on what that means here. So according to LinkedIn state of sells 65% of sellers say they always put the buyer first. But then if you ask the buyers, if they actually agree that sellers always put the buyer first only 23% agree, right? So have sellers think they are buyer centric, but the people that it’s actually about, right, the the buyers, they disagree, right, which is obviously a big, big gap between perception and reality. Yeah. On top of that, you have a dynamic where b2b buyers have increasingly high expectations in their buyer experience. So a research piece by Salesforce looked at the expectations in the buyer experience between b2b and b2c. So business buyers with consumers Yeah, and considering the the multitude of experience that everybody has as a consumer, you would think that they really, for them, the expectation would be higher. But this research piece really showed that in fact, the expectation for business buyers is these days, higher than for consumers. So 85% of business buyers say that the experience a company provides is as important as its product or service, whereas the 79% of consumers, right? I think the reason for that without, you know, knowing the ins and outs of all the answers, but my assumptions around this result is that business buyers have the advantage or the reason why their expectations are so high is because they can draw from the experience that they have as consumers as well as being a business buyer, right. So they, they have a much, much broader experience pool to draw from to set the bar really high for all the experiences that they have also from business perspective, right. So that means if you’re a b2b seller, suddenly, you don’t only compete with other b2b sellers, but he also compete with b2c brands, because this is what the buyers are used to right. So Dave and I, we actually spoke spoke about that, and when he was on my podcast, so the the episode is actually going to be released next week for anybody who’s curious, but we’re actually talking about, you know, for example, if you look at Uber, right, like suddenly everybody expects all the apps and all the self serve models to be as convenient and as insightful as as the Uber app. Right. And I think this is really reason for b2b sellers to step up their game in terms of the the buyer experience right. Now, on top of that, the reason that what I initially said about COVID-19 actually masking the discrepancy between buyer experience and sorry, buyer expectations and seller, and buyer centricity is that by the budgets have increased during the pandemic, according to McKinsey. So there’s a lot of budget increases in software and hardware in particular. So as hardware budget increases, it’s number one, software is number two, and then number two As marketing and advertising, yeah, so you see more money being thrown at really urgent issues that b2b buyers have to fix for their organizations, which means that it is not a reflection of what is actually usually happening in market. Yeah, so that means sellers can essentially get away with not being as buyer centric as they should be. And still close business because there’s urgent problems to fix during the pandemic. Yeah.

Pooja Kumar
Actually, that last bit was not something that I see.

Felix Krueger
I actually have to qualify that statement, because I have led conversations recently with a head of growth, who’s really experienced and really well connected here in the Australian market. And he has worked across a lot of quite big brand names in Australia, and he still has connections with those companies and has insights on their sales performance as well. And he actually shared with me that it really depends on the category that you’re operating in. So there are certain categories, you know, like, if you think about customer support, if you think about anything communication related, like virtual communication related, if you think about, you know, HR, software, recruitment, software, those kind of things, those categories, all experienced, like a real influx of business, you know, and even when so far in saying that, when he hired salesperson for for his business, and they have worked across certain categories, he actually ignores their performance during a pandemic, because it’s not a reflection of reality and their real cell skill. And why because he essentially says they had it too easy during the pandemic, and there was too much money thrown into these categories for those achievements to be really reflection of the skill of the person. So yeah, I have to agree that there are some categories might have missed out. So yeah.

John Moore
And I know we’re seeing the same thing, right. I mean, I know I talked to people feel like that’s an awesome list where you are right, it’s so easy to make a sale in some industries right now that you don’t have to be a good seller, you almost have to be an extremely horrible seller, not to make money.

Felix Krueger
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And on top of that Desert, desert mess, especially in Australia, there’s a big talent shortage at the moment, because Australia is so reliant on immigration. And, you know, especially from, from the UK, and the US, you know, from English speaking countries, which means that there’s, at the moment, a massive fight going on for talent as well, right. So I’ve seen jobs advertised for sales roles, with a tronic Australian dollar of 200,000. Australian dollars base plus commission, which probably makes it end up with 300,000. And the requirement was five years of sales experience, right? So you can see there’s a lot of money being thrown at the problem of sales, short sales, talent shortage as well. Right?

John Moore
I think all of us. Yeah. Let’s all get on the plane. I’m gonna find myself a big old house in Sydney. I love that, right? That’s right.

Felix Krueger
So I think like also, if we look at the data of organizations practicing sales enablement, so, sales enablement, Pro has actually tracked the progression of sales enablement being practiced in organizations. And according to them. Now, we’ve reached a point where 74% of organizations actually practice sales enablement in some shape or form through internal resources, or through initiatives or through vendors. Yeah, so it’s good to see that organizations are doing the right thing. Yeah. But it is still it is still really important to actually not take what’s happening at the moment as reality right? So we’re basically caught in this really unusual circumstance and there’s a lot of trends and behaviors and market that actually skewing skewing what’s going on at the moment. So what I expect to see after the pandemic is a hangover in the in the sales space. So that means, you know, like a lot of a lot of companies will actually realize that what’s been happening is not real and they need to step up their game massively to actually become buyer centric. And there was also sorry,

Pooja Kumar
I said right, hallelujah when that happened.

Felix Krueger
So a research piece by CSO insights, Miller Heiman group, I think which is one of the best research pieces and they actually talk about the the hard metrics of impact on sales performance. So this this research piece was from 2019. They haven’t done a new one since that talks, the talks about the same metrics but they were specifically looking at the behavior And focuses that shift performance in wind rights and quota attainment, yeah, which is, at the end of the day, what sales enablement ideally should be measured by, you know, rather than activity. And what they have stated, instead of the 19% of organizations that dynamically aligned our sales process to the buyer journey, those companies see a 17.9% increase in win rates and a 11.8% increase in quota attainment. So it is really safe to say that this data point from before the pandemic is probably more of a reflection of what’s what will be happening after the pandemic. And you can really see that the alignment of the sales process to the buyer journey, which is ultimately the translation and the behavior that we expect to see from sales to be spire centric, really has the potential to shift the needle commercially and really make a difference to the revenue of any business. Yeah. Data. Yeah, yeah. And I think so from my conversations of back to the qualitative angle of my conversations in the Australian market. I think it is still shocking to see how many businesses and even really mature businesses haven’t mapped their buyer journey. It is absolutely astounding, how many businesses forced their buyers into their sales process without actually aligning that sales process to the buyer journey? Yeah. And I think there’s a there’s a big, big opportunity for challenger brands that are out there, you know, who, who want to take market share off the incumbents to actually do that better than them to better enable their sales team and then ultimately close more business and actually catch up catch up to those bigger brands?

John Moore
Yeah, I agree. I agree, Felix, I mean, certainly all of those trends and data points are ones I know we’ve been looking at and seeing as well. So it’s exciting to hear you share that. And it’s funny when you talk about buyer centricity. Everybody’s buyer centric, it’s a very marketing term, but nobody actually changes how they go to market. Very few companies are changing how they go to market to actually mean anything. So that’s, it’s a great call out on your part. I know I’ve seen those during the pandemic, a lot more businesses starting to actually pay attention to the real data, the real metrics about how they’re doing activities that correlate, or these have caused victori relationships between what they’re doing and the business bottom line. And I don’t think it’s across the globe. Because, you know, let’s be honest, across the globe, half of the world still doesn’t know what sales enablement even is. But for those companies that actually know what it’s what it is, and are have been doing it for a little while, it seems like it feels like in every conversation I have, and I’ll be curious what everybody else says bread I see raisin and it seems like more people actually doing, taking advantage of a more data oriented approach to enablement. What are you going to say, bro?

Britta Lorenz
No, I agree to everything that Felix and Utah said. I was wondering if, in the report if you also saw a change based on customer success enablement, for example, because especially during the pandemic, it was the topic to go into Customer Success enablement. And also in parallel the partner enablement, we speak about buyer enablement, but we also need to enable our partners to sell what we want them to do. Did you identify anything on that in your report?

Felix Krueger
And now so that there wasn’t specifically covered in the in the research that we were looking at, but I do agree. Next,

Britta Lorenz
Next topic research.

Felix Krueger
No, but I agree, I’ve recently had a lot of conversations around land and expand strategies where Customer Success certainly plays a big role. And again, I think, you know, maintaining and growing business is easier than actually, you know, closing new business. So I think there’s a big opportunity to include Customer Success more and more and equip them with sales skills and consultative skills as well. To to utilize them and the whole buyer experience and expanding business on that basis.

Pooja Kumar
Yeah. And it’s interesting. Just I think that by experience is important. I am seeing a lot more around the channel development but this piece around the buyer centricity which is very close to my heart, by the way, I very much I think I’m gonna My mission is to change the whole world to be truly buyer centric, you know, there could be they probably they could, I’d like to teach the, the world to sink thing. But I do see that becoming a lot more prominent now and companies in certainly the regions I work in, which is ASEAN and India, are starting to consider what they need to do to be more bias and trick, and that’s the land and expand strategy and the customer success teams are starting to bubble we’re seeing a lot more Customer Success teams, and customer success enablement teams, as well.

John Moore
Yeah, in fact, and in fact, we’re going to be from trust enablement perspective, we’re going to be starting to talk about a bit more as we go forward. But I’ll save that for a little bit later in this conversation. But I agree with you, I think it’s becoming, it’s no longer acceptable to only use the marketing terms, we all need to grow up a little bit and recognize the ownership and the power that our buyers actually have in the process. So spot on.

Pooja Kumar
And to to add to that something that Dave had put in some of the thoughts that Dave nettle had sent for South Africa, is he said, you know, to support the buyer through this, the seller through this journey of becoming more buyer centric, virtual coaching and coaching generally, but more doing being able to do it virtually, being able to shift the mindset of buyers through coach at off sellers, I’m sorry, through coaching, that’s become quite a big focus of the big needs now that he sees in South Africa and and it resonates for me as well, I can see it bubbling into a big need now as well.

John Moore
Oh, amen. You know, the other thing I was going to throw out there, cuz I’m curious what everybody thinks about it. I’ve seen, there’s certainly a lot more talk about that things like the last FCS event. But I’ve been seeing and hearing a lot of people talk about it, both in business and outside is a focus on the well being of the individuals in the business, you know, all the sellers who have been struggling just as much, if not more than that all the rest of us locked up in our houses during COVID. There’s a lot of talk about, and I think it’s amazing to see about mental health of sales, you know, physical health because of the ramifications downstream on that. There’s certainly a lot of focus in enablement role, with HR with l&d with sales leaders to bolster that, are you folks, is anybody else seeing the same thing? Or? I’m curious to hear?

Pooja Kumar
Yeah. So sorry, I’ve actually got a double title. It’s called sales enablement and organizational culture. So that has that title has only kind of propped up over the last two years because we felt like we need someone to to just make sure that people are in the right headspace. And I think the last two years have been more, more, definitely more, it was tougher for a lot of sales reps greater.

Britta Lorenz
I think we also see it in the actions, management is taking in a lot of companies that they are giving those mental health they have, or even give a whole week off to recover. So I think it’s really noticed also by management, to share and value what everybody has been doing over the last couple of months, and also what it actually put on the shoulders of everyone. I mean, being at home, juggling all the balls of the things happening at home and focusing on work. That has never been the case before. And I think that’s something that really got recognized. And it changed a lot of how we see home offices, and also how we see specific roles.

John Moore
Right? I mean, we hired a whole we hired a whole generation of new sellers to our business who have never actually met each other in person. Yeah, there’s no built in loyalty to each other. There’s no team collaboration dynamic that you often see. So I think you’re right, but I think that’s leading to a lot more focus on how do we start to bring people together and take care of them.

Britta Lorenz
Also think about that. The new generation, they never felt this real networking, feeling what we had what we were able to enjoy, also mentoring, having a real physical mentor within your company, seeing how others are doing their job. These are things they are missing out you can watch a video Yes. But it is different. If you are different if you are allowed to follow a mentor or have a physical body to go along with versus doing it virtually. I think we really need to cater that need to overcome the gap. We We We are the pandemic created.

Pooja Kumar
Yeah. And and so mentoring is a it’s a nice, it’s a nice segue to a point that Dave men made again, around AI and tech starting to play a much bigger role in the end. boarding process. And I recently had some conversations with a couple of companies around AI playing a role in coaching. You know, I have to tell you five years ago, you told me I’m being coached by AI. I don’t think so buddy. But I’m now seeing the value of it because at least for specific sales coaching pieces, right, where you need to make sure, especially when you’re onboarding someone remotely, that they understand the value proposition of what you’re proposing, positioning, the personas that your positioning, etc, etc. And I am starting to see the value of it because it’s time consuming, and it takes up the bias.

Britta Lorenz
But isn’t that also a quality or a skill enabled me to save a gig you to understand what kind of technology should I bring in? Does it fit what we are doing? Or is it an extra burden on the team. So I think t Q is gonna be one of the next upcoming skills. We talked about EQ a long time, but now t Q is coming into the game and the combination of both that’s gonna be gobbled. If you’re able to juggle both balls, you’re gonna be the star

John Moore
out there. It is. And the only thing I wanted to add there was the the robustness of AI computational models, combined with the sheer amount of data that they have at their fingertips now their virtual fingertips now, they’ve just gotten a heck of a lot better. So from a scalability solution. Amen. Pooja, I think they’re adding so much value. And from your perspective, Britta, from what you said, we can’t lose the human element. And I know I’m talking to my my friend, and mentor and the human expert out there. But the human side combined with the technology, which I know I’ve heard you talk about Britain in the past. Oh my god, it’s so important that we can’t lose sight of that. Hmm,

Felix Krueger
yeah, I agree. I think there’s, you know, the, if you if you think about the hype curve, you know, the the famous Gartner hype curve, the I think the AI and technology is currently a bit on the decline in all of our people are people actually realize, okay, it is powerful, but it doesn’t can’t still can’t replace the human touch that is necessary to actually be consultative, to build relationships and market. You know, it’s an I think the, the focus is, again, more shifting towards utilizing technology to enable people rather than replacing them. And I think that’s, that’s a positive,

Britta Lorenz
absolutely, we have to use it in the right way to make sure that it supports everyone. But never forget the person behind you can go for example, into a sales coaching, meeting, and just hammer down your data, and forget that the person is sitting there like this, or maybe something happened. So please be open. And really watch what you see and listen what you hear really deeply and not just listen on the surface.

John Moore
Agree, but I still like I like pujas point, and I didn’t want to lose sight of that, you know, it does take some of the bias out of the equation. We all we all have our biases and filters, for better or worse, simply because of how our life’s journey has taken us. So it does help. But we also need to remember sometimes AI can be built with bias that we definitely humans have to fit in and continue to fit in.

Pooja Kumar
Yeah. Now Actually, there is another trend that I’m seeing in ASEAN and India, they feels the same way about South Africa. And I’m super, and I think that I’m seeing it in Australia too. But Felix, you can talk to that. And we’re super excited to see so many more rolls around sales enablement appear in our regions. And clearly So it used to be maybe I feel like I use two years as a as a broad statement for everything, but not so long ago. sales enablement was, especially in larger companies was run in the US. And then you had a program manager in India or in ASEAN countries or in other parts of the world who would deploy the sales enablement. But I’m starting to see more in mind that that was okay, but didn’t take into account that culturally, our buyers are different and thus the enablement needs to support the buyers journey. And so that was really my big beef I guess about about how those global teams or global roles worked. But I’m starting to see a lot more strategical roles now being advertised and being being recruited for within Asia Pacific, and certainly in ASEAN and in India, and I’m thrilled about that. What about you guys? What are you seeing?

Britta Lorenz
I can just confirm that it is starting to come also to, it was the same in our Europe, everything was based out of the US or UK, the English speaking countries and deployed and everywhere else. But now the job roles and opportunities. I mean, they are huge. And they are coming up, you see so many roles right now. I can totally agree with that.

Felix Krueger
Yeah, I can also confirm that for Australia. So there’s, there’s such a huge appetite. For some most of the most of the roles that I speak to, on my day to day. They’re kind of, you know, like in the SMB space, C level, and VP of Sales kind of level. And there’s such an appetite to understand sales enablement, better, you know, there’s, there’s more and more roles popping up. We actually did an analysis I unfortunately, can’t exactly remember the data points. But we actually did a breakdown based on LinkedIn Sales Navigator data of the sales enablement roles per capita, adjusted for 100,000 of population for across the English speaking world and Australia was actually even though it’s small, it was actually, if you adjusted for its size, it was actually the second most best resourced country behind the US. So I think there’s more and more roles popping up. It’s still a small market, which probably won’t change in the near future. But yeah, I think I think it’s becoming more and more prominent.

Pooja Kumar
Right. And you’ve got some great enablers in Australia actually. Very, very strong set of enablers in Australia. So that’s great to see.

John Moore
It’s also the one thing I want to throw out there Pooja and sorry, to do it, beyond the fact that we have some amazing people listening in and leaving comments on the LinkedIn, Crystal Gayle, Peter, Marianna, and I, all of our good friends are out there leaving some good commentary, and I appreciate y’all. One thing I wanted to say is, what you’re recognizing their pleasure, to me is so important because it represents a maturing of the enablement function to so many things that start off and the US historically, I’m not saying I believe this is right, but just historically, when, when it’s still really early on, there’s a lack of trust, they hand out ownership for strategy out to other parts of the globe. The fact that it’s maturing out and reaching out to the to the other parts of the globe and more responsibilities being handed out, I think represents a maturing of enablement across the planet, which is a wonderful thing to say.

Pooja Kumar
dreams are coming true today.

John Moore
Yes, and welcome to Australia, Peter gray said there’s openings and we’re all gonna go down there.

Felix Krueger
I know Peter Bray.

Pooja Kumar
Give us an intro. Felix, we all want to roll with him.

Felix Krueger
He’ll be on the podcast soon, actually. So you can you can get to know him.

Pooja Kumar
Awesome. Okay, guys, I’m going to switch gears a little bit in the last few minutes and ask prediction time. Now, guys, Felix, actually, let’s start with you. If you were to look at your sales enablement crystal ball today, what do you think are some of the emerging business trends for for sales enablement?

Felix Krueger
Yeah. So I think number one is, as I said earlier, technology will be used to enable humans rather than replacing them. So I think the the hype around AI, you know, has is still there, but the expectation is no longer you know, like to be able to fully replace humans, especially if you think about high high ticket tech sales. You know, it’s, it’s just something that you still cannot and probably don’t want to scale to technology. So I think, yeah, technology enablement will be a big one. I think, considering the the cell skills that you’re seeing, which are also being nurtured by increasing number of sales enablers out there, and I think the the requirement for sellers to be analytical and have business acumen will, will cause sales departments to look for talent in new places. And probably Yeah, probably will change the typical career path of a salesperson in the future. So I think that that’s something that might be happening as well. Especially in Australia, as I said, because there’s a talent shortage. There’s big, big potential for that to happen. And then lastly, I think, revenue KPIs, if you think about That being more more deployed across sells marketing departments, you know, in some, in some cases, even customer success if they have some sort of revenue targets to upsell or cross sell customers. I think that revenue perspective is something that will grow across the whole organization, you know, so I think that that mindset of being of Okay, I’m, I’m working in a department that just has a supporting function will change in the future to be more revenue driven, which is ultimately what every organization wants to do, you know, I, just to give you an example, somebody who who has displayed that, that that mindset A long time ago, at the media company that I used to work for, was the head of video. So he was producing video for the news website. And he always taught his video producers, or his team of video producers that they’re not producing video to produce video, they’re producing video to make money, right? So and he really instilled that even though video production is not necessarily something that you would think of being a revenue driver, right? And or being a mindset that you would have to drive revenue. So I think that sort of mindset will will grow over time across different departments of the organization.

Pooja Kumar
Yeah, good. All right.

John Moore
Yeah. You just get lunch delivered.

Pooja Kumar
No, I didn’t get lunch delivered. I got my phone delivered.

John Moore
I love what I love what everything Felix just said, that’s, that’s really awesome. But one of the things that I would add on top of that, not but And in addition, what I would have on top of it is, and we talked about this in terms of the buyer centricity. Today, buyer centricity means I’m trying to find a better angle to sell you. One of the things that I know, I’m seeing in conversations I’m having a lot more, and that trust enablement, will be talking about in some way, shape, and form more and more is , really helping the buyer go through their change management, there are their understanding of what they need to do internally, before they even talk to sellers. We all know that 70% or so depending on the research, you look at the buying journey has taken place before they even talked to us anymore. And that’s only going to get worse and worse in more commoditized. markets and solutions. So you know, as I talk to enough people like , who’s been looking at this for the last 30 years, and others, we have an opportunity as enablers. And this is my challenge. And I’ll be quick to really think about how to put the buyer first. We will make money as a result of it. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying we’re going to create a nonprofit and start giving our stuff away. But really helping them encouraging them to go through their process. And if we do so we’ll see as a result better qualified leads better value driven conversations, happier customers stay longer, and all that goodness, and I’m running for president so I want to get my vote. We’re about to buy a BSL pujara printer. What do you guys think? What do you think’s coming?

Pooja Kumar
Here? Go Britta.

Britta Lorenz
I mean, what should I add to everything that already I think from the back region perspective, we see the evolution of sales enablement, per se. I mean, we’ve heard about before already that we are always couple of years behind, but we are picking up and we are coming in strong. So we really get what it is now. And people start to understand it as well in the field and start to work on it. And we also see that on the number of jobs, which are out there. So I totally think enablement is gonna make the difference in how everything is going to be in growth of businesses and the wealth of businesses. And it’s going to have a huge impact on the customer experience and buyer experience as we heard before, right.

Pooja Kumar
Yeah, that is that’s fantastic. So I can only add to what what you’ve what you’re all saying because I agree with all of it. And I think that my crystal ball shows that in the next two years, the southern hemisphere is still going to be either mostly remote selling and remote working. And I don’t think that any I haven’t spoken to any enabler in around actually any enabler that feels like they’ve got they’re found the right equation to enable and upskill sellers as well as they could. So Mariana, maybe Tick Tock video as I’ve been talking about enabling through Tick Tock videos because micro learning And, and going, going going are getting some small bite sides of enablement to support the sellers. That’s kind of what we need. But I don’t think we’ve got it right. I am not convinced that that, you know, most companies haven’t arrived. I’d love to hear from you if you think you’ve got it right, by the way. So that’s kind of the remote, the remote enablement and remote onboarding is still a big deal. I think that Dave nela saying the same in South Africa in being able to create Well, I don’t think I’m looking at his notes so I know that it’s the same but and then finally, my final prediction is the rise of AI in sales enablement. I think that’s going to be part of all of the content enablement and all the work that we do out of the next two or three years. So Pooja,

John Moore
I know we’ve gone longer than we intended, but we could talk for the next 47,000 hours on this and it’s it’s only 215 in the morning here so I’m ready to do for another five hours of this so but maybe, maybe we jumped to the top three tips. Anybody want to start feeling Do you want to kick us off with maybe your top three tips?

Pooja Kumar
top tip for enabler? Not even three? Let’s do top one.

Felix Krueger
Okay, the top one tip Yeah, I think we touched on it earlier, I think content will play such a massive role in you know, the remote buyer enablement and accommodating for the buyer journey. You know, there’s a there’s a data point out there from Gartner that 44% of millennials, millennial business decision makers would prefer to make a purchase without any seller interaction, right so and if you think about that, even though the buyer regret is higher for those kinds of people, and I think there’s there’s still the need to create better content in a sales context. You know, marketing content is often not only top of the funnel, but high up in the clouds. And I think content needs to be more buyer centric to really support them and making educated purchase decisions. So I think that that’s my top tip. work closely with customer facing teams to gain those insights pair that with your own researcher onto the industry that you serve, serving and then work with Product Marketing and marketing and actually creating content that then ultimately supportive buyers that’s my tip.

Pooja Kumar
Cool Thank you

John Moore
Pooja Pooja you got an axe you keep waiting till the end your turn.

Pooja Kumar
Okay, My top tip is still the same for all enablers. Be bold, you know your buyers you know your enabler, uh, you know your your sellers, you know the what the buyers need, and you’re probably closest to the ground to be able to create or see what changes needed. Be bold, speak up and create the change that you need to see up there.

John Moore
That that just became my favorite line and tip right here. What about you product?

Britta Lorenz
Don’t assume you know everything. Stay curious and listen to your customers internally as as well as externally. Adjust, adjust daily and be curious

John Moore
feel as they do this all the time. You had a great tip. Pooja blew my mind after yours. On top of you blowing my mind, initially now Britta blew my mind, I’m going to give a real simple basic one though. Find the highest revenue owner revenue leader in your business and get on their calendar, sit down with them and understand what makes them tick, what they’re concerned about and find ways to tie your efforts to their outcomes and goals that they care about. build those partnerships, people build those partnerships.

Unknown Speaker
I agree

Pooja Kumar
all great tips. Hey, guys, this is fantastic. We have gone a few minutes over the time, but I think everyone got insights. So thank you for joining this at Asia Pacific times. JOHN is 1:30am fear, and we really appreciate your joining us. Felix, thank you so much for all of your insights and bringing your study to life. And Britta it is super early for you as well. And you look amazing. So thank you for coming in and waking up early and joining and helping us spread the word of sales enablement.

John Moore
What what Yeah, I’m gonna take one more and then I’m going to close out because anybody’s been listening to us for far too long. Marianna, our dear friend said be seller centric was her top tip. Understand, and this is a really, really important one. understand where your companies and sellers are in terms of maturity level. Growth is a step by step process and that’s so spot on understanding Where you businesses and the maturity model is spot on. And we could talk about that three days about that. We should have Marianna talk about that next time.

Pooja Kumar
Mariana super clever Actually, we should do another one of these. So thank you for helping us and thank you for joining us in this global trust enablement copy collaboration and enablement test Episode Four trust enablement. I think today was a definitely a global point of view. And thank you for anchoring it for us, Felix.

Felix Krueger
Thank you so much for having me guys. So it was a real pleasure to be able to contribute and thanks for everybody for their time and for listening. It was great.

Pooja Kumar
Thank you.