EPISODE 2
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[00:00:00] Jonathan Kvarfordt: If I came to you and I said to you, Hey, can you make me an onboarding plan? And that’s all I told you, even though you’re the expert, your result would probably be mediocre. Not because you’re incapable of giving it to me, but because I didn’t give you enough context. That is why I think the main problem is with most people prompting is that they talk to AI, like they’re supposed to read their minds and understand this.
[00:00:19] Jonathan Kvarfordt: But if I came to you and I said, Hey, I need an onboarding plan that’s 30 days long for brand new salespeople who are working in Latin America, selling to CFOs at the bank, selling this particular product. I need these, these, this, this skill with these, these tools. Your plan would be way better because you now understand the context of what I’m asking for.
[00:00:35] Jonathan Kvarfordt: It forces you to become a better communicator.
[00:00:37] Steve Watt: Welcome to The Enablement Edge, the go to resource for enablement. And go to market pros. We’re bringing you the secrets, strategies, and tactics that drive meaningful impact. You’ll get valuable insights and expertise from enablement leaders, so you can become an effective change agent, turn strategy into [00:01:00] reality, and transform your organization for the better.
[00:01:07] Steve Watt: Today’s episode of The Enablement Edge, we’re digging deep into AI, and enablement. And I can’t imagine a better co host for this topic. And my friend and my colleague, Amber Mellano, one of Seismics, AI enablement experts. Amber, thanks for joining me on the show. Tell folks a little bit about what you do.
[00:01:30] Amber Mellano: Hey, Steve. Thanks for having me. So I just recently stepped into a new role where one of the things that I get to focus on is helping make sure that our revenue teams are able to get the most out of generative Generative AI. So not only using our own tools, but even using other tools out there in the world to really help them be more efficient, more effective and level up their game.
[00:01:50] Amber Mellano: And secretly learning myself how we can make enablement secretly leveling up our games. And which was one of the reasons it was so fun to talk to, to coach Kay today. He is just [00:02:00] so widely revered in the enablement community and such a thought leader in AI. It was really cool to hear some of his visions for where he thinks AI can take us and.
[00:02:09] Amber Mellano: Even what it’s already doing where he’s just doing some incredible things with scalability and all the stuff. You guys are just going to eat this up. And also giving us really practical advice. I don’t want to give anything away, but spoiler alert, listen for grace when you get to the podcast. And I think you’re going to really be Excited and there’s going to be a lot of stuff people are going to take away from this.
[00:02:30] Amber Mellano: I’m super excited for everybody to listen.
[00:02:32] Steve Watt: It was a bit of a balance, wasn’t it? I think we knew that going in that when you get someone like Jonathan Kvarfordt on an, on an episode, uh, you could talk for hours. For sure. But we had to not do that. Um, also you could go way blue sky. You could go way off into what’s possible, where this is going.
[00:02:53] Steve Watt: That’s really interesting. You could also get really practical and tactical. What can I do [00:03:00] today? And how exactly do I do that? And when we talked about it, we realized we wanted to do both. And I hope that we hit a good balance. I believe that we did. I, I, I really do think we walked that line. I hope our listeners and viewers agree.
[00:03:17] Steve Watt: Please let us know if we missed the mark, let us know, but I hope you loved it as much as we did. Let’s jump in. Jonathan, really happy to have you on The Enablement Edge. I gotta say, I had such a good time prepping for this episode. You know, the first place I always go is to LinkedIn, and your LinkedIn profile, I gotta say to anyone watching this or listening, you gotta go check him out.
[00:03:43] Steve Watt: This guy is everywhere. This guy, you are an advisor, you’re a consultant, you’re a founder, All sorts of different things, all going on simultaneously. They all come back to two things. They all come back to AI, and they all come back to enablement. [00:04:00] And for that, I can think of no better guest for today’s episode.
[00:04:03] Steve Watt: So thank you so much for joining us. And let me start with asking you about your current main gig, GTM AI Academy. Why did you found it, and what do you do?
[00:04:16] Jonathan Kvarfordt: Well, first off, that was a very kind introduction, like it, it, uh, I like to add things to my LinkedIn. I think that’s what it is. So maybe that’s why it looks so robust.
[00:04:24] Jonathan Kvarfordt: But I appreciate that. It’s very kind of you. Um, the GTMI Academy, I founded because, I don’t know, gosh, two, two years ago, I was introduced to AI and I just saw how powerful it was just on a product standpoint. And then obviously, ChatGPT came out soon after and kind of launched this craziness of all the AI tools coming out.
[00:04:42] Jonathan Kvarfordt: And I was in a meeting with a mastermind of a group of people. Where one of them was talking about how, you know, ChatGPT was affecting his business and before I was just using it for like poems and weird song names about Snoop Dogg style of cats in space or something. So I was just, I didn’t really get how it was, you know, but then [00:05:00] after he went through this mastermind show and showed some things he was doing, I’m like, this is freaking cool.
[00:05:05] Jonathan Kvarfordt: And then from there, I also thought to myself, like, this is where things are going to go is this, this, this AI, AI space. And so I dove, I dove in and I, I tried to figure out from any way I could find out how to use AI, not just chat GPT, but a lot of different tools I was introduced to. Um, and then I realized in the space where I was looking on LinkedIn and watch different people as they’re leading the space with AI and go to market, I was like, no one’s really talking about how you can actually do this kind of stuff and no one’s really offering anything because the courses out there or the education.
[00:05:33] Jonathan Kvarfordt: It’s good. Like there’s a lot of really, really good free materials from Google and from Amazon and from all these different places, Microsoft, but none of them were specific to go to market or actually applying it to your job. It’s just kind of generalized. So I was like, I’m going to make something because that’s what I do every day is that as an enabler, I enable teams of how to use.
[00:05:51] Jonathan Kvarfordt: AI with customer success with marketing and with, uh, sales, all the different teams I was working with, I’m like, I’m just going to make something out of it because no one else is doing [00:06:00] it. So I’ll do it. So that’s kind of where I came from was from that. And because I’m extremely passionate about enablement specifically being the team that will lead the cause or lead the charge on adopting AI instead of a.
[00:06:10] Jonathan Kvarfordt: A function because we’re already doing tool enablement. I mean, you guys know this at Seismic. Enablement team is the one who usually rolls out Seismic to any type of team, and if it does well, it’s usually because the enablement team is the one who did it. So in my mind, like, it’s the perfect team to kind of lead the charge around AI adoption around across the revenue teams.
[00:06:29] Jonathan Kvarfordt: So that’s why I founded it.
[00:06:31] Amber Mellano: When we were talking earlier, uh, getting ready for this call, you had mentioned what a great position enablement is in to be not only having the seat at the table, but also maybe driving the conversation being had, um, to spread these, these practices across the entire business, really not even necessarily just focusing on the revenue teams.
[00:06:51] Amber Mellano: Are you seeing customers looking or, or the people that you’re in contact with looking at it that way?
[00:06:56] Jonathan Kvarfordt: In general, yeah. Like there’s, there’s a lot of people who. I mean, you look at the case studies [00:07:00] from OpenAI itself, when you talk about Moderna, for example, who rolled out the enterprise plan, and just their case study online, in which anybody can read, is awesome.
[00:07:07] Jonathan Kvarfordt: Because they’ve implemented their GPTs and just ChatsPT across the entire team, and their productivity and their speed is way higher, and the quality they’re getting is way higher than before. When I read that, I mean, I kind of knew this going forward, but it started to show how AI can really influence All of the entire organization, not just revenue teams.
[00:07:26] Jonathan Kvarfordt: And that’s kind of my opinion in general with enablement is that it shouldn’t be restricted to just revenue teams. I’m very passionate and opinionated that enablement should be functioning across all parts of the organization. Um, and AI is kind of another segue of where, I mean, imagine of course, sales, customer success, marketing, rev ops being.
[00:07:43] Jonathan Kvarfordt: They’re not able to use AI, but what about the engineers, and accounting, and HR, and product, and all these other people? They could use some help with speed and productivity, too. Like, imagine the world where someone, somewhere, will sometime create an AI enabled program for the entire org, and they’re just going to [00:08:00] be, no one will be able to catch up to them.
[00:08:01] Jonathan Kvarfordt: Like, we haven’t gotten to that point yet. But we will,
[00:08:04] Steve Watt: soon. Something I’ve heard you say, Jonathan, is that AI and enablement is not just about doing the same things faster, doing the same things cheaper. In fact, it’s really about having the opportunity and really the obligation to rethink some of the objectives of enablement.
[00:08:23] Steve Watt: Tell us more about what you are getting at there.
[00:08:27] Jonathan Kvarfordt: Yeah, well, it kind of comes down to fundamental principles of like what’s the job to be done here? And I think a lot of the times, I can’t speak for anybody else, but how I have functioned in enablement was based on the technology capabilities from my own skill level, which was obviously restricted because, you know, I’m, I have my own weaknesses and strengths in enablement.
[00:08:45] Jonathan Kvarfordt: But now, as a result of AI, there’s parts of what I can do that amplify my strengths and also bolster up my weaknesses that I never could have done before as a team of one or a team of 10. And then secondly, it’s like, also kind of like how we talked about before, a lot of the processes that [00:09:00] now are, you know, in existence were created because of the technology or the abilities of the people we had then.
[00:09:07] Jonathan Kvarfordt: You know, it’s kind of like, I always compare the AI, what’s going on AI right now to the industrial revolution, the process of being able to get from Chicago to New York. was through a train or through horses or through something. But then all of a sudden cars came up and airplanes and all these different types of travel, the destination, the travel may have been changed, but the experience is much, much better, you know, much more faster.
[00:09:30] Jonathan Kvarfordt: It’s better, better suited, at least most time when I fly planes, it’s at least better. Um, but, but I always compare it to that of like, am I functioning in an, in enablement right now as someone riding a horse, or am I willing to look at something different and go. Kinda like how Henry Ford said, if I asked what people wanted, I would have made faster horses.
[00:09:50] Jonathan Kvarfordt: But you gotta think of like, what’s the, what’s the replacement? How can I look at a different way to travel the path that might be better, faster, easier than it would have been before, you know? [00:10:00] So is that about
[00:10:00] Steve Watt: taking a step or two back and saying really what is the job to be done of enablement and not just automating and accelerating all the current things the enablement team is doing, but really stepping back and saying, What could we do?
[00:10:14] Steve Watt: What should we do for the organization? Is that where you’re going with this?
[00:10:18] Jonathan Kvarfordt: Yeah, I mean, it’s just, it’s just the same point of just trying to figure out, like, what are the things that I’ve been asking the same question, kind of stepping back that you said before, like, what is the purpose of enablement at all?
[00:10:30] Jonathan Kvarfordt: Like, what do we exist for? And the actual definition of enablement is about improving performance of something. You know, that’s what it’s about. So I always think about that and thinking, okay, if that’s the case, what What I used to have done in the past in enablement was something that I, as a person, had to do myself.
[00:10:48] Jonathan Kvarfordt: And now I’m asking the question, can it be done by AI better than what I could do? And the answer is usually yes. Um, so now I’m thinking of myself in enablement specifically more of like a, [00:11:00] we talked about this before, a good comparison is like the game master versus the emperor with Hunger Games. Like I’m not the emperor because that’s the CRO or CEO, but I am the game master to where, I control the environment on which the teams are living and not in a way to torture them or to have them, you know, take out each other, but to, but to win.
[00:11:19] Jonathan Kvarfordt: And the more and more AI that has more capabilities that it can do, the more I think enable it should be that kind of systems admin to kind of help the environment or the ecosystem of where the teams live in to be more successful, better able, and more equipped to use better time of their brain energy.
[00:11:36] Jonathan Kvarfordt: Like a lot of times with AI. Just the fact of taking off some of the mundane tasks, you can have a lot more brain space to do some of the more fun creative stuff that AI cannot do. Hopefully. We’ll never be able to do as the stuff that humans can do, you know?
[00:11:48] Amber Mellano: Yeah. I was thinking one, when you were saying about enablement folks, I think that one of the biggest challenges that enablement folks have is that we spend so much time trying to figure out how can we help our stakeholders, whoever [00:12:00] they are, what are we going to do to help?
[00:12:01] Amber Mellano: And then while we’re figuring out how to solve problem A, problems B and C land on our desk, and we’re still in the middle of problem A, and we’re trying to figure out how we’re going to do all of these things. And then when you said about the brain energy, I feel like with the, the harnessing that power of AI.
[00:12:15] Amber Mellano: It gives enablers, which are, I feel like, inherently clever people, inherently scrappy, trying to figure out, how am I going to put all these fires out at the same time? AI gives us such a huge advantage there to make that brain capacity expand. Instead of thinking like, how am I going to solve these problems?
[00:12:33] Amber Mellano: It’s almost like you can get around the problem and start to look at, well, how am I going to achieve that goal? Instead of looking at all those obstacles in front of us, it might give us that bandwidth to, to really get clever. And like you said, the, the game master, you know what the winning move is going to be, and you have to figure out how to get all of the chess pieces there.
[00:12:50] Amber Mellano: AI is such an interesting, like. It will help us get there in the fact that it could do a lot of that busy work for us, but it also helps us be free to be more creative by taking on [00:13:00] that busy work. It’s really slick.
[00:13:01] Jonathan Kvarfordt: Let’s just take something example like MedPIC, for example, how MedPIC as a general theology or methodology is pretty well understood, but then the magic comes into actual execution and application of it in real time.
[00:13:13] Jonathan Kvarfordt: Example or a conversation, right? And that’s where a lot of my time in the past was spent was thinking about, okay, if I was talking to a CFO of a bank, how would I position this particular question? And all this kind of stuff, like I’d be the one making sure the materials were there to make sure that the teams have what they needed when they needed it to ask the right questions or know, you know, the competitors or whatever the case might be.
[00:13:33] Jonathan Kvarfordt: But now within two seconds, I can. Take MedPick as an example and then make this entire script of any persona that’s specific to them that’s really good that would have taken me time like my brain matter would have had to take time to do it because Of all the enablers out there, I’d call myself a mediocre enabler, but in my best time, like it would take me time.
[00:13:53] Jonathan Kvarfordt: And so now that I don’t have to do that, I can get those type of tasks out of my way. So I can think more about, okay, what’s the things that are a [00:14:00] bigger, higher impact that I can do that again, AI cannot do as of yet, but I can, I can still get the short term wins out there to help the teams in the moment to do what they need to do.
[00:14:10] Jonathan Kvarfordt: And also think about longer term, what’s the bigger impact type stuff.
[00:14:13] Amber Mellano: I was thinking in terms of the, uh, the faster horses versus cars idea, would you share with us like maybe an epiphany you’ve had between that faster horses and cars thing? What was like the first thing that sort of turned that light bulb on in your mind?
[00:14:27] Amber Mellano: I’m curious to like share your experiences to put light bulbs on in the rest of our minds.
[00:14:32] Jonathan Kvarfordt: I’ll give you one that I’m actually playing with right now is kind of a mix of both automation and AI. So. I’m working with a team right now where the product is an AI automation tool, and before I worked with them, I was doing what I call the old school version of doing this, which was, I had this crazy prompt that I have for, what the concept is, is giving coaching on sales calls, because the old school world is having some sort of CI tool that someone manually Has to grade, right?
[00:14:58] Jonathan Kvarfordt: And then get feedback on. [00:15:00] Um, and the fact of the matter is, is that you may have a hundred calls a week and maybe five of them get graded. So obviously that’s not really good numbers for feedback and for awareness of what’s happening. And I was thinking myself, okay, I wonder if I could do this with, with AI and do a call review with AI.
[00:15:14] Jonathan Kvarfordt: So I made this crazy prompt based on methodology and persona and all this other stuff you need to have for. Uh, call review and I trained it on how to coach because I, I have my, I wrote a sales coaching course. So I uploaded it by coaching content to the, to the GPT. And so I have this thing where I did this coaching model.
[00:15:30] Jonathan Kvarfordt: So it literally hand delivered to me. Like I had an assistant that was me do the call review, which was crazy because I watched the call. I wanted to see what it thought. So I watched it first and I ran the prompt and I was like, okay, I know what my notes are and I compared them. And I was like, holy Hannah, this is crazy good because I just didn’t, there’s some parts of it that I didn’t think about.
[00:15:51] Jonathan Kvarfordt: Um, even parts of my own coaching methodology. I was like, Oh yeah, I did remember talking about that. Um, that I didn’t, I didn’t think about in the moment. Now you take that and you add the [00:16:00] layer of automation onto it to where not only can you do that, And like, literally, in the old school way, it would be me uploading a long transcript and putting a prompt in and getting a result back in ChatGBT and getting back an output.
[00:16:11] Jonathan Kvarfordt: But now, working with this team, it’s like it’s all automated. So every single call gets graded, every single person gets their, their update from it. And then on a leadership standpoint, you think about that, saying, okay, if I had all this data on every single call. If I could take, let’s just say, a scorecard of all the calls happening in a week, 100 calls, whereas before it was 5 calls, now it’s 100 calls.
[00:16:32] Jonathan Kvarfordt: If I could look at that conglomerate of that, I can look at, as an enabler, think about, okay, what’s the skills that are weakest? As a whole, what’s the skills that are strongest? Where’s the good examples of what good looks like? Where’s weak look like? Can I share these snippets with the team live? Like I can do things in scale that could never have done before.
[00:16:49] Jonathan Kvarfordt: Cause I just didn’t have the capacity to. So that was one thing I was like, blew my mind of like, Holy crap. There’s some. There’s some really cool things you can do with this, not just for the individual, but for [00:17:00] me as an enabler to make sure that the process that would have taken me months before can be happening in a few days.
[00:17:06] Jonathan Kvarfordt: The weakness with some tools, trackers, is it’s literally just taking the word itself, which is not always correct. When you layer on an intelligent application like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Cloud, or one of these other tools, on top of conversation, it understands the context. So now it can pull out all of the context of the questions.
[00:17:24] Jonathan Kvarfordt: I can look at skills or anything that’s observable on a call. I can look at the content. I can look at how the objections we’re getting. And then once I look at that from each individual call, I can then look at the entire set of calls and look at, okay, what’s the top five objections this week? What’s the top five content requests?
[00:17:40] Jonathan Kvarfordt: What’s the pricing going on? Like I can have all this information and data that’s accurate. Now, so that me as an enabler, I could go, okay, the thing that’s holding us back and where our deals are dying is stage two. And what we talk about based on the data is this topic. So now I know what to go train on or coach on.
[00:17:55] Jonathan Kvarfordt: I couldn’t have done that before. So it allows me to be a lot more quicker in [00:18:00] my ability to support or to have a pulse on what’s happening. Because before, unless you’re really with the customers and understanding it, you don’t, you miss all that.
[00:18:08] Steve Watt: I love it. Are we yet at a point where it can go beyond assessing?
[00:18:14] Steve Watt: Me, the, the seller and my performance on the call and all the things I said and didn’t say and how quickly I said them and how many filler words I used and whether I hit all the right notes. Beyond that, is it able to, to gauge your reaction? Are we able to gauge the, the facial reaction from the buyer to see where they look confused, where they look happy, where they look unhappy, where they’re rolling their eyes.
[00:18:41] Steve Watt: Right. Are
[00:18:42] Jonathan Kvarfordt: we at that point yet? Um, funny enough, we were at that point years ago because that was the first tool I got introduced to was an AI that someone built by himself about how to read tone of voice and facial recognition and body language and all this stuff that, and the company I was with bought his tool.
[00:18:57] Jonathan Kvarfordt: So I was, I was the enabler [00:19:00] training the team of how the AI worked around this particular tool. It’s crazy. And that was two years ago. So, yes, it exists, and yes, people use it. The one thing on the other side, which I realized when I did a conversation before, is that there’s a downside to that, because maybe people don’t want to share their data with an AI being trained on their tone of voice or their physical language, because that data goes somewhere.
[00:19:21] Jonathan Kvarfordt: It may not tag that to me as a person that could be advertised to, but it is somewhere. So the question is, where is that line between, where is it okay for me to choose in how much of my data is being trained on or not, which that, that is where I think things are going is. How much choice do we have over the data we share?
[00:19:37] Jonathan Kvarfordt: Which right now, even without AI, you think about all the cookies and stuff that get on our computers and what’s being tracked is crazy. But it’s just going to be that times 10. So I think it’s, it’s going to be interesting to see how much control or influence we have over the data we’re willing to share or not.
[00:19:52] Jonathan Kvarfordt: In that kind of example. So.
[00:19:55] Amber Mellano: That just makes me think of what an interesting challenge for going to market with a product like that will [00:20:00] be and having, thinking about having to enable sellers in this region versus that region in terms of what they can talk about and what that’s going to mean. Using your, uh, your prompt to, okay, this is what sellers in this region should be able to say.
[00:20:13] Amber Mellano: I was thinking too, you were, you had that amazing, uh, Prompt and automation going into being able to evaluate effectively a hundred calls a week. And then, and even layering in the idea of what is the recipient, how is their reaction? What are they doing? I wonder like that feels like where we’re getting to the, the cars versus horses.
[00:20:32] Amber Mellano: Now we have the ability to almost be enabling on. Empathy or emotional, you know, kind of EQ in addition to, Hey, these are the common objections you’re going to hear about pricing or functionality. We can also start to enable our field about how do you react to a person and, um, and how you can kind of read what’s happening perhaps, which also sounds like a slippery slope, but what it, that seems very interesting to me.
[00:20:57] Amber Mellano: Have you kind of gone down that road already? [00:21:00]
[00:21:00] Jonathan Kvarfordt: Yeah, there, there’s a lot of talk on that. Cause like in my. Past life as a life coach, I spent a lot of time on body language and emotional, emotional tone of voice and that kind of stuff as far as how you read people and I don’t know what the official stats are, but you know, there’s something like 10 percent is words, 30 percent is tone and the other 60 percent or whatever the left is, is body language.
[00:21:20] Jonathan Kvarfordt: So like having an AI, um, analyze a transcript is only getting 10 percent of what’s actually being communicated, not the other 90 percent of tone of voice and tones. It’s better than not having anything. Cause you can tell a lot just from the transcript, um, like, you know, objections and product questions and that kind of stuff, but doesn’t quite always capture the relationship build, you know, cause.
[00:21:41] Jonathan Kvarfordt: Like, you know this, I hear this between couples and people all the time, it’s like, it’s not what you said, it’s how you said it. So like, I don’t know if, uh, at least I don’t think so, Chattopadhyay is not at that point yet as far as analyzing calls from me manually doing it, because it’s not hearing the audio, it’s just getting the transcript.
[00:21:59] Jonathan Kvarfordt: But [00:22:00] we will come into a world very soon where that will be scalable and used by anybody, which is, again, one Do we want to choose into that world? Maybe, maybe not. It just kind of depends on the use case, I guess.
[00:22:12] Steve Watt: How much of an employment threat are we facing? For enablement professionals, obviously there’s an opportunity to be immensely more productive and impactful.
[00:22:25] Steve Watt: It’s reasonable to suggest that may lead to smaller enablement teams. How much of a threat is this to enablement careers? And I guess the follow on question is, how do we make sure that we as individuals come out on the good side of this and we’re not the ones being replaced?
[00:22:43] Jonathan Kvarfordt: Uh, it’s a really good question.
[00:22:45] Jonathan Kvarfordt: I think it kind of goes back to a larger question you, we were talking about before about how is this actually going to affect the entire go to market function, not just enablement, because I think that’s kind of more the question because enablement is there as a mechanism to obviously [00:23:00] enable the entire go to market function.
[00:23:01] Jonathan Kvarfordt: So it’s really about how’s that going to change and that will ripple effect into enablement. That’s one of my thoughts. The second thought is it depends on how you define what enablement is. And this is kind of why I get really passionate enablement, because if all you think enablement is, is a person who makes battle cards or decks or something like that, then you will be replaced immediately.
[00:23:22] Jonathan Kvarfordt: If you think enablement is more strategic than that and looks at the entire system and, and understands what is the messaging, what’s the content, what’s the training, what’s the coaching, what’s the game that’s being played and how can I enable the performance improvement of that. That’s a much different conversation.
[00:23:39] Jonathan Kvarfordt: And especially when you look at it from the view of, can it be expanded to other teams besides, you know, just revenue teams, then it’s a chance of expansion, not just reduction of teams. So that’s how I like to look at, look at it. I look at enablement as more than just a content person, look at it more than just training.
[00:23:56] Jonathan Kvarfordt: It’s about going back to the original question of what are we actually [00:24:00] here to do? And does that equal a live group training? Most of the time, no, but a lot of people associate enablement with live group training. And I’m like, that’s not what enablement is. That does not equal. It’s one thing we do, but it’s not the thing, the enablement is.
[00:24:14] Jonathan Kvarfordt: So I think that’s the larger question of really understanding what are we actually here to do and how can AI influence or impact that and just leveraging it as any other tool, as you would be more productive.
[00:24:25] Steve Watt: So I think what I’m hearing you say is that in order for us as individuals to come out on the good side of this, we better get.
[00:24:33] Steve Watt: More closely aligned with leadership around the outcomes that our organization values and needs to achieve. We better become more strategic and more true business partners and not be willing to allow ourselves to be defined as content creators, as trainers, as anything else that’s more of a tactical delivery.
[00:24:57] Steve Watt: Would, is that a fair statement or is there anything that you [00:25:00] would improve that statement?
[00:25:02] Jonathan Kvarfordt: Um, I realized and I had posted about this on LinkedIn recently about how a lot of people, myself included, I used to think about enablement as more of a cost center, meaning that how I behaved was more like a cost center versus an investment center.
[00:25:17] Jonathan Kvarfordt: Investment center is like anytime you put money into anything, you have an upfront ROI or upfront expectation of the KPIs you’re going to be delivering and you have a plan in place in order to get that accomplished. For me, I can’t talk about anybody else, but for me, I used to function in a way that I Was more reactive, was more about the vanity metrics of how many people showed up to my trainings, all this other stuff.
[00:25:37] Jonathan Kvarfordt: But I wasn’t talking the business language and I wasn’t talking about the impact longterm around why enablement should exist in the first place. And when I switched that was when things just clicked in a lot of ways for me, because I was like, Oh, I see why I’m doing this wrong is because I’m looking at it from a totally different mindset.
[00:25:54] Jonathan Kvarfordt: And the more you’re able to look at it, like you said, strategic with the end in mind of. What’s the revenue goals? What’s the [00:26:00] KPIs to get us there? What’s the skills, behaviors, tools, knowledge, whatever that need to get us to the KPIs to get us to the revenue that then dictates my My strategy and it also makes it so I can make sure I’m in alignment with leaders because I can say listen my goal My program is in alignment with your revenue goals.
[00:26:18] Jonathan Kvarfordt: Like I’m not gonna change because You think you had a bad call with someone on discovery. Like the data doesn’t tell us that. The data tells us the negotiation sucks. We need to focus on there. So that’s where I’m going to go. And that’s why I think a lot of people don’t have one, the data to back that up into the.
[00:26:33] Jonathan Kvarfordt: Um, voice to be able to say, Hey, Mr. CRO, I understand your opinion on discovery is, is where we need to go. However, the data is suggesting this and because you and I have the same goal of hitting revenue, this is where I need to go and this is what you pay me for is to look at this stuff, you know? Um, and I think that’s where enablement needs to focus on changing the conversation of saying, I am here to be a strategic partner.
[00:26:53] Jonathan Kvarfordt: I’m not here to be someone in the corner fighting fires whenever you need me to. I’m here to be with you, not in the corner. Yeah.
[00:26:59] Amber Mellano: [00:27:00] Yeah. Yeah.
[00:27:00] Jonathan Kvarfordt: Yeah.
[00:27:01] Amber Mellano: It’s like saying that the idea that, that not only is enablement making or giving us an opportunity to be smarter as enablers, but it also gives us the opportunity to deliver more to the business, which gives perhaps the business an opportunity to strive for more.
[00:27:15] Amber Mellano: That’s an interesting angle on it as well.
[00:27:19] Steve Watt: Exactly right. If I’m in an organization that is not AI savvy today. What are some near term things that I can do, that I can do as an individual enabler or as the leader of a small enablement team? What can I, what can we do right now to get us going on this journey?
[00:27:44] Jonathan Kvarfordt: It really depends on what your company allows. I know a lot of people whose companies don’t allow them to access different AI tools. And maybe the only one you’re allowed to do is Copilot. So I would say, whether you’re allowed to or not, because What you do outside of your work is up to you. [00:28:00] I would say you need to deep dive into the basic fundamental tools, because they’re only going to get better from here.
[00:28:05] Jonathan Kvarfordt: So whether that’s Claude, Chachabuti, or Gemini, one of those three, that you’re leveraging that and just diving in to say, how can I push the envelope of what is possible using these tools? Um, because like, I gave you the example of the CompC model before. One of the people who went through the GTMAI Academy was like, I never even thought about creating a competency model and then the assessment, and then the review, and then the coaching plans, all using AI.
[00:28:28] Jonathan Kvarfordt: Like, but that didn’t come from anything except for me just being curious of me thinking, I wonder if I could do this with AI? And I pushed it to the level where I got to the output I wanted to get to. So that’s one. Two is, I would say, um, obviously the GTMAI Academy is here. I try to post a lot of hopefully valuable content, but, Worst case scenario, there’s so much free content out there, even around the basics of prompting, that doing that alone will get you farther than not doing anything at all.
[00:28:53] Jonathan Kvarfordt: So I would say, find a free course from one of the, you know, big places like Google or Microsoft. Go through it and [00:29:00] really adapt it and try it to your own use case, whatever that might be. And then lastly, is to be willing to ask yourself the question of, am I willing to do things differently to get a better result?
[00:29:10] Jonathan Kvarfordt: Because with AI, you have to ask that question or you’re not going to get to where you could go with it. If that makes any sense. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:29:17] Amber Mellano: I was thinking, I’ve only been, you know, kind of diving to AI for about a year now. And I, once I kind of got the notion of what prompting was all about, it starts to waterfall and you really start to see, Oh, what if I did this?
[00:29:28] Amber Mellano: Oh, what if I included that? What if I told it about this? And, you know, I think that’s, uh, that’s really exciting and it works at every level. It works at like. Yeah. I just got tasked with standing up an enablement team. What does that mean? How, how am I going to structure it? And, you know, I think we talked about this on our pregame call about building an enablement charter.
[00:29:47] Amber Mellano: And it’s even if you asked, you know, ChatGPT and gave it some inputs and told it something about your staff and what your goals are and all of that, it’s going to give you a charter that Even if it isn’t perfect, it gets you 80 percent of the way there and also [00:30:00] sparks a bunch of ideas, which I love that.
[00:30:02] Amber Mellano: And that seems to be like your journey has been like, well, then I tried this and then I realized I could do that. Especially like with your methodology, you know, you get to the next step. Every time you achieve one step, it’s time to look and see, all right, put my head up, look above the trees. What are my options now?
[00:30:17] Amber Mellano: Where do I get to go now?
[00:30:19] Jonathan Kvarfordt: Yeah, AI, funny enough, has actually made some of my more human skills more fine tuned because like, for example, you said creative thinking, and the other one is, I call them just two mindsets. One’s the editor’s mindset because I have to be an editor of the output, and then two is creative because I’m thinking, I wonder if I could do this, and I start just thinking more creatively about what is actually possible with the AI or not.
[00:30:41] Jonathan Kvarfordt: And I think that when you’re open to those possibilities. And just being willing to play. Like, for me, this may sound weird, but using AI tools is playtime for me. I’m like, ooh, I wonder if I could do this today. It’s not a burden. I don’t consider it working work, so I’m trying to push it to another level.
[00:30:57] Jonathan Kvarfordt: And then lastly, to your point around getting to 80%, [00:31:00] I would definitely agree with that. Um, what I love about enablement is that most of the people I know in enablement, I should say pretty much everyone I know, are really good at what they do. And they usually know what good looks like or can identify it or their consciousness to say, that’s good.
[00:31:18] Jonathan Kvarfordt: Being able to have that talent with AI is awesome because then you can push it. Because that’s where I hear a lot of people get frustrated, like, it’s just too broad, it’s not specific enough. But whenever I hear that, I’m like, it’s because you’re prompting broadly. It’s not because the AI is not capable, it’s because your input’s there, which also means another human thing to do with AI.
[00:31:37] Jonathan Kvarfordt: It makes you really introspective because I ask myself, maybe I’m the problem here and I didn’t communicate as well as I should have, which is restricting the output I’m getting, you know? So I think as long as people are looking at or being willing to ask themselves around, um, what’s possible being creative, being willing to critique anything, like you said, and understand it’s not going to be a final product, but it’ll get you 80, 90 percent of [00:32:00] the way there.
[00:32:00] Jonathan Kvarfordt: You can fine tune it and go. And then be able to, I don’t know, just be willing to experiment and go just think out of the box what you would have done before.
[00:32:10] Amber Mellano: Jonathan, I’m wondering if you could offer me some advice about how to build just the right prompt. Like, what do you think of, or what tips would you offer me for making sure that I got the right message across?
[00:32:21] Amber Mellano: Not necessarily the exact words, but the right sentiment. To get me to those kinds of answers that I’m looking for.
[00:32:29] Jonathan Kvarfordt: I’m a big fan of frameworks, but before I go into frameworks, I want to make sure I can give some context to the answer, just to make sure we understand the framework itself. If I came to you and your specialty of whatever it was, and I said, let’s just pretend like you’re like the expert at onboarding people, no matter who I brought you to, you’re the expert.
[00:32:46] Jonathan Kvarfordt: And I said to you, Hey, can you make me an onboarding plan? And that’s all I told you. Even though you’re the expert, your result would be probably mediocre, not because you’re incapable of giving it to me, but because I didn’t give you enough context. So, but if I came to you and [00:33:00] I said, Hey, I need an onboarding plan that’s 30 days long for brand new salespeople who are working in Latin America selling to CFOs at the bank, selling this particular product.
[00:33:07] Jonathan Kvarfordt: I need these, these, this, this skill with these, these tools. Your plan would be way better because you now understand the context of what I’m asking for. That is what I think the main problem is with most people prompting, is that they talk to AI like they’re supposed to read their minds and understand this.
[00:33:22] Jonathan Kvarfordt: It forces you to become a better communicator. Now, with that being said, I’m a big fan of frameworks and I like to have kind of like a, a mold of what I can use to focus my thoughts so I can make sure I’m communicating correctly. So I like, um, there’s a couple out there. The one I’ve, I created that I like a lot, actually I use all the time is called GRACE.
[00:33:39] Jonathan Kvarfordt: It’s called the GRACE framework. So, it means you have a goal or a role of some kind. You have rules to set of like the boundaries of what the AI should be following. You have advanced context like a methodology or your product background or whatever advanced if you want them to understand. You have clear instructions of like you’re going to do this, this, this, and this.
[00:33:58] Jonathan Kvarfordt: So, rules are more like the boundaries that it [00:34:00] should or should not do, whereas the instructions of what it’s supposed to execute on, and then lastly is examples. I’m a big fan of giving AI examples. Um, and I’ll give you a specific example of giving example, whereas on LinkedIn, there’s so much good content from so many good people that like Christian Kraus posted a thing about good email writing.
[00:34:17] Jonathan Kvarfordt: And I literally took his, his email that he gave as a prompt and I put it as an example inside of a prompt and I redid all these emails. Based on his framework, but on this prompting framework. So then it knew the context of my company and my situation with my team, but it used an expert source of emailing.
[00:34:34] Jonathan Kvarfordt: So then the output was like, awesome. I barely had to tweak it at all. I knew what it was going for, but using that as a framework kind of guides the AI to be really specific on. What it needs to accomplish. And you can do that with anything. You can do it with a compsum model. You can do it with onboarding plan.
[00:34:49] Jonathan Kvarfordt: You can do it with like a competitor one pager. Like it’s literally limitless of what you can use it for. So if they use that alone, they’ll get, they’ll get pretty far. [00:35:00]
[00:35:00] Amber Mellano: That’s huge.
[00:35:01] Steve Watt: Give us, give us that acronym again, uh, uh, Jonathan Grace, G R A C E, which
[00:35:06] Jonathan Kvarfordt: we’re doing Which
[00:35:07] Steve Watt: means
[00:35:07] Jonathan Kvarfordt: goal
[00:35:07] Steve Watt: or role, rules, advanced context, clear instructions, and then examples.
[00:35:14] Steve Watt: Jonathan, thanks so much for joining us. I think this has been a fantastic conversation. I hope our listeners enjoyed it. And viewers agree. And if they’re at all like me, they’re going to want more of you. Uh, where do they go to learn more about you and learn more about GTM AI Academy?
[00:35:32] Jonathan Kvarfordt: Well, they go to the GTMAIacademy.
[00:35:34] Jonathan Kvarfordt: com. Hopefully nice and easy. And they can find my stuff there. I’m on LinkedIn all the time, posting stuff and I’m always willing to connect. So if you have any questions, you can always reach out to me personally. I’m happy to help. And just want to say. Thank you to you and the Seismic team. I’m a big fan of the enablement team there at Seismic with Megan and all the team there.
[00:35:50] Jonathan Kvarfordt: They’re amazing. And, uh, I just nothing but appreciate you guys as an organization lifting up the profile of enablement in general. I just want to say thank you. So appreciate it. [00:36:00]
[00:36:00] Amber Mellano: Thank you, Tom, for a great conversation.
[00:36:03] Steve Watt: Thanks for joining us on the Enablement Edge. We’re on YouTube. And all your favorite podcast providers.
[00:36:10] Steve Watt: See you next time.
[00:36:11] Voiceover: The Enablement Edge is brought to you by the team at Seismic. Seismic is the global leader in enablement, keeping organizations on the cutting edge of engaging customers, enabling teams and igniting revenue growth. You can learn more at seismic.com.
In this episode of The Enablement Edge, Steve and Amber sit down with Jonathan Kvarfordt, Founder of GTM AI Academy, to explore the dynamic intersection of AI and enablement in the modern business landscape.
Jonathan is an industry leader and an enablement expert. And in this episode, he reveals what originally fueled his fascination with AI and its potential to revolutionize enablement strategies. He shares the crucial skills and experiences that have been instrumental in his professional growth, shedding light on the innovative ways he leverages AI to optimize enablement processes.
Steve, Amber, and Jonathan strike a balance between blue-skying possibilities for AI and enablement while also offering practical advice for those wishing to implement AI in their daily work. Some of the insights Jonathan shares include ways to implement AI tools to streamline processes, make data-driven decisions, and unlock new opportunities. Additionally, you’ll hear his “GRACE” framework that he uses every day when prompting tools like ChatGPT.
Jonathan also discusses the broader implications of AI on the enablement landscape, highlighting its potential to revolutionize how teams operate and achieve their goals. He gives real-life examples of AI applications that have led to substantial improvements in business performance, encouraging viewers to stay ahead of technological trends. Jonathan’s insights offer a roadmap for those looking to advance their careers by integrating AI into their enablement strategies.
*(00:00) Episode Start
*(01:08) Today’s Topic
*(03:24) Introducing Jonathan Kvarfordt
*(04:53) What is GTM AI Academy?
*(08:30) AI is not just about speed
*(14:40) The scaling power of AI
*(18:43) Enabling on empathy
*(22:42) Enablement cannot be replaced
*(27:45) How to level up your enablement team immediately with AI
*(32:28) Building the perfect AI prompt using GRACE
Jonathan Kvarfordt is the Founder of GTM AI Academy focusing on upskilling go-to-market teams and individuals in sales, customer success, marketing, and other functions with AI tools to do things better, faster, and easier.
As a sales and enablement executive with 15+ years of experience, Jonathan develops, delivers, and implements enablement programs for global organizations, Fortune 500 clients, and startups. He has an established history of helping companies double their revenue through sales team transformation and the creation of enablement structures. He was recognized in SEC’s 2023 Enablement Ones to Watch report.
“I look at enablement as more than just a content person. Going back to the original question of ‘what are we actually here to do? And does that equal a live group training?’ Most of the time, no. But a lot of people associate enablement with live group training. That’s not what enablement is. So I think that’s the larger question of really understanding what are we actually here to do and how can AI influence or impact that and just leveraging it as any other tool as you would to be more productive.” – Jonathan Kvarfordt
What does AI actually do for sales enablement? This short explainer breaks down the biggest benefits and how Seismic puts it into action.
From prepping for meetings to following up faster — AI agents are reshaping how sellers work. Explore how Seismic's Aura AI is helping reps reclaim time and focus on what matters most: selling.
Meet Aura AI—your enablement team's new superpower. From personalized content to real-time coaching and insights, Aura helps every go-to-market team move faster, work smarter, and drive better outcomes.
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