[00:00:00] Kunal Pandya: Let’s think about what’s happened over the last two, three years. The perception of enablement has been such that companies have laid off hundreds, if not thousands of enablers globally. Why did that happen? If I was to ask a CFO who ultimately is making those decisions, what does your enablement function do?
[00:00:17] Kunal Pandya: What are they going to say? What we want them to say is they’re delivering revenue impact in this way. And this is what we believe they’ve done. But what they will actually say is they’ll do training. They’ll do some onboarding. We’re not hiring anymore. We don’t need onboarding. This has to change because we cannot have an A woman in that position.
[00:00:33] Kunal Pandya: We know where it belongs. We just have to prove it. We have to make it believable.
[00:00:38] 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.
[00:00:59] Steve Watt: Turn [00:01:00] strategy into reality and transform your organization for the better.
[00:01:08] Steve Watt: Welcome to today’s episode of the Enablement Edge and welcome to my co host, Heather Cole. We worked together so closely in season one. So great to have you back. In season two, thank you for driving today’s episode and thank you for bringing on such a great guest today. We’re welcoming Kunal Pandya, he’s VP, global revenue enablement at Corsearch
[00:01:35] Steve Watt: he’s also founder and CEO. Of Sales Velocity Labs. And he’s got a lot to say about enablement. Heather, how was it that caused you to want to bring on this conversation with?
[00:01:49] Heather Cole: So I’ve been following Kunal for a long time and he is such an advocate for great enablement. And then on top of that, he [00:02:00] gives very practical advice on how to go from good to great.
[00:02:04] Heather Cole: He’s very passionate about many things, but one of them is how do we take the enablement function and truly elevate it to the point where we’ve earned a spot, um, not just on the revenue leadership table, but eventually how do we get it even higher to the C suite level as a transformational enablement function?
[00:02:26] Heather Cole: Now he readily admits that this is not, we’re not there yet. And so he tells it like it is. And he’s also very practical about his advice on how do you get from point A to point B as an enabler and how to think about that, um, with very specific things that you should absolutely be doing and measuring.
[00:02:44] Heather Cole: And that’s what I love having conversations with him because he has very defined frameworks in his mind and he’s got practical experience to back it up.
[00:02:53] Steve Watt: He speaks about all of these things with a lot of experience, a lot of passion, and he’s not afraid to be provocative. [00:03:00] And to challenge enablers to think differently and act differently.
[00:03:04] Steve Watt: He asked some pretty provocative and important questions about how we see ourselves, and how the C suite sees us, and how they perceive our role in the firm, and what we bring, and I think it was an excellent conversation, and I’m excited to jump in. Me too, let’s go. Kunal, thanks so much for joining us on the Enablement Edge.
[00:03:28] Steve Watt: I am really looking forward to you bringing your perspective to this important area. And on that note, I want to start with a kickoff question. What do you think is the number one challenge facing the enablement profession today?
[00:03:45] Kunal Pandya: Thanks, Steve. So great question. I mean, I’m sure if you ask five or six enablers, you’ll probably get Seven or eight different answers, but my personal view is, um, the number one challenge facing enablement today is the inability for [00:04:00] enablers, for revenue leadership, sales leadership, for C3 executives to answer the question, what is the revenue impact?
[00:04:08] Kunal Pandya: Of your enablement function.
[00:04:10] Heather Cole: That is a fantastic answer. And, you know, it’s really, you know, from the, from what you’ve been talking a lot about over the past year, Kunal, I remember you were interviewed at one point and somebody asked you if enablement had actually earned, uh, the ability to be at the C suite table.
[00:04:27] Heather Cole: And you had a really interesting answer. Tell us about that.
[00:04:31] Kunal Pandya: Well, my answer was in short, no, I don’t believe it’s earned that space. on the C suite just yet. I guess there’s two, two ways to, to kind of look at the answer. Should it have a seat at the top table? I think ultimately, yes, enablement delivers a significant value for the business and more and more we are starting to see that starting to come through.
[00:04:53] Kunal Pandya: But the second part of the question is, does it deserve it right now? And I think that answer is still a no. [00:05:00] Um, there’s many reasons for that, I think. I think enablement and the perception of enablement isn’t quite there yet. If I was to look at some of the hard stats out there. One way to think about it is, look, just take a look at the job positions for enable, enablement.
[00:05:13] Kunal Pandya: We see lots and lots of manager level positions. We see some pretty low level positions as well. I’ve seen some interns, um, who are the first enablers in businesses. Um, junior level positions, not many VP level positions. That’s for sure. Um, you see lots of director level positions, but not many VP level.
[00:05:32] Kunal Pandya: Interestingly, there’s probably more chief revenue officer vacant positions than our VP of enablement positions. And that’s quite telling. Um, and when we start asking ourselves, why is that? It’s the perception. Enablement isn’t quite perceived to be a strategic business driver that belongs at the C suite just yet.
[00:05:53] Heather Cole: So that gets us back to the answer that you gave to the challenge, which is to be able to have that voice [00:06:00] at the, either at the revenue leader table first, and then at the C suite. Later, it’s about being able to articulate impact on the things that matter most to an organization, ROI. Um, right now, you know, I know that there’s a big push for people to look at the impact of enablement, but why do you think enablers are so hesitant to go that direction if they haven’t gone there yet?
[00:06:24] Kunal Pandya: I think there’s, uh, certainly some, some warranted reasons, valid, very valid reasons as to why enablement is important. Maybe, maybe shy’s away from talking about and delivering our impact, right? Um, one of them will be comfort zone, I think. And when we think back to, you know, the origins of enablement, where did it actually come from, and obviously.
[00:06:45] Kunal Pandya: It started during the sort of dot com era, uh, the cloud era,
[00:06:50] the,
[00:06:50] Kunal Pandya: the, the prevalence of SaaS, enterprise SaaS, uh, organizations like Salesforce, like ServiceNow, like, uh, uh, like SuccessFactors back in the [00:07:00] early 2000s. And suddenly, Those companies realized, well, we have to sell a little bit differently with these kinds of SaaS solutions, right?
[00:07:07] Kunal Pandya: It’s not the same as it always was. So sales training, as it was, started to morph into what we now know as sales enablement, right? It was not just about how to sell. Um, it was about how to sell in an era of SaaS, in an era of customer satisfaction, retention, growth. Um, profit, all those kinds of things.
[00:07:27] Kunal Pandya: Lots of companies started building and hiring sales enablement functions without truly understanding, well, how is it really different from sales training? And that resulted in this kind of mixture of different types of individuals entering the sales enablement function. When we fast forward to today, we see people coming from the sales perspective.
[00:07:47] Kunal Pandya: We see people coming from the L& D or training perspective. We see people coming from the marketing content side of things, product marketing, perhaps. And that’s resulted in this. I think, uh, reluctance to start going [00:08:00] deep into ROI because of comfort zone, right? It does depend on where you’re coming from, but comfort zone is a key thing that having a grasp of the data, the ability to analyze data, to be able to dissect it, ultimately to build stories from that data, which you tell to your revenue leadership, to C3 executives, right?
[00:08:19] Kunal Pandya: To board, investors, founders, whoever it may be. Um, and that’s not easy. It’s also quite scary as well, right? Because if you’re talking about numbers, financial metrics to your CFO, um, that’s credibility on the line. Big time. Um. It is. Yeah. You don’t want to say the wrong thing.
[00:08:36] Heather Cole: So is it a crisis of confidence, do you think?
[00:08:38] Heather Cole: Like it’s, it’s, they’re doing what we tend to do is, you know, I’m comfortable measuring the activities. I’m from a, I’m from a training environment. I like to measure smiley faces and feedback. On my content, I like to measure whether or not quizzes have been completed and done and whether or not they can do the role play.
[00:08:56] Heather Cole: And I am not confident enough to say that what I’ve done is going to [00:09:00] drive revenue or is it something else?
[00:09:03] Kunal Pandya: I think confidence is certainly, certainly playing a part. Um, but I think it’s generally capability. Where do you start? Where do I get the data from? What data do I need? How do I churn that data?
[00:09:12] Kunal Pandya: How do I analyze it? How do I build the stories from it? How do I tell that story? How I get, how do I get people to believe what I’m actually saying? Um. So there’s, there’s an element of skill, knowledge, capability, and competence in all of those aspects. But yeah, all of that breeds confidence ultimately to stand up in front of, you know, your investors or C3 executives and tell that story.
[00:09:33] Kunal Pandya: And I think that’s where the biggest challenge is.
[00:09:35] Heather Cole: So you hit on it. So what are those measurements that are the must haves? Like what, when you think about measuring and in your experience and what you see, um, other enablers do successfully or should be doing successfully, what are those areas that they should be measuring if they’re not measuring anything else?
[00:09:54] Kunal Pandya: I think there’s probably four components in terms of those measures. Four categories, let’s [00:10:00] say. Uh, the first category, probably the most important to any business, Is revenue. Ultimately, when we think about sales enablement, revenue enablement, even customer success enablement, wherever you may be, it’s all about revenue at the end of the day.
[00:10:17] Kunal Pandya: That’s why we’re here. Um, but more specifically, it’s about what I would say that the revenue gap, which is what do we need to achieve from a revenue perspective as a company? And where are we, or what is our trajectory or forecast? Where do we, where do we expect to be? And typically there’s a gap of some kind, especially if we’re looking at the start of a year.
[00:10:38] Kunal Pandya: This is what we did last year. This is what we need to do this year. What’s that gap? What’s the difference? As an enablement, as an entire revenue function, as revenue leadership, it’s the aim of that team to bridge that gap. So how do we do it? Right. Which is where we get to the next level of kind of measure, which is sales velocity, as I see it.[00:11:00]
[00:11:00] Kunal Pandya: Sales velocity is an interesting equation actually, which takes, uh, four components, number of opportunities entering my pipeline, the average win rates, so the number of deals I’m actually winning on average. Of that pipeline entering my average deal value. So what’s a price point? What’s my average deal size for those, for those deals that we win.
[00:11:20] Kunal Pandya: And ultimately, how long does it take for us to close each deal on average? Now, the interesting thing with the equation is when you strip all of our KPIs back, when you strip all of our numbers and metrics and revenue based targets back, those are really only the four things that impact how much you sell.
[00:11:39] Kunal Pandya: It will depend. On different types of businesses, you may be selling services. You may be selling software. You may be selling, um, inventory, for example. So how, you know, how you actually measure, it’s like different, but when you strip it all back, those are the four things. Um, now when it comes to the revenue gap, seeing those four components [00:12:00] as levers, win rate, for example, average door value, which lever I’m going to pull, how hard am I going to pull it?
[00:12:08] Kunal Pandya: When do I pull it? How am I going to pull it? What am I actually going to do? Because however we pull it has an impact on that revenue gap. Which now brings us to the third component, which is the sales execution activities. Um, so we’re talking about things like sales development activities. How do I outreach to my prospective clients or customers?
[00:12:31] Kunal Pandya: What do I say on the phone from a new business generation, customer acquisition perspective? How do I perform my discovery call, my demonstration, my pitch? Um, how do I price, how do I justify investment, business case? How do I negotiate, get into procurement, close a deal, all those kinds of things. It’s not an exhaustive list, there’ll be a ton of things that happen there, but each of those things is measurable in some way, perhaps by conversion rates, perhaps by, by revenue, right?
[00:12:59] Kunal Pandya: Whatever it [00:13:00] may be, but it’s, it’s measurable, which brings me to the last kind of component in terms of what we measure. And this is probably the most relevant for enablement because this is what we can actually impact, which is the skill, the knowledge, the competence, the attributes of those sellers, those, those, those revenue, uh, individual contributors.
[00:13:20] Kunal Pandya: Who deliver and execute against those activities, who deliver, uh, bookings and revenue, who drive those sales velocity metrics, who ultimately can drive the revenue gap, right? So they, there’s a correlation across that flow and across that chain, which we can drive. And it starts with what I call those core leading indicators, competence, behavior, skills, resources, process adoption engagement.
[00:13:47] Kunal Pandya: And that’s kind of how I see the, the blueprint of, of how enablement is
[00:13:53] Steve Watt: measured ultimately. If I’m an enablement leader who wants to step up, you know, I want to [00:14:00] make that move from measuring activities to really measuring impact. And as you said, it’s hard to know where to start. I think one of the, the fears I’m going to have, or one of the challenges I’m going to face.
[00:14:12] Steve Watt: Is how do I separate the impact that my team and I are having from everything else that’s going on? You know, the company’s releasing new products, economic conditions change for the better or for the worse. Competitors do things, uh, our own sales managers and leaders come and go. And there’s so many things.
[00:14:31] Steve Watt: How do I credibly. Parse out our impact from all the rest of that.
[00:14:38] Kunal Pandya: It’s a super valid question. It’s one of the reasons why a lot of enablers are reluctant to go in this direction, right? Or, or to actually tell these kinds of stories. Credibility is on the line. The way I address this is when we think of, I typically think about measuring enablement, we typically think that as a post execution activity.
[00:14:58] Kunal Pandya: We’ve done the thing, we’ve done the training, we’ve done the [00:15:00] enablement, we’ve delivered a program. Let’s measure its impact. That’s a bit of a misconception. The reality of the situation is the measurement of enablement actually starts before you execute, before you deliver. And it starts at a point when you are actually defining your program, defining the strategy, um, for enablement.
[00:15:19] Kunal Pandya: Because what you’re trying to do there is justify why do we need to do a certain thing? Whatever it is, whatever the program is, why, why are we doing it? Which is where the blueprint comes into play, right? We talked about revenue, the revenue gap. Ultimately it will boil down to some kind of revenue gap.
[00:15:34] Kunal Pandya: That’s why we’re doing it. Well, let’s understand what that gap is and how we expect this initiative, this program to deliver against that gap. And we do that by tying it to, well, what are you expecting from a sales velocity impact? Does it impact win rate? Does it impact pipeline? Does it impact door values or length of sales cycle?
[00:15:52] Kunal Pandya: Perhaps all of them, which makes it even more important potentially. Does it impact the sales execution activities? Does it, does it impact, or should it [00:16:00] impact my team’s competence, their behaviors and attributes and skills and the ability to execute? If the answer is yes, it sounds like it’s a valid program, but the next step and the most critical step is to get buy in.
[00:16:15] Kunal Pandya: So one way I recommend that we do this, and I’ve done this many times in the past, is to benchmark. Give a good example. A revenue leader was talking about implementing a business case initiative at their company. But we needed to define, is this a strategic priority? Is this really going to impact what we need to do?
[00:16:34] Kunal Pandya: And the way we did that was to understand, well, those individuals, those reps who are best in class at this specific execution activity, delivering business cases, they had the competence, they delivered the right messages, they knew how to calculate it all. They knew how to present it and tell the stories.
[00:16:53] Kunal Pandya: What was the benchmark for them? What was their win rate? What was their average door values? How long did it take for them to close deals? What was [00:17:00] their general revenue, uh, booking targets and numbers look like in attainments? Now the story here is, if they’re at a certain level and everyone who doesn’t prescribe to those methods and best practices is maybe here, well, what would happen if we got them to the same level in terms of competence, in terms of capability and execution ability, what would happen?
[00:17:24] Kunal Pandya: Well, we found that in this example, um, that their win rate would actually be about 20 percent higher. Okay. But let’s go, let’s, let’s, let’s go lower. Let’s say, okay, 5%, 10%. There’s still, depending on the size of business, a 5 or 10 percent impact to win rate still potentially worth millions of dollars. Let’s take a portion of that as a worst case scenario.
[00:17:43] Kunal Pandya: Now, the key here is getting the buy in. We agree that if we can get everyone to that same level that we can deliver X or deliver Y in terms of impact. Do we agree? Yeah, that should be possible. There’s usually the answer if you tell the story right. [00:18:00] That’s where credibility starts,
[00:18:02] right?
[00:18:03] Kunal Pandya: Getting that buy in.
[00:18:04] Kunal Pandya: Now you deliver, you execute, you got everyone to that level. Did it have an impact on their competence? Yes. Did it have an impact on their execution? Yes. We’re delivering business cases. or whatever that program was in a much more consistent, frequent way. And we can measure that. Well, has it had an impact on win rate?
[00:18:23] Kunal Pandya: We said 5%. If it has, great, right? We can attribute a portion of whatever that win rate increased to the enablement activity. There’s credibility there. We’ve got buy in from the start. But if it didn’t, what if it didn’t, right? What if win rate actually went down? And this is happening as well. Then it’s everybody
[00:18:41] Heather Cole: else’s fault, Ben.
[00:18:42] Heather Cole: Then it’s everybody’s fault.
[00:18:43] Kunal Pandya: Then it’s someone else’s fault, no. Um, so, um, Hey, look, we agreed, we agreed that if we were to get people to this level, this would impact. So market conditions, the economy, um, macroeconomic factors, whatever it is, resulted in a dip in [00:19:00] win rate. Something within the company, perhaps we lost some people or headcount or resources.
[00:19:04] Kunal Pandya: You know, these things are happening today, but it results in a dip in win rate. My answer typically to that is, well, what would it have been? If we didn’t implement that program, what would that dip have looked like, right? Because there’s things that we cannot control, but what we did was our part of the bargain, which was get people to that level, which we agreed should have an impact,
[00:19:25] right?
[00:19:26] Heather Cole: Absolutely. Yeah. You know, it’s interesting because I think One of the places that we all struggle from an enablement perspective is the baseline. First of all, saying, okay, how do you determine what it would have been if we didn’t put it in there and what assumptions do we need to make? And do you have a baseline for maybe another product launch or something else that you can use where it didn’t happen?
[00:19:46] Heather Cole: You don’t usually have an A B test because You don’t want to tank a group of reps and not give them everything that they need to sell just for your measurement and experimental standpoint. And then the third thing I see a lot is also the, um, [00:20:00] you know, we don’t talk about it a ton, but looking at ourselves and saying, all right, I’m looking at the leading indicators to ensure that the program that we put out, the resources and, and everything that we want them to engage with is the best it can be.
[00:20:16] Heather Cole: And how do I. Pivot on that if it’s not, how do I understand why, you know, the most asked about question in our AI tool is about pricing on this new launch, we missed the mark. So being able to say, okay, how do I take that data and not just use it to prove our value, but use it to make ourselves better because we’re not always perfect.
[00:20:41] Kunal Pandya: And that is what it comes down to, right? Continuous improvement. Um, but being able to measure in the first place is how we improve and how we can impact something, right? Being able to measure it. Whatever that metric is, whatever that combination is, I think the key with what I’ve just mentioned here is [00:21:00] there’s no static KPIs, especially at the leading indicator perspective.
[00:21:04] Kunal Pandya: It depends on the program. It depends on the initiative. A common enablement perspective is that these are the KPIs that I need to just put into place. I’m going to keep measuring this throughout the year. And whilst from a lagging perspective, that might be. True, I think from a leading perspective, that needs to be flexible.
[00:21:23] Kunal Pandya: As long as it’s flexible and you’re agile towards that, and you do have a level of agility that allows you to change and change direction, as businesses have had to over the last two, three years, you’re continuously measuring, you’re continuously measuring impact. And where course correction and a change of direction is needed, you can, right?
[00:21:43] Kunal Pandya: And you can hopefully justify it as well. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:21:47] Heather Cole: Definitely. So I know that it’s a, a big, um, knit for you is that this hesitancy that we enablers have, you know, to, to jump into the ROI pool, the true impact [00:22:00] pool. What would be your thoughts around like, what’s the little step they can take first to get comfortable with it?
[00:22:06] Heather Cole: Do you have any thoughts on that?
[00:22:09] Kunal Pandya: Yeah. The, the hesitancy, I mean, we talked about fear. Um, of credit for damaging credibility. We talked about comfort zone, just general believability in, in, in the entire concept of ROI and enablement, right? Um, there are still enablers out there who don’t believe that you can measure it.
[00:22:28] Kunal Pandya: And, and, and, you know, they, they’re not completely wrong. It’s difficult, right? It’s not the same as marketing attribution or attribution in other areas when it comes to, to sales. The fact is, let’s think about what’s happened over the last two, three years. Um, the perception of enablement has been such that companies have laid off hundreds, if not thousands of enablers globally.
[00:22:54] Kunal Pandya: When it comes to those kind of, kind of layoffs, it’s damaging the [00:23:00] profession and the role as a whole. It’s damaging to, to the companies who serve the role. But let’s consider those, those, those layoffs. Why, why did that happen? Because did they, did they understand? Did they perceive? If I was to ask a, um, a CFO who ultimately is making those decisions.
[00:23:20] Kunal Pandya: Signing those decisions off ultimately, however, however they get to that person. And you ask him, what does your enablement function do to think about the answer? Well, what’s the answer going to be? What are they going to say? What we want them to say is they’re delivering revenue impact in this way. And this is what they, what we believe they’ve done.
[00:23:40] Kunal Pandya: That’s what I’ve been told. That’s what we want them to say. But what they will actually say is they do training, they do some onboarding. Hang on. We’re not, we’re not hiring anymore. We don’t need onboarding. We’re on a certain level when it comes to ourselves, we’ll cope, we’ll manage. We saw teams, we saw leaders.
[00:23:56] Kunal Pandya: We saw. Entire functions wiped out. This has to [00:24:00] change. This has to change. Right? So that’s my first point here, which is the first step is just understanding why we’re doing this, why this needs to happen, because we cannot have enablement in that position. We know where it belongs. We just have to prove it.
[00:24:14] Kunal Pandya: Um, we have to take that step. We have to make it believable. The second step I would say is get a grip of the data. Without the data, none of this really works. Right? And, and that’s hard. It’s outside of comfort zone for many people. But a level of data analysis is what is required in a future enablement function.
[00:24:35] Kunal Pandya: There’s often cases where that just may not be possible based on time bandwidth or capability. So I always say, if you have Data analysts in your organization, sometimes even a RevOps function, make them your best buddies. They come out for the beers, you know, do what you have to do, um, but get them to work with you for you, right?
[00:24:58] Kunal Pandya: [00:25:00] Absolutely.
[00:25:00] Heather Cole: And it’s, you know, it’s interesting because when you think about CRM, CRM’s, you know, kind of the backbone of all of it, but it’s not the brain. Um, it’s really, it’s just, it’s the backbone and without what you have in the CRM, It’s almost impossible to go to that next level of how are we impacting those individual deals and opportunities.
[00:25:24] Heather Cole: So, you know, one of the things that we see still is a hesitancy to connect platforms within enablement no matter what they are, whether it’s an enablement platform or a conversation intelligence standalone, whatever the case might be, it’s got to be connected to the CRM or it’s just useless as far as measuring impact for the most part.
[00:25:44] Kunal Pandya: Yeah. Attribution is a key, right? Um, and you know, for decades, maybe centuries, everyone’s been fighting for attribution when it comes to sales, right? There’s the sales rep themselves. Of course, they’re going to claim most of the attribution. There’ll be pre sales or sales engineering, [00:26:00] right? Solution consultants, for example.
[00:26:02] Kunal Pandya: Now there’ll be some, some opportunities where the sales rep did nothing apart from arrange the meetings and the pre sales consultant did everything, but who’s going to get attribution? Who’s going to get comped on that? Then there’s marketing,
[00:26:13] right? It
[00:26:14] Kunal Pandya: was because of the campaign or the event or.
[00:26:16] Kunal Pandya: Whatever took place, but the lead, but the lead came in in the first place. It’s high time that enablement were part of that conversation. It’s just harder. That’s, that’s the problem we have, but it’s, it’s time that we were part of that conversation now.
[00:26:29] Heather Cole: So we talked a little bit about confidence in enablers and if I’m an enablement leader listening to this, thinking, what does, could look like?
[00:26:37] Heather Cole: Like, how do I assess what I’m doing and what should I be thinking about? You know, what advice or what kind of framework can you put around that?
[00:26:44] Kunal Pandya: That’s a great question. I mean, I, I typically think about. Let’s look at ourselves as an enablement function. What are we doing? Where do we stand? Right. And I, and I typically categorize enablement into two, two categories.
[00:26:57] Kunal Pandya: Um, one is reactive enablement. [00:27:00] The other one is strategic. So what are the characteristics, let’s say, of a reactive enablement function? And maybe let’s ask ourselves, is this where we are? Is this what we’re doing? Is this kind of how we’re perceived? The first thing I would say is of the characteristic of a reactive enablement function is, do you perform random acts of enablement?
[00:27:19] Kunal Pandya: Um, what do I, what do I mean by random acts? It’s when the person who shouts the loudest or asks the most amount of times for you to do something. Is that what you do? Without justification, without assessing, without getting people on board, without understanding why we should do that. We’ve all done it at some point in our careers.
[00:27:39] Kunal Pandya: We’ve all, we’ve all been there, but if you’re doing it every single day, that’s going to lead on to other challenges. The challenges are, well, the lack of sort of medium or even long term strategy. You’re reacting continuously every day, right? Or on every request. Um, it also means that you might be lacking a alignment with an [00:28:00] overarching business strategy, right?
[00:28:02] Kunal Pandya: Because we’re just reacting to requests. It probably also means that you might have a narrow or tactical remit, which is focused maybe on just training, onboarding, maybe content. We know about enablement is a much bigger spectrum than that, a much more strategic spectrum than that as well. It also probably means that there’s a lack of measurable program impact, right?
[00:28:26] Kunal Pandya: Because we’re just reacting to things and we’re getting it done and we’re ticking a box. Essentially, um, you might instead be measured, you know, informally on things like task completion. Did I get it done or not? Um, volume of delivery, perhaps. How many certifications did I complete? Sometimes I’ve seen it, even popularity.
[00:28:46] Kunal Pandya: Do our sales teams like us? Which then means that there might be minimal or no correlation to actual revenue impact or perception of that, right? Um, and ultimately, take all that away. What ultimately means is you’re perceived as a cost [00:29:00] center. And what happens to cost centers? When times are tough, as we talked about, as we’ve seen, um, they’re often removed.
[00:29:10] Kunal Pandya: They’re often cut. So how do we stop that from happening? It’s about asking ourselves, do we do these things? Is this where we are? And if, if, if, if that’s the case, what, how am I going to change it? What am I going to do? How am I going to become more strategic?
[00:29:23] Heather Cole: So I guess the question there too, is at what point do you say, I cannot do this within that organization?
[00:29:31] Heather Cole: What if your leader sees you? As someone who is just pumping out projects and getting the tasks done. Um, is there any secret sauce to changing people’s mind or at what point do you say you need to look for a new role?
[00:29:46] Kunal Pandya: Yeah. You know, this is probably going to be so common, right? And we won’t hear enough about this because you just don’t, right?
[00:29:53] Kunal Pandya: But I’m sure this is such a common problem where. Revenue leadership, you know, [00:30:00] company leadership has hired enablers or built an enabler function without truly understanding or knowing what enablement should or could be. For them, it is about that narrow tactical remit. We need to train ourselves people.
[00:30:12] Kunal Pandya: We need to do some onboarding and manage our content better. Right. Churn out PDFs and PowerPoint. I’ve even seen job descriptions that fit that kind of, I’ve seen it. It’s out there.
[00:30:21] Heather Cole: It’s there. Yeah.
[00:30:22] Kunal Pandya: Um, now how do we change that? That’s such a tough one to change, right? How do we change that is to do it, all the things we’ve been talking about, do it anyway.
[00:30:33] Kunal Pandya: Do it on your own back. I’ve done that. I’ve had to do it. And I have to prove a point, prove the value, prove what we’re actually trying to do. And I’m sure there’ve been lots of people out there saying, we don’t have to do that. We shouldn’t have to do that. People should know. Well, yes, you’re right. They should know, right?
[00:30:48] Kunal Pandya: Because they’re hiring a team. They’re investing in an enablement function. They should know what they’re doing. But I think somebody has to step up and say, we’re going to educate you on what enablement could be.
[00:30:58] Heather Cole: And I think it’s like changing [00:31:00] hearts and minds. It’s almost like the challenger sale where you’re saying, I know you think you know what you want.
[00:31:05] Heather Cole: But if you go down this road, this is all you’re going to get. But if we think about it differently and do it this way, look how much better it could be.
[00:31:12] Kunal Pandya: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:31:13] Heather Cole: Yeah. It doesn’t always work, but you know,
[00:31:15] Kunal Pandya: Doesn’t always work. It doesn’t always work. And, and, and if it continues, continues, doesn’t work or it’s just not, uh, given the airtime, then, then yes, maybe start thinking about how you position yourself for the next role.
[00:31:30] Steve Watt: Let’s close out with. Three questions that we ask all of our guests. First off, Kunal, what’s going to really change in the enablement function or in enablement careers over the next 18 or 24 months?
[00:31:46] Kunal Pandya: Wow. So 18 24 months is a long time, right? If you think back to 18 24 months ago, things were quite different then, right?
[00:31:54] Kunal Pandya: And, and, and we can’t let a blood gust go without talking about AI, right? Because, uh, [00:32:00] 18 24 months ago, we weren’t really talking about it at all. Barely, in terms of how it’s going to change businesses and our roles and the roles within those businesses. There’s often quite a talk around AI being Is it going to take our jobs?
[00:32:13] Kunal Pandya: Is it going to take enablement out? You know, is it going to replace the things we do? And my viewpoint on this is no, I don’t think it will yet, but there’s two things to consider with that. One is AI at this point in time today is the worst it’s ever going to be. It’s only getting better every single day.
[00:32:36] Kunal Pandya: It’s going to continue to be. So if you’re thinking right now, it’s not going to do it because it’s not good enough. It’s the worst it’s ever going to be. Um, secondly, if you’re not thinking about AI as an enablement function or an enabler, if you’re not embracing it, and if you’re not using it in some way, the question isn’t, is AI going to take my job?
[00:32:54] Kunal Pandya: No. Um, the question should be, is the person who is using AI going to take my job? [00:33:00] Because that’s probably more prevalent. Why? Because that person who is using it is likely going to be more productive, more efficient. Um, more responsive, um, just faster execution and delivery, fastest strategy, faster ROI, all of it.
[00:33:15] Kunal Pandya: Right. Um, and that’s not just from an execution and delivery of enablement programs perspective, but also all the things we’ve just talked about, ROI, data analysis, measurement. It will help from end to end, the full spectrum of what we do. Um, so 18, 24 months ago, we’re not having this conversation. We’re not talking about roles becoming extinct or anything like that.
[00:33:37] Kunal Pandya: Imagine where we’ll be in two years time. It’s so hard to predict. Um, but you can bet that AI is going to play a super important part. What’s not going to change? I think something we’ve already mentioned, yes, there’ll be AI, yes, there’ll be more KPIs. Yes, we might even move to this, this direction where enablement is elevated to, to the C suite, right?
[00:33:56] Kunal Pandya: You might start seeing that, but what’s not going to change is what I mentioned earlier [00:34:00] is the people, right? The empathy that the, the human instinct to, to improve, to be better, to do more, um, and for us to unlock the potential of people as enablement, as enablers. I don’t believe that should change. I don’t believe that, that needs to change, right?
[00:34:18] Kunal Pandya: That needs to, in fact, be elevated. Um, so that, that will certainly stay the same, um, in terms of what we do and how we do it, right? And how we think about enablement, um, it’s the core of who we are and what we do.
[00:34:33] Steve Watt: What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?
[00:34:38] Kunal Pandya: You know, we’ve, we’ve talked a lot about data, right?
[00:34:40] Kunal Pandya: We talked a lot about metrics and KPIs, all this kind of thing. It’s just so critical and important towards what we’re trying to achieve here. But I think one of the best pieces of advice that somebody gave me, and it was actually part of a quote as well, uh, from, from Simon Sinek. Um, and it slightly contradicts everything that I’ve just said, [00:35:00] but, but, but we need to think about this.
[00:35:01] Kunal Pandya: We need to keep this in mind. We have to keep this in mind, which is we have to stand for the people because that is what enablement is about. It’s a people business. That’s what we are. That’s what we do. We change people’s perception. We change, um, people’s abilities, capabilities, right? It’s a, the human interaction.
[00:35:18] Kunal Pandya: And I think the quote is something like, stand for the people, not just a metric or a number or a KPI, because the data won’t, won’t support you, right? When you need it. It’s the people that will. You need the people more than the data, right? Really. So stand for the people. And then that’s how we change the world.
[00:35:37] Kunal Pandya: And then I always keep that in mind when it comes to everything I do, because ultimately you have to have that level of empathy for what is happening in the business, what is happening to the people in the business for enabling to be successful. Yes, the data supports it, it backs it, it makes it, it makes it happen, but it’s done for the people.
[00:35:56] Heather Cole: And it’s, it’s so true because you know, the, the, [00:36:00] when the data goes sideways and it’s not what you want to see, It’s the people who truly see value in the enablement programs that is going to save the function, for sure.
[00:36:15] Steve Watt: All right, Kunal, if our listeners and viewers are like me, they’re going to want more of you and more of what you’re bringing to this profession.
[00:36:23] Steve Watt: Where can they find you and where can they get more? Absolutely. So,
[00:36:28] Kunal Pandya: uh, you can find me on LinkedIn, uh, is the most obvious place, uh, at this point. Um, but also check out my website, salesvelocitylabs. com, uh, where you’ll find lots of articles of thought leadership on pretty much everything we’ve just talked about, as well as an up and coming course, which I’m launching called a strategic enablement blueprint, which will cover.
[00:36:46] Kunal Pandya: Everything we’ve just talked about and teach enablers how to do exactly what we just said.
[00:36:51] Steve Watt: Fantastic. Everyone go check them out. Uh, check out those resources and thanks for joining us today Kunal. It’s been an absolute pleasure to speak with [00:37:00] you about this. Likewise. Thank you very much. Good to talk.
[00:37:05] Steve Watt: Thanks for joining us on the Enablement Edge. We’re on YouTube. And all your favorite podcast providers. See you next time.
[00:37:13] 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.
[00:37:26] You can learn more at seismic.com.
