About Christian Palmer: Christian Palmer is the Senior Manager of Sales Enablement at Justt, the only company fighting chargeback disputes for merchants and winning. Christian’s background includes working as an L&D Consultant/Sales Trainer at Phaidon International, where they provided foundational academy training to new consultants and coached and mentored them on both team and individual levels. Christian also worked as a Clinical Consultant at ProClinical, a global recruitment company specializing in the life sciences industry. Earlier in their career, Christian worked as an Associate Consultant at Real Staffing, an international pharmaceutical recruitment agency, and as a Corporate Recruiter/HR Associate at Dutch-X. Christian began their professional journey at Apple, where they served as an Expert. Christian Palmer, M.S.Ed., has diverse experience in sales enablement, recruitment, learning and development, and leadership roles. Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about Christian.
In this episode, Nancy and Christian discuss the following:
- Definition of sales enablement
- Importance of sales enablement within a company
- Necessary tools for enablement
- Role of sales playbook in enablement
- Enablement in one-person teams vs. global departments
Key Takeaways:
- It’s of tremendous value to businesses to bring somebody who can identify the gaps first, then fill them in and be the main voice for the salespeople.
- I’ve only seen playbooks succeed at larger organizations with more structure and infrastructure.
- Everything you say will not be listened to if you don’t have it.
“Sales enablement can be defined in a number of different ways. Because it is such a newer field, it tends to get mis-defined if that’s a phrase all the time. And the best way for me to describe it is essentially twofold. I’ll probably start with the more form formal definition of it. That is to provide the tools, resources, skills, processes, and infrastructure for sellers to enable them to be more efficient, skilled, and proficient with their actual product offering to sell more effectively over time. That is the more formal side, but I would say maybe something a little bit softer that I guess you could say is more layperson’s terms for folks is going to be that I am more or less bridge or support system or the voice of the salespeople. And that can stretch across different cross-functional teams to senior leadership and stakeholders and be able to bridge that gap between what’s going on in the ground with sellers and what’s happening strategically in the organization.” – CHRISTIAN
“In probably an ideal world is that you have your LMS, your learning management system, that you’re able to create content with and a CMS, a content management system, of which you’re able to organize that content of what you made in the LMS into a digestible format for sellers and anybody else looking at it. Both of those tools, more so the CMS, should be able to help you measure success rates of reps over time. That could be done in a number of ways, through their behaviors, actions, and results, corresponding those specific results to maybe some items that they had done during the onboarding within that CMS. But those are probably the main tools. You could throw in another authoring tool or whatnot if you wanted to facilitate making even more differentiated content, like maybe an articulate or something along those lines. Any place that doesn’t have either of those. It will be a bit more of a lift for an enabler to assemble something. Those tools make it a lot easier. But there’s a ton of them out there. It’s hard to know what’s going to be best.” – CHRISTIAN
“I think the easiest way, or the standard way you’ll see amongst most enablers, especially those with sales experience, is leveraging that you’ve been there before. Of course, this gets harder the longer you’re not in a sales role. The harder it’s going to be to align. However, I think the main foundational selling parts don’t change. So, those aspects are what you can align with a rep. Whether it’s somebody going on a performance improvement plan, I’ve been on it several times in my career. One time, it didn’t work out too great; the other time, it worked out for me. Using that as leverage and explaining to a seller, like, hey, look, this isn’t the end; it’s just the beginning, shows vulnerability on my part and shows them that I can relate to what this is—the vulnerability aspect I bring up because that’s how you build relationships with anybody. So, whether or not they’re actual sellers doesn’t matter as much to me. But the fact that they are, and I go in and let them know maybe areas that I’m weak in upfront, maybe areas that I know I’m strong in or where I think I can help them, and start adding value to them without them even asking for it.
An example of this would be if you come into an organization where you don’t have industry knowledge. This is very much how it was at Riskified for me. I knew nothing about chargebacks or the fraud or policy abuse space. But I did know all the different selling skills I’ve accumulated and enabled over the years. So, I was able to come in and create sessions and content and additional resources around some of these skills that were agnostic to what Riskified is and what industry it’s in.” – CHRISTIAN
Connect with Christian Palmer:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-palmer/
- Justt: https://justt.ai/
Try Our Proven, 3-Step System, Guaranteeing Accountability and Transparency that Drives RESULTS by clicking on this link: https://oneofakindsales.com/call-center-in-a-box/
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Voiceover: You’re listening to The Conversational Selling Podcast with Nancy Calabrese.
Nancy Calabrese: Hi, it’s Nancy Calabrese, and it’s time again for Conversational selling – the podcast where sales leaders and business experts share what’s going on in sales and marketing today and it always starts with the human conversation. Today we’re speaking with Christian Palmer, a global revenue enablement manager at Riskified Global Enablement Team. His company focuses primarily on global onboarding and coaching. Christian has a combined 11 years within sales and enablement. Starting off in the hospitality and retail world, he honed his skills within customer service. This translated to the recruitment third party staffing world, where he moved from individual contributor to sales trainer. His enablement career started there. And since then, he’s been fortunate to work with a number of early stage startups. It is a pleasure to have you on the show, Christian. Let’s dive right in.
Christian Palmer: Heck of an intro, Nancy. Thank you so much for having me. [1:18]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, I’m excited. You know, but I have to tell you, global revenue enablement manager is a tongue twister. I had to practice that a few times to get it straight. I guess it’s something that you get used to, but let’s just start with the basics. Tell everyone what sales enablement means.
Christian Palmer: I want to preface this with sales enablement can be defined in a number of different ways. And quite frankly, because it is such a newer field, it tends to get mis-defined, if that’s a phrase all the time. And the best way for me to describe it is essentially twofold. I’ll start with probably the more form formal definition of it. And that is to be able to provide the tools, resources, skills, processes, and infrastructure for sellers to enable them to be more efficient, skilled, and proficient with their actual product offering to be able to sell more effectively over time. That is the more formal side, but I would say maybe something that’s a little bit softer that I guess you could say is more layman’s terms for folks is going to be that I am more or less bridge or support system or the voice of the salespeople. And that can stretch across different cross-functional teams to senior leadership and stakeholders and really be able to bridge that gap between what’s going on in the ground with sellers and what’s happening strategically in the organization. [2:55]
Nancy Calabrese: Great. Oh, you said sales enablement is relatively new. How new is it?
Christian Palmer: You know, I don’t have like, I guess the official point of when it started, but I will say I did not really see the word enablement until around like four or five years ago. And it was honestly it was around the time when I had started my tenure as a trainer, and I was doing enablement work before the word enablement even came up. Yeah. [3:23]
Nancy Calabrese: Okay. Huh, okay. So why is this so important, you know, to implement within a company?
Christian Palmer: I think it’s being able to have businesses strike a balance between the activities that most folks in a go-to-market organization, as far as the go-to-market function of a business is concerned, to be able to speak effectively on all the different things that are going on within the seller’s function and be able to translate that to other areas of the business um, or largest businesses need somebody like an enablement person on their side and on their team because they help bring their expertise, maybe as an individual contributor in their past sales life or other, um, you know, maybe other, uh, prerequisites that they bring to the table. Um, but also I think, uh, on the other end of it, they want to have somebody who’s able to come in and make the sellers better and more successful. And not to say, um, you know, a sales manager could not do that. A senior sales leader could not do that, or you know, maybe anybody else high up. A lot of the times, even the time I’ve been a sales manager, I did a lot of enablement work, but being a resource to them, not only coaching their reps and onboarding their reps and doing all the other associated enablement activities, but also working with the managers to help them get better as well. And I end up being, more of a resource and a support system and a true partner in the strategic aspects of the business, but also on the ground level working with reps directly. So, it’s of tremendous value to businesses to bring somebody on like that, that’s going to be able to really fill in the gaps, identify, I’m sorry, identify the gaps first, then fill them in and be able to be that main voice for the salespeople. [5:21]
Nancy Calabrese: Sure. What are some of the tools you mentioned that are necessary for enablement?
Christian Palmer: You know, I’ve been in roles where I’ve had absolutely nothing except my Google account. You know, I’ve had to deal with just having spreadsheets and organizing everything and what I like to say a spreadsheet, HE double hockey sticks. That’s essentially what it is. And then using docs and everything else accordingly. But I would say in probably a more ideal world is that you have your LMS, you’re learning management system, that you’re able to create content with, and a CMS, a content management system, of which you’re able to organize that content of what you made in the LMS into a digestible format for sellers and for anybody else looking at it. Both of those tools, more so the CMS, should be able to help you measure success rates of reps over time. That could be done in a number of ways, through their behaviors, through their actions, their results, corresponding those specific results to maybe some items that they had done during the onboarding that are within that CMS. But I would say like those are probably the main tools and you could probably throw in another authoring tool or whatnot if you wanted to facilitate making even more differentiated content, like maybe an articulate or something along those lines. But I would say any place that doesn’t have either of those. Obviously, it is going to be a little bit more of a lift for an enabler to put something together. Those tools make it a lot easier. But there’s a ton of them out there. It’s hard to know what’s going to be best. I’ve worked with a bunch of them, so it can be difficult. So, I see it from both sides, but certainly those two would be the most important. [7:15]
Nancy Calabrese: So, is creating like a sales playbook part of sales enablement?
Christian Palmer: I would say not always, but a lot of the times, yes. I have been tasked with making a playbook in past roles. I think playbooks can take on different formats. They sometimes can be a tool to help upskill folks maybe on industry or product knowledge. You know, when there is a complex sale at hand and maybe you have people or sellers coming into the role that you know, don’t have that experience upfront. So, for instance, like Riskified is in the fraud management space within finance. And I think, you know, if you don’t know all the specific jargon coming into the business, a playbook for that could be of tremendous value to be able to upscale really, quickly, and early. But also, in addition to that, I would say playbooks themselves are only going to be as good as your best rep. [8:20]
Nancy Calabrese: Okay.
Christian Palmer: And the reason why is because a lot of times, I’ve been in this situation before, you get asked or suggested to make a PlayBic or you take it upon yourself to make one, you put what you think is out there as best practice to sell product or product suite effectively, let’s say, and it doesn’t always resonate with every single person. You must know what good looks like first within your organization before you can then put that down in writing and say, this is how it’s going to be, and people can then follow it. I’ve only seen playbooks be really successful at larger orgs that have more structure and infrastructure in place where the sale is a little bit blacker and whiter than it is all over the place in gray, not knowing how to make a quote, having different types of products, different personas and things of that nature. [9:15]
Nancy Calabrese: Huh, so where should enablement sit within an organization?
Christian Palmer: It’s a great question. It’s a question I’ve been guests on other podcasts where this was the entire topic. It’s fun to think about, you know, and I think different orgs would say and argue that it should sit with maybe marketing, maybe your revenue operations team. Those are probably the most common non-sales functions I’ve seen enablement report into. It really is going to be dependent on how built out or not built out your executive leadership team is, I would say generally, it should report into a VP of sales or whatever senior equivalent there is for sales. And the reason for that is because everyone’s goals, metrics, and things they’re working towards are going to be the most aligned in that regard. Whereas if you are, let’s say, reporting into a marketing, a CMO, um, you know, perhaps somebody else in a, in another part of the organization, uh, those folks tend to have different goals and metrics and things that they’re working towards where your roles and responsibilities may not correspond with that. So, I would say it’s, it’s harder to be set up for success in those situations. And on the softer side of things, you don’t have as much buy-in, um, cause you’re not a marketer. You’re not, um, a revenue operation professional, although it’s somewhat close. And, if you’re on the sales side of things, you’re going to be like kind of one of them if that makes sense. Not to put salespeople in a box, but let’s be real, right? If you’re not a part of the sales org, you’re going to get looked at a certain way. So, I think that that’s proven to be the most successful in my eyes as far as like organizational structure. [11:11]
Nancy Calabrese: Okay. And you mentioned revenue operations. So how, how would you suggest to best work with that department for successful outcomes?
Christian Palmer: Definitely, I think collaborating with them on where their strengths are going to be versus yours. I’ve seen, this has happened at a couple organizations I’ve been in, I’ve seen revenue operations focus a little bit more on the reporting aspects of things, whether that’s Salesforce Tableau or whatever equivalent tool we want to talk about, being able to understand the stats a little bit more, the correlations between the metrics and maybe what’s going on within the market or within the industry to bring conclusions to why those metrics are the way they are. But I think in tandem, using those or leveraging them with enablement to say, how could we help sellers get better at their role or improve this stat over time? That’s where enablement could come in and say, well, you know, there’s a number of things we could do, whether it’s a session, a self-guided learning, some type of assignment or a combination of all three of those things to get sellers to be able to get up to speed as quickly as possible, make that change with the support of revenue operations. So, I think it’s just playing to each role strengths. But with that being said, I’ve seen revenue operations professionals act as enablers in some organizations and vice versa. I’ve been in an enablement role where I’m the one pulling all those stats if they don’t have a revenue person. I’m the one who’s kind of making those connections and then carrying out whatever enablement activities there need to be. But at least in the larger orgs where things are a little bit more built out, that tends to be what I’ve seen and heard. [13:01]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. OK. Now, you mentioned earlier that it’s important to earn stakeholder buy-in early and continuously. Why is it important?
Christian Palmer: If you don’t have it, everything you say is not going to be listened to. I think that that’s probably the biggest aspect of this whole thing. And it is imperative that when you come into an organization, you’re able to build up those relationships immediately. It takes a long time, you know? And I think a lot of stakeholders may or may not agree or align on the sentiment of needing enablement or what its value is. So, for those folks, sometimes it’s more of like, I need to prove it. But with stakeholders themselves, I think if you have their buy-in and it’s done early enough, they’ll be able to echo your sentiments. They’ll be able to reinforce things that you’re showing their team and be able to do all those things when you’re not around. And excuse me, I think that’s when it tends to be the most valuable because everybody is going to appear more aligned and you’ll feel more comfortable knowing that, hey, I can leave this in the manager’s hands. Additionally, there could be some other things that they would then help with on the side, not to say I would want every stakeholder to do this, but maybe they can help look over material that I create. Maybe they participate in some of the things that I’m doing with the sellers. That makes it a lot more valuable to a seller and to me, because then the weight of the world’s not on my shoulders. A seller is going to hear something from the horse’s mouth, their manager. Let’s say that’s a stakeholder and that ends up being a lot more successful. [14:45]
Nancy Calabrese: Huh, but how do you establish credibility with the reps, the sales reps? How do you get their buy-in?
Christian Palmer: This can be done a number of ways. I think the easiest way or standard way you’re going to see amongst most enablers, especially ones that have sales experience, is leveraging that you’ve been there before. Of course, this gets harder. The longer it is that you’re not in a sales role, the harder it’s going to be to align. However, I do think the kind of main foundational parts of selling don’t really change. So, like those aspects are what you can really align on with a rep. Whether it’s somebody’s going on a performance improvement plan, I’ve been on performance improvement plans a couple times in my career. One time didn’t work out too great, the other time it did work out for me. And being able to use that as leverage and to explain to a seller like, hey, look, this isn’t the end, it’s just the beginning, shows vulnerability on my part and shows them that I can relate to what this is and the vulnerability aspect I bring up because that’s how you build relationships with anybody. So, whether or not they’re actual sellers doesn’t matter as much to me, but the fact that they are, and I go in and kind of let them know maybe areas that I’m weak in upfront, maybe areas that I know I’m strong in or where I think I can help them and start adding value to them without them even asking for it. So, an example of this would be maybe you come into an organization, you don’t have the industry knowledge. This is very much how it was at Riskified for me. I didn’t know anything about chargebacks or the fraud or policy abuse space, any of that. But what I did know was all the different selling skills I’ve accumulated and enabled on over the years. So, I was able to come in and kind of create sessions and content and additional resources around some of these skills that were agnostic to what Riskified is and what industry it’s in. [16:48]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Christian Palmer: So that helped me build up that rapport very quickly. Also reveal to them what my vulnerabilities are. But a lot of it is like coming in, sending a video, introducing myself to everybody in the main general channel on Slack or something, just being very open and available. And sticking my neck out for them when it comes to supporting them is so important to help them start getting by in with me or I get by with them. [17:17]
Nancy Calabrese: Oh, you know, what’s the difference when you work with a one-man team versus a global department? Is there any difference in enablement?
Christian Palmer: I’d say so. I think on the one hand of it, when you’re on a solo enablement team, the weight of the world is on your shoulders most of the time, you’re going to be in a position where not only are you ideally identifying where there are gaps and how you could enable upon them, but every Tom, Rich and Harry is going to be reaching out to you about something they need, whether that’s people that are not big on enablement or people that are enablement happy and want to training for everything. Generally, when you’re a one-man person, it’s going to be a little bit, I don’t want to generalize, but at least what I’ve seen is like, you’ll be a little bit more responsible for quantity of production rather than the quality because of how fast things are generally moving. If you’re a solo enabler, usually you’re in a little bit more of a lean organization. They’re going to be scrappy. They’re going to want things done yesterday, although I would say bigger orcs still do that too. [18:28] But with all that.
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, I don’t think you get away with that in any organization.
Christian Palmer: Yeah, yeah. No, that’s a great point. And I think like if you’re if you’re solo, I think it just will come down to, you know, being able to spread yourself across a bunch of different areas simultaneously, pivot and adapt when necessary. Know that maybe some of the projects that are a priority today may be dropped as priorities tomorrow. On the other side of it, if you’re in a larger organization or like a global team. A lot of the times those teams are separated by function, by skill, by region. And with that means that people are going to have a little bit narrower swim lane. Maybe there’s people that are just focused on content. Some people that are just focused on bringing tools onto the team and integrating them. Like all those different thing’s kind of need to come together. Generally, there’s going to be a little bit more, I don’t know if red tape is the phrase, but You know, like the kind of bureaucratic tendencies of larger orgs where, you know, there’s a resource, meaning a person for everything and things will need approvals. You’ll need to work more cross-functionally. And in different ways than you would, if you were a solo person, you’d still would work cross-functionally as a solo. But I think in this regard, you’re going to be a little bit more like, okay, we’re going to do one piece of this enablement activity that I’m going to pass it on to a product marketing team or a data team or something along those lines. Whereas the solo thing, I would include them, but I generally would be doing everything from start to finish. So, I think there are pros and cons to both, but they are different. [20:07]
Nancy Calabrese: Well, can you believe it? We’re up with time. We could go on forever. No, not at all. I mean, you have a lot to share with us. So how can my people find you?
Christian Palmer: Did I speak too much? Did I say too many things? Definitely look me up on LinkedIn, Christian Palmer. I have a comma after my last name, MSED. And definitely find me on LinkedIn. Feel free to view the other podcasts and content that I’ve created in my featured section. And don’t be bashful. Hit me up with a message. If you need any help regarding enablement sales, maybe on the job search, I am available. And yeah, here to help. [20:47]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow, hey folks, let’s take advantage of Christian’s generous offer. You were wonderful. And you could tell listening to you, you’re very passionate about what you do. And so, I’m going to end the show today and encourage everybody again, take advantage of Christian’s offer. Christian, you’re terrific. Thank you so much for your time and make it an awesome sales day, everyone. [21:14]
