Shawnna Sumaoang: Hello, and welcome to the Win Win Podcast. I’m your host Shawnna Sumaoang. Be part of us as we dive into altering developments within the office and the way to navigate them efficiently.

Right here to debate this matter is Felix McCabe, the top of world enablement execution at Dropbox. Thanks for becoming a member of us, Felix. I’d love so that you can inform us about your self, your background, and your position.

Felix McCabe: Shawnna, thanks for having us at present. I began my profession in gross sales, so I’ve a whole lot of empathy for the gross sales power. My profession trajectory has taken me by completely different avenues from advertising and marketing to business to the place I sit now in enablement. I’ve a novel perspective on the entire gross sales course of and the completely different elements and components supporting our gross sales crew. In order I transitioned into enablement at Dropbox, what I do at present is lead the execution arm of our enablement crew, serving to to upskill the extent of our sellers at Dropbox.

SS: I really like that, it feels like you’re the excellent visitor to speak about skilling up your gross sales groups. And I do know on LinkedIn you talked about that you just prefer to push the boundaries of vendor improvement from onboarding to productiveness to mastery. And that could be a key focus for you. As an enablement chief, what does streamlining the trail to mastery seem like? 

FM: From the place I sit I take into consideration the vendor life cycle, such as you mentioned, from onboarding, to ramp, to beginning to develop into productive, to in the end turning into a grasp in that position. That begins with onboarding and equipping the gross sales professionals with the appropriate gross sales expertise they should actually be capable of promote in at present’s market. You layer on high of that product data and any particular gross sales course of nuances we’ve got. Then you definately’ve acquired to verify that studying, take a look at the supply, and in the end log off and certify and say this salesperson is field-ready. However improvement can’t actually cease there. It takes steady follow and that comes within the type of teaching, and that’s what’s required as we transfer nearer to mastery. I’m not saying we’re absolutely there but at Dropbox, but it surely’s actually the ambition we’ve got to place these proper items in place to speed up that journey by the vendor life cycle. 

SS: So inform us slightly bit concerning the worth of coaching and training on this. How do you construct efficient coaching and training packages to assist sellers obtain mastery? 

FM: The coaching is just nearly as good because the reinforcement that occurs afterward. As a result of what number of occasions have we seen a vendor undergo, tick the field, “I’m licensed”, however then they wrestle to articulate your worth prop available in the market or one thing like that? The problem for frontline managers is commonly that there’s not sufficient time to educate every rep successfully, particularly if I’m managing a crew of six or eight reps.

However the performance that we now have with Highspot – thanks – has given us the power to scale that studying with the power for managers to actually leap in on the platform and be capable of coach in a extra async and time-effective approach. From an admin perspective in my world, I’m in a position to make sure that teaching is going on and we’ve seen that ramp up since we’ve began to implement this course of. The subsequent step for us is to see how AI can speed up that. 

SS: Completely. Now, out of your perspective, what’s the strategic worth of a unified enablement platform in terms of guaranteeing sellers are prepared and constructing that path to mastery? 

FM: We’ve heard lots about Zoom fatigue over the previous few years, particularly because the pandemic, however for a vendor, it’s instrument fatigue. There are such a lot of locations to go to do completely different components of the method, and that’s simply annoying. It’s in my approach, and on the finish of the day, I’ve acquired a clock above my head and a goal on my again. I’m making an attempt to get that job finished anyway, so it’s complicated, and it slows down the gross sales course of.

However what we now have with you and Highspot, there’s a approach of bringing a few of these components collectively in order that our sellers are shifting nearer to a single supply of development. For me, I really like the concept I can go to 1 place. I can find out about my merchandise as a brand new vendor by programs and studying paths.

However then, as an skilled vendor, I’ve acquired a spot to go and refer again to. If I’m on a buyer name or making ready for a giant assembly, I’ve an evergreen or always-on area the place I can get that info that’s key and significant. 

SS: And Felix, you’ve truly leveraged Highspot at a earlier enterprise group in addition to Dropbox, and primarily based on that have, what are a few of your finest practices for successfully implementing and actually driving adoption amongst your sellers, significantly as you talked about, whereas there may be all this instrument fatigue? 

FM: My numerous experiences at GlobalTelco, Vodafone – shout out to the blokes there – and truly a woman at Highspot, Laura, who applied that at Vodafone, and who launched us to the platform, and I used it as a rep. That’s why when the chance got here up, I put my hand up and mentioned, “I do know this could be a lot higher than what we have been doing with the platform at Dropbox.” When it comes to finest practices, I’ve borrowed from a few of that have, however I’ve additionally realized from different enablement practitioners, like Manny, who I met in Seattle final 12 months at your Spark convention.

I’ll shout out right here to Donnie Miller over at American Woodmark. I do know he was on this podcast too, however he gave me a tour of their occasion of Highspot, and that gave me a whole lot of meals for thought as I got here again and began to relaunch the platform. So by way of adoption and serving to us get there, primary: it’s making issues simple to seek out. It’s as a lot about curation as it’s creation as a result of you may have a whole lot of stuff in there. I like to make use of the analogy that we’re the gallery, and we work with the publishers because the artist and we assist them curate one of the best belongings and showcase what our reps must know. Then it’s about constructing good governance across the platform to verify it’s at all times good content material and stuff that’s outdated is getting out of there.

High quality is one thing we struggled with and now we’re getting lots higher at. And investing time in bite-sized studying, to indicate how one can get one of the best out of the platform. That’s a worth add and a key tidbit that we acquired from our Highspot CSM, Kelly, so shout out to her as properly.

SS: You talked about how vital it’s to actually be sure that Highspot is seen as a platform, that trusted supply, and also you guys have seen a whole lot of success by implementing a whole lot of these processes that you just simply talked us by, together with nice governance, you guys have truly achieved a 29% improve in adoption of Highspot over the previous few months. How do you achieve belief along with your sellers when launching new packages or initiatives? 

FM: It begins with belief, and that’s key for adoption and guaranteeing that what we’re doing is value-add for our stakeholders. Not solely the gross sales reps themselves, but additionally gross sales management and never ensuring we’re including to a precedence listing, however we’re a part of the precedence listing, supporting that and partnering with content material publishers. In our case, that’s a whole lot of our product advertising and marketing crew to make sure the standard of what’s being produced in addition to ourselves by way of the educational that we’re creating is supported by these belongings after which bringing it to gross sales in a constant.

We’ve finished that lots utilizing the Gross sales Play object in Highspot, that’s been useful, each from a curation viewpoint, but additionally from an admin viewpoint, as a result of we’ve acquired dashboards now be capable of present how these performs are being engaged with, from a content material consumption viewpoint, in addition to a studying certification viewpoint.

And, one other suggestion we’ve taken from Highspot is leveraging your messaging framework of what to know, what to say, what to indicate, and what to do. And simply simplifying that messaging for reps has been, a recreation changer. 

SS: Now, by way of strategic initiatives, since you talked about the product advertising and marketing crew is one in all your key companions. I do know one in all your key focuses this 12 months is driving a brand new product launch. Are you able to inform us extra about this initiative and what you’re aiming to realize? 

FM: We launched a brand new product final 12 months, which we name Dropbox Replay. It’s a video picture collaboration instrument, enabling issues like body anchoring and commenting, and works with a whole lot of the primary video modifying instruments on the market like Adobe and DaVinci.

It’s acquired many use circumstances, not simply the media area, however building area. We’ve even seen some attention-grabbing use circumstances from sports activities groups that we accomplice with. From an enabler perspective, it’s about us guaranteeing that our sellers are educated about this product, its performance, after which the way it’s supporting our clients to be extra productive. In order that’s the place it begins with Replay. 

SS: Completely. What are a few of the key ways in which you’re leveraging Highspot to assist help the product launches to your groups? 

FM: I’ll speak a bit concerning the Replay launch once more as a result of what we’ve finished is we began by making a three-module studying path. Our sellers can study concerning the product and take a look at their data utilizing the data checks and the video submission functionality that’s in there. I believe that’s actually cool as a result of we’ve tried to be inventive with that kind of information verify and the video submission. What we’ve finished is create situations the place we can have reps pitching in opposition to objections that they may get from a buyer, in addition to making a situation the place they should demo the product.

In order that’s each two completely different use circumstances for that very same piece of performance inside our studying paths and that’s been nice. Alongside that, we’ve created an evergreen area round Dropbox, we Play merchandise, so we’ve acquired our pitch decks in there, discovery questions, case research, aggressive info, we’ve even acquired video content material from a few of the reps, a few of their colleagues who’ve been profitable promoting the product and what worth they have been in a position to convey to their clients. 

In order that’s the place we’ve acquired to to date, however we’re nonetheless trying ahead and we’re now how we are able to leverage Highspot’s API, create a brand new movement of knowledge so we are able to begin monitoring extra of this line correlation from content material, consumption coaching certification into pipeline technology and in the end income, proper? So we’re beginning to construct that out now with the assistance of the Highspot technical account crew. 

SS: How do you measure the influence of your efforts in your strategic initiatives and do you could have any wins you may share? 

FM: We’ve been on a journey from a knowledge perspective right here. As I simply talked about, we’re automating a few of the processes we’ve had by your API and knowledge lake extension, however till now it’s been very handbook. Final 12 months, for instance, we took our world AE crew, roughly about 50, 60 sellers, and we checked out their efficiency throughout 5 – 6 standards: efficiency versus goal closed enterprise, these sorts of issues, and we created an aggregated rating.

We did the identical by way of engagement and issues that might spotlight engagement, like content material consumed had they accomplished coaching, et cetera. What we have been capable of finding by creating this aggregated rating was that the reps who have been doing extra of the appropriate issues – they have been extremely engaged, consuming the content material in Highspot, and taking the programs that we’d constructed – have been outperforming others considerably. I believe the stat we’ve got is between 48 to 57 share factors increased attainment versus goal than those that weren’t engaged, in order that’s big for us to have the ability to quantify that affect over income. Going ahead, the plan is to automate a whole lot of this and we’ll be seeking to leverage the API, but additionally the Scorecards you’ve constructed into the platform.

SS: And that’s a tremendous win, congratulations to you and the crew at Dropbox. Final query for you, Felix, you could have a robust imaginative and prescient to your enablement technique. How do you intend to evolve your technique within the subsequent 12 months? And the way do you intend to leverage Highspot that will help you innovate?

FM: I at all times prefer to joke that we’re by no means in a good combat in enablement. We’re sometimes outnumbered 50 reps to one in all us. In that world, it’s all about being scalable, repeatable, and measurable. A few issues that we’re seeking to do is proceed to put money into constructing extra of our areas inside Highspot in these Spots. We’re bringing on different companions inside the enterprise, like our rev ops crew, and deal desk, they’re all on the lookout for their very own areas.

So we’re bringing extra of the gross sales course of and group into Highspot to proceed that ambition of being a single supply of fact. We’re on to your front-line lead teaching program, so convey all our front-line managers by a training program and Highspot will play a giant a part of that with particular manager-based performs and utilizing the Scorecards once more right here.

After which we’re hopefully going to speed up a whole lot of what we’re doing with the AI performance that you just guys have delivered to market not too long ago. For me particularly AI suggestions inside these studying modules, I believe that’s going to be a giant piece for us.

SS: Thrilling. Felix, thanks a lot for becoming a member of us at present. I actually admire the time. 

FM: Thanks for having us.

SS: To our viewers. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Win Win Podcast. Be sure you tune in subsequent time for extra insights on how one can maximize enablement success with Highspot.