Conference Program

Keynote Presentation:
Sales Enablement: Enabling Beyond Sales

How many times have you been called upon as a sales enablement leader to fix the declining sales in an organization? How many times have you been asked to build programs that will drive net-new business in the virtual world? And how many times have the strategic conversations with sales boiled down to just delivering a rocking sales kickoff or a few training programs? Wondering how you can elevate your sales enablement efforts to drive sustained behavior change?

If yes, then this session is for you. By attending, you will be able to:

• Understand how selling is changing in the virtual world.
• Identify the people, process, and tools dynamic in sales enablement.
• Create a plan to position sales enablement function as a strategic function in the organization.
• Leverage product marketing, marketing, sales, customer success, and HR teams to drive sustained sales behavior.

Speaker: Rashim Mogha, GM, Leadership and Business Solutions, Skillsoft and Founder, eWOW

Practitioner Session:
Learning Isn’t Linear: How Just-in-Time Enablement Helps Meet Reps in Their Moment of Need!

The pandemic has proven life doesn’t always go as planned. With theories like Ebbinghaus’s forgetting curve and Sweller’s cognitive load theory, enablement professionals are at a crossroads of knowing they need to reinforce training initiatives. However, they also need to give space to manage various external forces pulling on our revenue teams. How do you find the right balance?

Being thrust into a virtual environment has allowed enablement to optimize tech stacks and navigate alternative modalities for getting information to the field. Just-in-time learning leveraging AI and conversational intelligence creates a “choose your own adventure” experience to accommodate rep tenure, segment, and learning preference.

Speaker: Whitney Sieck, Senior Director, Enablement, Outreach

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Demo Session:

A showcase for several speakers to present great, well-formed ideas on specific topics in under 20 minutes.

What Sales Enablement Is – And Isn’t.
Positioning Sales Enablement for Success in Your Organization

Ask 10 companies what sales enablement is, and you’ll get 13 different answers. During this session, the speaker will demystify and simplify the sales enablement function and provide a few pointers on presenting it to your organization, so you’ll have a higher probability of success. He will also explore a simple but effective tool you can use to increase your strategic influence in your company as a sales enablement professional while avoiding being known simply as “the sales trainer.”

Speaker: Bob Britton, Director, Sales Enablement, Netsurion

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Don’t Sell a Product, Sell a Vision: Transforming Sales Presentations Into Stories That Wow

The difference between a presentation that moves the buying process forward versus one that stagnates a sales cycle is the energy and emotion the prospect feels. Some sales presentations focus almost entirely on product features and company statistics. Prospects sit back and cross their arms as they struggle to think through how that product solves their problems. Imagine this instead—your salespeople present a compelling vision for prospects who then sit forward, nod, and smile. They might even say, “Wow!” They remember the story and feel compelled to repeat it to others in their buying committee.

Jill will explain how her organization was transformed by selling visions through story presentations and how you can do the same. You’ll learn a repeatable framework for creating engaging sales presentations that include emotion, buying personas as heroes, and an inspiring storyline.

Speaker: Jill Emerick, Director, Talent Development for North America Revenue, First Advantage

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How to Replicate Success Like a Private Equity Firm

A portfolio company in private equity goes through three stages in their hold period: heavy investment, steady growth, and the harvest stage. During this session, you’ll explore the nuances of enablement to drive revenue growth across a portfolio company.
You will learn:

• The expectations of a private equity company that are very different than a founder-owned or public company
• How a sales leader thrives in each stage to maximize what the private equity company wants to get—high valuations.
• What an operating partner wants out of their sales leader during the entire hold period.

Speaker: Dan Perry, Managing Director Sales Excellence, Riverside Company

Practitioner Session:
Select and Prioritize Your Sales Enablement Initiatives for Maximum Impact

As an enablement professional, if you want to earn the mythical “seat at the table” and deliver organizational impact, you’ll need to move beyond reactive operating models and providing baseline services. The enablement leaders of the future will operate more like performance consultants. During this session, attendees will learn about the results you can deliver when you reach the formal maturity model of sales enablement (based on two separate research studies). Three key methods for selecting and prioritizing initiatives will be shared, to help you make an impact.

1. The building blocks of sales enablement. We’ll start by understanding the framework and how to use the building blocks to diagnose your current state and design a plan to close the gaps.
2. Force field analysis. How to conduct a force field analysis to prioritize initiatives that support reaching a desired future state.
3. COIN-OP analysis. How to conduct a situation assessment using COIN-OP (a sales discovery method) to select and prioritize initiatives that will move the needle.

Speaker: Mike Kunkle, Vice President, Sales Effectiveness Services, SPARXiQ

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Demo Session:

A showcase for several speakers to present great, well-formed ideas on specific topics in under 20 minutes.

The Sales Success Formula: Holy Grail or Science?

How do you break the code on sales success? Is it science, art, dark magic, or a fleeting dream? Every sales leader seems to have their own idea of the right KPIs, metrics, and success criteria, as well as how or what to coach to. In this session, you will learn how see through fiction, get to the facts, and identify once and for all:

• What drives sales success
• Where to look when there’s a failure
• Why typical sales management fails in coaching efforts
• How you can fix the problem

Speaker: Ray Bonis, Director Sales Strategy and Enablement, Thryv

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Launching Two Different Sales Methodologies in a Sales Organization

As sales enablement and training professionals we are often challenged to drive a specific sales methodology within a sales organization. There are many sales methodologies an organization can adopt, with 14 different methodologies to select from which one is the right fit for your organization? Investing in these programs can be costly and it requires a commitment from your sales and marketing leaders.

In 2020 during the beginning of the pandemic, I joined a medical device organization and was tasked to build out a new sales enablement program. Before I joined this organization a decision was made to partner with Challenger Selling and Miller-Heiman (Professional Selling Skills). As sales enablement professionals we know there is a dramatic difference between both of these selling methodologies. My challenge was to launch both of these programs to a 400 person sales team during a pandemic virtually.

Learn how to tackle this challenge and work with your sales and marketing teams to make it a success.

Speaker: Jason Gwilliam, Manager, US Sales Training and Enablement, Abbott

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The Future: Post-Pandemic Enablement

The COVID-19 pandemic changed what the norm was leading into 2020. While causing a surge in the use of digital technologies, it also accelerated multiple technology trends and forced people and organizations worldwide to adjust to new ways of work and life. Companies and educational institutions shifted to work-from-home, and the art of sales has completely changed. Customers are more demanding than ever as they’re faced with uncertainty and held accountable for immediate ROI on the products and services they choose. It has become difficult to obtain a budget as stronger use cases and more meetings are required between the buyer and seller. Adding to the difficulty, executive presence on sales calls is up by more than 50 percent, causing sales cycles to be longer and forcing sellers to be more effective than ever.

The pandemic forced us to re-think how we enable our teams and how sellers need be more effective at differentiating themselves to outsell the competition. During this discussion, the speaker will highlight some emerging sales enablement trends, including C-suite business acumen, selling with empathy, tech stack consolidation, and sales and customer enablement evolution.

Speaker: Jenn Haskell, Director, Sales Training & Enablement, Everbridge

Enjoy a cocktail reception with your peers before you head out to explore everything Las Vegas has to offer.

Practitioner Session:
Never Underestimate a Droid: Using Fun, Competition, and Recognition to Drive a Culture of Learning

Come learn how Lucid Software used a Star Wars–themed achievement program to provide learning on demand and as-needed. Enablement can only run so many programs at once. Providing online credits with application and self-reflection requirements can extend your reach. Add recognition and prizes, and your people will love it.

Speaker: Stacey Unck, Director of Enablement, Lucid Software

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Demo Session:

Keynote Presentation:
Rethinking B2B Sales Enablement to Align with Digital Buying

As B2B buyers increasing use digital tools to buy, suppliers must rethink how they sell. But how exactly? The answer lies in the very different way humans engage with digital information. Ironically, that difference not only makes it harder for suppliers to sell, but for buyers to buy, at least with confidence. This new B2B buying environment means sales enablement leaders need to expand their perspective and move from enabling sellers to enabling selling.

Speaker: Doug Bushée, Senior Director, Sales Research Practice, Gartner