About This Episode

You roll out this fantastic new talk track… and only 2 people use it.

You can’t get discouraged or offended. You have to cheerlead for their success.

In this episode of the Sales Engagement podcast, I had a chance to talk with Jamin Fochtman, Head of Sales Enablement at Addepar, about sales enablement.

“The only thing that has gotten me to this point is being able to ride shotgun with some of the best sales executives I’ve ever worked with. They showed me good from bad,” Jamin said.

Jamin told me about the critical skills of a sales enablement professional, hurdles to implementing change, and some of his favorite technology.

Let’s dive in!

Key traits of a sales enablement professional

Beyond coaching yourself and your team and leveraging technology, a sales enablement professional has to show 2 critical skills.

Optimistic

“Gotta be optimistic,” Jamin said.

People across any type of a sales role are feeling the pressure. It’s the role of sales enablement to be the positive reinforcement.

To remind everyone that things are great and can get even greater with tools and resources.

Thick-skinned

When it comes to training, everything you build and everything you share isn’t always going to get used — and that’s okay.

Jamin reminded us to focus on the fact that what you do is helping someone. (Helping everyone all the time isn’t a realistic expectation.)

Tip: One way to help ease an introduction of new tools or capabilities is to explain the Why. 

“When we release new features and launch new products, there’s always a resounding ‘Why are we doing this?’” Jamin said. It’s important for that Why to be the foundation of any change.

Sales enablement challenges

Most people are resistant to change — at least a little bit, at least at first — and salespeople are no exception.

Watch out for egos

You’re up there talking about a new deliverable, training, or talk track, and someone in the room has an ego.

They resist you because they feel your “improvement” is really just a message about how they were doing something wrong.

“I had to learn how to change my message delivery of, ‘Alex, it’s not something you’re doing wrong, but maybe you could do it better,’” Jamin said.

Another strategy to overcome egos is to leverage the success of top performers to fight the fear reaction.

Even more than “you could do better” is “you did this really well, so let’s refine it.”

“Give it a shot. Just see what happens,” said Jamin. “I’m not mandating it. I’m just asking you to try.”

Pioneering systems & methods

Another challenge facing sales enablement is seeing friction between departments and not being able to do something about it.

Well, Jamin did something about it.

His company used to need a formalized scoping document for every single deal. It took 4-5 days to get in front of everyone’s eyes.

Super frustrating. So Jamin created a streamlined workflow that was done in a few hours.

“It immediately cut the friction between sales and services and accelerated our time to close,” he said.

Sales enablement tech

I asked Jamin how to find the balance between leveraging technology and coaching yourself.

“You learn quickly,” he quipped.

• Gong: He loves how it tracks analytics and uses it to communicate with prospects by sending recordings and to communicate with the team by sharing positive wins.

“Having that transparency of information and visibility into what is being said, honestly, is just changing the game for us,” he said.

• Copilot: Jamin uses this in meetings with cue cards for reps to use to help align coaching techniques during a call.

“Coaching is critical. Whether you’re a manager, whether you’re in sales enablement, and across employee development, it’s really important,” he said.

Partnering with sales leaders

The point of technology and coaching is to deliver it to team members. Which you can’t do without a relationship with sales managers.

When it comes to who has responsibility for what, Jamin just asks the leaders how they prefer to collaborate.

And when it comes to data, information, and performance, he makes a direct case for what should be important or what leaders should pay attention to.

“The more you’re able to surface information to them for them to quickly make decisions has made a dramatic difference for us,” he said.

One piece of wisdom

I like to ask each guest to share just one piece of wisdom or advice.

Jamin’s was gold:

“Be open to learning.”

No matter how long you’ve been in your role, you have to stay adaptable and willing to listen to what others around you are saying. 

And particularly to sales reps: Stay open to the concept of trying new techniques and tactics in your conversations. “We’re seeing dramatic change in those who are really open to listening and learning,” Jamin said.

Get in touch with Jamin about sales enablement on his LinkedIn.

For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.