Sales Enablement PRO Podcast

According to the State of Sales Enablement Report 2024, 20% of organizations see sales process as a key strategic priority. So how can you streamline your sales process and equip reps to win more and win faster? Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Win Win podcast. I am your host, Shawnna Sumaoang. Join us as we dive into changing trends in the workplace and how to navigate them successfully. Here to discuss this topic is Scott McNabb, the chief sales officer at Verisk Marketing Solutions. Thank you for joining us, Scott. I'd love for you to tell us about yourself, your background, and your role. Scott McNabb: Yeah, I'm thrilled to death to be here. Thank you so much. As mentioned, I'm the Chief Sales Officer for Verisk Marketing Solutions. I have been in and around the world, solving problems for major brands, major carriers, major tech companies, et cetera, for the better part of the last 20 years, so since I was nine years old, that's a joke, and have been leading sales teams, both in the

Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO Podcast. I’m Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we’re here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today, I’m excited to have Debbi Varela, the author of Put Me In, Coach, here with us today. Debbi, I would love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience.  Debbi Varela: Absolutely. Thanks for having me. My name is Debbi Varela. I have over 15 years of experience now in the sales enablement and transformation space before it was even really like what it is today. I have been lucky enough to have worked with some of the world’s smallest startups to some of the world’s largest tech companies. After working in these businesses of all sizes throughout my career, I have honestly met some of the coolest and most interesting people. I’ve learned so much about what works, wha

Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO Podcast. I’m Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we’re here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today, I’m excited to have Andy Springer, the chief client officer at RAIN Group, join us. Andy, I would love for you to introduce yourself, and your role in your organization to our audience. Andy Springer: Hi, everyone. Thank you very much for having me. I am Andy Springer, the Chief Client Officer at the RAIN Group. My role is one that each and every day I am a practitioner leading teams in terms of supporting large-scale sales transformations and also working with small, and medium-sized enterprises in terms of upscaling and developing sales skills that are going to shift the dial in terms of sales performance. SS: Wonderful. The reason that we wanted to pull you on to this podcast is because RAIN Group actually recentl

Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO Podcast. I’m Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we’re here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today, I’m excited to have Jay Shephard at Bentley Systems join us. Jay, I would love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience. Jay Shephard: Thanks for the invite. I’m thrilled to meet you and spend some time with you. Where do you start? I have been doing this for a while. I started my career 25 years ago selling, and when you start your career in selling you start to pick up some things that seem to go well. All of a sudden I started being asked to do some coaching with new hires that were coming in by my boss. What I found out, Shawnna, is I loved it. It’s a lot of fun. I thought, is there a career around this? I love selling, but I also love the coaching element. That&

Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO Podcast. I’m Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we’re here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today, I’m excited to have Rodney Umrah from Forcepoint join us. Rodney, I would love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience. Rodney Umrah: Thank you so much, Shawnna. I am delighted to be here. My name is Rodney Umrah, and I’m the global head of enablement at our go-to-market organization here at Forcepoint. SS: I’m excited to have you here. Now, I know that you’ve shared that enablement found you rather than you finding it. Tell us a little bit about that career journey. Why and how did you transition into the enablement field? RU: I’ll take you back a little before I get to the transition because that will help to inform why that experience was so interesting to

Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO Podcast. I’m Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we’re here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today, I’m excited to have Regan Barker from Grant Thornton, Australia join us. Regan, I’d love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience.  Regan Barker: Absolutely, Shawnna. It’s great to be here. My name is Regan Barker and I am the head of sales and sales enablement here at Grant Thornton Australia. Part of my role is to work closely with the business on their sales activity and sales coaching. Grant Thornton is an accounting audit and consulting firm. We have six offices across our beautiful nation and seven service lines. We sell over a hundred products and services across 11 industry specializations with about 170 partners and 1,300 people.  SS: Thank you for joining u

Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO Podcast. I’m Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we’re here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today, I’m excited to have Marja Moore join us. I would love for you to introduce yourself to our audience. Marja Moore: Thank you, Shawnna. Hi, everyone, my name is Marja Moore, and I am in the Seattle area. I have most recently worked at companies like SAP, Concur, and Infoblox. Right now, I’m taking some time off to explore some new adventures, but I have worked in everything from marketing to business development to sales enablement and value methodology building. I have a diverse background in many industries and I use all of that to inform how I go forward with every new role, especially with enablement.  SS: Wonderful. I’m excited to chat with you. There was something on your LinkedIn profile that caught

Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO Podcast. I’m Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we’re here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today, I’m excited to have Jonathan Kvarfordt from Simetrik and the founder of GTM AI Academy join us. Jonathan, I would love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience.  Jonathan Kvarfordt: Shawnna, I’ve been looking forward to this. Thank you for having me on. As a big fan of the organization and podcast, I just want to say first off, thank you. I am currently the head of revenue enablement and product marketing at Simetrik. I do everything with revenue enablement teams, sporting partners, CS teams, sales, and business development. The other hat I wear is product marketing. I currently have a team of five content writers and designers all they do is your basic content creation fr

Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO Podcast. I’m Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we’re here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today, I’m excited to have Jennifer Ryan at Blackline join us. Jennifer, I’d love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience. Jennifer Ryan: Absolutely. My name is Jennifer Ryan. I’m the director of global sales enablement here at Blackline. I went the long way around to find my way to enablement. When I was a solutions consultant, I was a customer success manager. I’ve done IT support, I’ve done customer training. I’ve done all of these things, and my senior VP of sales came up to me and he says, you keep circling the barrel, but until you understand sales, you can’t understand business, so you have two choices. You can go into sales enablement, or yo

Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO Podcast. I’m Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we’re here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today I’m excited to have Nicholas Gregory from Qlik join us. Nick, I would love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience. Nicholas Gregory: Thank you so much, Shawnna, for the opportunity to speak to you and to speak to your audience here. My name is Nicholas Gregory. I started my career in sales after university. Specifically with a cybersecurity company called McAfee about 15 years ago, where I was given an opportunity to fulfill a very personal and professional goal of mine to work in Latin America, which is a different conversation for a different day. Nonetheless, the powers that be at the company, knowing my aspirations to work in Latin America, tap me on the shoulder to be a new memb

Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO Podcast. I’m Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we’re here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today I’m excited to have Rachael McCormick from Vonage join us. Rachael, I would love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience. Rachael McCormick: Thanks, Shawnna, and thanks for having me here today on Sales Enablement PRO. As mentioned, my name is Rachael McCormick and I’m one of the managers for Vonage’s Global Sales Enablement Team. My journey actually started with a marketing degree. When I graduated, many of the marketing positions I was looking into required years and years of experience, which I think many recent grads tend to find, and instead, I got into sales. I had success in that role and learned a lot of skills that I still utilize today and incorporate that

Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO Podcast. I’m Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we’re here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today we are having Ankita Tiwari join us. Ankita, I would love for you to introduce yourself and your background to our audience. Ankita Tiwari: Thank you for having me today, Shawnna. I’m Ankita, originally from India. About five years ago, I found myself starting my enablement journey in France. It’s funny because of how I stumbled into enablement, just like many others in the field, back then it wasn’t a very clearly defined role, and I sort of ended up in it by chance. It’s been a fun journey so far, and I never looked back. So far I’ve had the pleasure of working with scale-ups, super multicultural, and international companies. The growth that I have experienced in these organizations has been

Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO Podcast. I’m Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we’re here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today, I’m excited to have Bana Kawar from AWS join us. Bana, I would love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience. Bana Kawar: Thank you very much, Shawnna. Hello, everyone who’s listening to this podcast, and a shout out to all enablement professionals all over the world. My name is Bana, and oftentimes people think of a banana without an A to remember my name here in the UK. I look after the UK public sector enablement here at Amazon Web Services. I have been with the company for seven and a half years now in different functions and different countries. I currently spearhead the enablement function here in the public sector and help the organization grow to what it is today a

Olivia Grieman: Hi, and welcome to Book Club, a Sales Enablement PRO podcast. I’m Olivia Grieman. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space and we’re here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so they can be more effective in their jobs. Sales is a career where mindset really can make all the difference. From understanding customer behaviors to developing a sound process to crafting an effective strategy and to closing with confidence, success in sales is very much rooted in psychology. I’m so excited to have Alison Edgar, MBE, here to tell us a little bit more about this concept that she details in her book Secrets of Successful Sales. So with that, Allison, I’d love to pass it to you to tell us a little bit more about yourself and your background. Alison Edgar: Hi Olivia. Thank you so much for having me. I am Allison Edgar, MBE. Now, I’ll probably explain that before the book. In the UK, twice a year the then queen, now to be king,

Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO Podcast. I’m Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we’re here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today, I’m excited to have Chiara DiFede from Birdeye join us. Chiara, I’d love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience. Chiara DiFede: Hello, and thank you for having me. I am a sales enablement manager with a focus on partner sales at Birdeye. Birdeye is an all-in-one reputation management platform, and I currently support and focus on enabling our internal sales reps how to effectively sell to our channel partners. Sales ultimately found me like it does most people, and when I found success, I wanted everyone around me to find similar success. I had an opportunity to dive into the enablement world, and I haven’t looked back since. I’m so happy I took that chance.

Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO Podcast. I’m Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we’re here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today I am excited to have Anna Duong from Cisco join us. Anna, I would love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience. Anna Duong: Thank you, Shawnna. It’s a pleasure being here and I consider it an honor to be part of this podcast. I lead product, solution marketing, and sales enablement at Cisco for two multi-billion dollar data center portfolios. I am a marketer by training who aspired to be more. When I first started out, I started my career in product management, then product marketing, then I ventured into demand gen, and now into sales enablement. In between these experiences, I practice and hone my trade in a variety of business environments from startup to mid-size, and now I&

Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO Podcast. I’m Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we’re here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today, I’m excited to have Kate Munday from Google join us. Kate, I would love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience. Kate Munday: Thank you so much for having me. A bit about what I do, I help transform people and brands by educating them on how to communicate their stories effectively. I’m a communications coach, I’ve got my own company, Out The Box Speakers, and I’m also a creative business partner for Google. I’ll just elaborate on that cause I think it’s really funny and ironic really that I am in communications and storytelling. I’ve always really loved storytelling, but communication has been something that I used to really struggle with. T

Olivia Greiman: Hi, and welcome to Book Club, a Sales Enablement PRO podcast. I’m Olivia Greiman. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space and we’re here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so they can be more effective in their jobs. In sales, it’s easy to get so focused on the end goal of one deal that you ignore the details and then lead to an aftermath of the sale that is crucial to long-term success. Setting a solid foundation and maintaining a strong relationship after the sale can be just as important as closing the deal. In her upcoming book, Sales Essentials, Rana Salman details a start-to-finish guide to lead you to sales success. I’m so excited to have her here to tell us a little bit more about her book today, so with that, Rana, I’d love to hear a little bit more about yourself and your background. Rana Salman: Thank you for having me and really thank you Sales Enablement PRO for all that you do for our community. My n

Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO Podcast. I’m Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we’re here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today I’m excited to have Christian Palmer from Riskified join us. Christian, I would love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience. Christian Palmer: Thanks so much, Shawnna. Happy to be here. In my role at Riskified, I’m the global revenue enablement manager. I sit on a global enablement team that focuses primarily on the sales org that handles both inbound and outbound selling as well as our customer success function as well. Riskified is a fraud and abuse platform that aids and assists e-commerce companies to make sure that only the good customers are the ones who are buying and performing acts on their websites. SS: We are excited to have you here, Christian. Tha

Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO Podcast. I’m Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we’re here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today I’m excited to have Jennifer Rizzi from Squarespace join us. Jennifer, I would love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience. Jennifer Rizzi: Thank you so much for having me, Shawnna. My name is Jennifer Rizzi and I am the sales enablement manager for the enterprise team at Squarespace. My background is actually in journalism, believe it or not, and my career took several interesting turns to end up in my current role supporting technology sales, but I love it and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I started off in TV reporting and I worked as an on-air reporter in two state capitals, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and Charleston, West Virginia. After that, I relocated to New Yor