AI and The Future of Revenue Enablement

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Welcome back, everybody. We are here so excited. We have Roderick Jefferson, who is moderating this panel of these incredible women. I mean, powerhouse women in revenue and sales enablement. And so Roderick is a professional speaker and he's the author of Sales Enablement 3.0. And our incredible rockstar panelists, we have Sandy Robinson. She's the VP of Revenue Operations and Client Growth at Quavo Fraud and disputes. Megan Davis is the Director of Sales Enablement at Hunters. And of course, what can we do in sales 3.0 without Terry Long, the VP of global revenue enablement at Mindtickle. I am super excited. Gerhardt, how about you?

Well, I'm excited. We need to also mention that all four people that have joined us today are winners of the Sales 3.0 Sales Enablement Award. We have a panel of winners. It's something we've never had before. So I'm so excited and grateful that you would join us today. And I want Roderick to take the lead and lead the panel and tell us all about the future. Thanks, Gerhard. Stephanie, I appreciate it. It's amazing to be a part of this group of, as Stephanie said, amazing. Not only winners and not, not only practitioners, but incredible people as well. So this has got to be my most favorite panel that I've ever been on here or otherwise. Because it's people that I not only know and trust, but also incredible amount of respect for each of them. And you're about to find out why. So, you know, everybody's talking AI, right? And everyone's talking revenue enablement. We wanted to put it together because in today's fast market, AI, as we all know, is transforming both how we do sales go to market and enablement as a whole to drive more. Excuse me, more growth. But how do you do it? Everyone's talking about it, but now we want to get to what I call strategically tactical. Not only the broad pieces, but the tactical pieces of how to use AI to enhance your sales process, personalize customer engagement, and ultimately drive scalable growth. But before we do, I want to take a moment and have each one of the ladies introduce themselves and. And Megan, I will start with you.

Sure. Thanks, Roderick. So very excited to be here and be on this panel. Like. Like Stephanie said, I lead sales enablement at a company called Hunters. We're a cybersecurity startup providing a SIM solution for security, operations, teams. And in my role being at a startup, I've built out the traditional sales enablement programs you think of and have also had the opportunity. Thanks a lot to the Use of AI to build out some of our customer and partner certifications. So very excited to be here and to talk AI with you all.

Thanks, Megan. Appreciate it. Now to my dear friend, Terry Long.

Thanks, Roderick. Hi Everybody. Terry Long, VP of Enablement at MindTickle. So a couple things, MindTickle, if you're not familiar, full revenue enablement platform. We are embracing the AI platform as well and doing quite a bit with it, which I'm happy to share as we move forward in this conversation. I come from a background of selling myself 10 years as a quota carrying rep, 20 years in enablement, which is kind of crazy to think loving what I do. Really passionate about helping sellers and CS be more successful. So happy to be here.

Thanks, Terry. And now my dear friend also, Sandy.

Thank you, Roderick. Yes, I'm really excited to be here. I am Sandy Robinson. I'm the VP of Revenue operations and Client Growth at Quavo. Fraud and Disputes. We automate fraud and dispute solution, monitoring and resolutions for fintechs, banks and credit unions. I'm on week three of the role here, but I've been in the sales leadership, revenue enablement and revenue operations world for over 25 years and I hate saying that, but it's definitely true. So I've seen this evolve over time. I've carried a bag run sales teams and a revenue operation. So I'm excited to be here and bring all this together. Thank you.

Thank you, ladies. All righty, let's go ahead and get this party started. But before we do, now, to the folks that are in the audience, please add any of your questions into the chat. We want to make sure that two things. One, we keep this thing interactive and and more of a conversation with you than a presentation. And the second is we want to make sure that we get to your questions that you have, because I know that you came to learn, but also to ask your specific questions. And so the last thing we want to do is just get up here and talk about things that aren't important to you. So now let's get this thing started. Megan, I'm going to start with you. What can be done to embed AI into your processes instead of it being an afterthought or just kind of the cool thing that everyone's doing right now.

Sure. So I think we've all found ourselves in a situation where we're stuck with a blank slate or blank piece of paper. Right. You're at the very beginning of a project and sometimes the hardest part is getting started. And regardless of what it is Right. If you're creating a sales training, a training program, a presentation, a project plan. So I propose you start with AI. And by AI I mean different chat bot tools. And.

I found I guess it really interesting to just start by posing your challenges to the chatbot and starting to collaborate, starting to brainstorm. And as you start to brainstorm, you start to learn kind of how to use that AI tool better. You can kind of see what responses are provided to you, refine them and kind of create the starting point of your project. So I wouldn't say that you should stop with the AI response in this case or just take the answers at face value, but I do think it's a really good brainstorming partner to start with early on. Perfect, thank.

Thanks Me, I want to double tap on, on something you were just talking about and I've got a two part question for each of you. Sandy, I'm going to start with you so you can start thinking about this one. Can you share one revenue enablement use case that you're using AI for today and one that you will not use AI for?

So what I found really useful with utilizing AI, particularly around salespeople, is digging into the call intelligence tools.

I want to step back for a second in having the tech stack. If your tech stack is pretty dialed in and set up well, it's going to really help you to maximize the benefits of AI. So if you're just trying to kind of dip your toes in it, you want to make sure that your tech strategy is pretty dialed in. But so in a very recent prior role we had a call intelligence tool set up and I don't know if we want to, I don't necessarily know if I want to name names or anything like that, but we're able to really dive into the call summaries and even automate things like medpic. So we are a medpic or we're a MEDPIC organization and, and having the ability to extract MEDPIC from the calls and save the sales folks time to actually pull it back into the CRM. It was very magical. And it took that barrier away from the salespeople to say, well, I don't have time to type that in and things like that. So I think it's really important that you really look strategically at the setup and how you want them to use it and provide the actual enablement and training to go along with it. So I'd say that's a very positive experience.

I think in terms of something that I wouldn't do again is just Kind of let folks go, try to figure it out themselves. And I think that's where the danger comes in is we don't want the sales team kind of chasing all of these shiny objects on their own without giving them some level of framework in how to actually use the tools and how to apply it, going to serve them best and ultimately save them time.

Thanks for that. Because we, we know as former sales bad carriers ourselves, if we can't figure it out, we'll go and, and do what works for us. Right. And sometimes it can delude messaging positioning, sometimes it can send you a different direction that the company's not trying to go to. So I love the, the fact that you're talking about putting in some guide rails. And so Terry, I want to go to you. I, I know that AI is a, a component of the Mind Tickle platform. So how are you guys using AI and then what are you not using it for that folks may think that they should or shouldn't be?

Well, I'm excited to say we're using it for almost everything we possibly can use it for today. I think the biggest success we're seeing is as the BDR team was ramping up around our new Personas and our new verticals. We're really struggling to get them comfortable to pick up the phone and have the right talk track. Finding ways to incorporate AI around our two way interactive roleplay. Meaning they could go in, do this interactive role play with a bot that we had pre programmed based on that Persona, that vertical with very specific elements around their sentiment, how quickly they may want to get off the phone, some of the backend insights, maybe they came out of a tough board meeting, maybe their budget's being restricted, they're under resourced. But using it in such a way where we can actually create as close to real life experiences for them to go in and practice in the moment before they pick up the phone and actually do that outbound call. What we started to see was a quick progression where they actually wanted to practice 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 times for each one of those outbound calls to continue to hone their craft. Because as they practice, AI would come in over the top and provide feedback. What did you do? Well, where are some opportunities? Can you try to position this differently? So it's been a really great use case around that particular area specifically. But we use it across the board. We use it to get insights into content, we use it in our digital sales rooms, we use it to help us craft enablement programs because it's built into the platform. So there's a myriad of use cases. I think to your question about where do you not use AI and it's less about where do we not use it and more about not taking it for face value. I think when it came out everybody was so excited, myself included, and you'd get a result and you just assume, oh, it's probably accurate, but knowing that there's going to be some nuances, there are some more complex or client specific discussions that are going to require you to really have a deep, more contextual understanding of the situation and you're not going to get that through AI. So making, making sure that, you know, you have a symbiotic relationship with AI is critical.

Love that. And it reminds me of something that, you know, there was a time we would all Google ourselves, right, to see what's out there, make sure that everything is clean. Now it's gotten to the point where, and I, I'll put it out there. I actually asked Chat, GPT and Claude about me to see, just to see what came back. All I can say is don't trust everything that it thinks you are.

Right.

Because there were some things that came back. I was like, that would have been great if I would have, but I never got a chance to do it. So don't take it for face value. Which now goes to the next question, which is around personalization. You were talking about partnership. I want to take it to that next level now. Right. And Megan, I want to ask you, how can you use AI to personalize training and resources for different teams to kind of scale? I'm talking about BDRs, AES, SCs, CSMs, etc. How can we pull them together and how should they be used individually for those roles differently? Because we all know what's too technical or too deep for one is not enough for others.

Yeah, I love this question and I think I'll kind of go back to, you know, my role specifically at Hunters. Right. I'm a practitioner in a sense. We're a startup, so we all wear a lot of hats. But that doesn't mean that your content or you know, in this case, training and certifications don't have to be personalized. So what I found, we use a AI video and audio generation tool to create the modules for our certifications. And by using AI and having this tool to build, it's allowed me as a individual, Right. Working cross functionally of course, but it's allowed me to build out Hunter's academy and create three and soon to be four certifications for our partners, for our customers, for technical users that enable them to sell our platform right on the partner side and also enable them to use and get the full utilization from our platform on the customer and end user side. And this truly would not be possible without the tools like we use that, you know, you type in the transcript, they generate the audio, sometimes the video. And it also makes it manageable to maintain because when we have product updates or we get feedback from some of the learners going through those programs, I can then go in, make the edits, generate and re upload the new video to maintain that certification. So yeah, I found in certification creation a lot of good synergy using AI.

One fun thing I just tried with it. Well, fun I guess we're all enablers, so maybe you'll agree with me.

I know we find things, strange things.

To be fun, I get it, keep me honest. But writing wrong quiz questions right on like exams or for quizzes can be very difficult. So I found that that's one interesting use case if you're specific enough to get AI to kind of help collaborate and write those, the wrong answer choices for you. But still, I think, I think Terry mentioned it as well. It's being very specific and not taking things at, at face value and especially when it comes to like some of our certification content is very technical. So I'm never just having AI write technical content and if I use it for that use case at all, it's having a technical reviewer or myself or multiple people really make sure that it's accurate. So yeah, that's, that's one way.

Love that. Always get an extra set of eyes on everything we put out. Right. As enablers, we've all learned you've got to have a backup to the backup. Sandy, Terry, anything you want to add to this piece?

I'll, I'll highlight another problem we were trying to solve using AI. Our customer success team was struggling to get up to speed on all of the product enhancements. Product release, product release, product release. And so in order for us to create something more scalable, we used AI to go in and actually scrub all the product release updates and create not only a repository but a certification similar to what Megan's talking about, but a full certification that we could push out monthly for them to consume, certify on and you do have again you've got to go in and validate because it's so technical. But it saved us a significant amount of time. It allowed us to scale it much more quickly and effectively and then we tailor even beyond that with all of the other roles. We use it to analyze role specific behaviors, to really understand engagement patterns and then put that into the platform to start building out different enablement tracks for each of those teams so you can have the micro learnings in a true role based training track.

Love it. Now we've jumped in and assumed that everyone is up to par on AI and they're all moving forward. We know like every tool, process, program, platform, etc. There's a maturation curve in every company and everyone's not at the same place. So, Sandy, I'll go to you. I've got a question for you. If I'm a new organization, I'm an organization and I'm new to really integrating AI, how what would you tell them now to think about as they're now integrating that into their enablement strategy that if they don't know now, they're going to wish they did later?

I'm the perfect person to ask that question because I have a clean slate in my new role. So I'm actually doing this right now with the overall tech stack and how we want to think about leveraging AI, just locking in the budget for next year and everything. So I'd say the first thing is really working with your IT departments and security departments on what the level of appetite and risk and making sure that you're working within that in your organization. And then there may be some level of teaching. Right. Like here's how we're actually going to use it. We're not going to just let people go free willy and run around and do whatever they want. Right. So I think that's a good first step. It's also helpful to build those relationships and then working cross functionally with the different folks that are going to be involved in this platform, either directly or indirectly. Right. So from an enablement standpoint, you're bringing in different subject matter experts and everything. So I think the people part is really critical. And then aligning on that core tech stack that you're going to choose and select on what tools and AI functionality that you're going to strategize on as a team.

I love the practical application and it actually leans to a question that just came in from the audience and that's I'm curious about what specific AI tools you're using to build some of these solutions. So I'll open this up broadly to all three of you. Terry, I guess I can gather which tool you use.

I was going to say mine's Pretty simple in that it's our own platform, it's mindtickle and it's a full comprehensive revenue enablement platform. So we use our platform, we call it mindtickle for mindtickle, trying to demonstrate what best in class looks like internally and externally.

Megan, how about you?

Yeah, we use a lot of different tools but the one I was speaking about with the AI video generation is Synthesia. So yeah, we use that today. I've had. We also leverage Juno Journey as the platform supporting that and I could. Yeah, a grocery list of others that I've used in the past.

Sandy, how about on your side?

I'm going to open this up to. I'm sure I'm going to get hit up by some different potential feature partners but I am actively on the hunt for us to optimizing things like role play and enablement. So I'm familiar with what I'm looking for. What I have really optimized is all of the functionality in Gong where we're leveraging not just the call summaries but the coaching and the initiative tracking which is. Is for me really critical from a rev ops and enablement function. So as enablement leaders we have to also justify what's happening and our spend and if people are actually benefiting from everything. So yeah, but I find it to be very comprehensive tool.

Thank you for that. I'm going to go a bit more tactical on that question and that is taking it down to tools that as a consultant I'm using and or that I recommend when folks ask me beyond the ChatGPT and Claude Quill bot for going in as a rewriter for folks that aren't as strong writers. You can go in and rephrase for you things like.

App called Video AI. As a keynote speaker we've got these long form keynotes. It actually is an AI tool that will break it down and chop it into YouTube shorts or social media shorts and. And not only that, but it also gives you. It will write your post for you for the various platforms whether it be LinkedIn or Instagram or Sky Blue or X or whatever you're using. So it's a phenomenal tool. Another one is online with what you were talking about, Megan, and that's in Video. Nvidia is amazing as far as creating and crafting because there's so much you can do with that. It brings in stock video and B roll and it brings in stock photos as well. And then there's another one called GAM and what Gamma does is actually creates presentations from you based upon how strong of a prompt engineer you are and how that can all go together. The last one is one that's called answer the Public and that is literally go in and ask about your particularly industry or your customers and it will now bring back the most common questions that come up about that particular subject or industry. So there's a ton of stuff out there that you can use. The next question from the audience is to gain cross functional executive support which we all know a little something about. What AI driven use cases across the buyer's journey should we consider focusing on early in 2025?

So I'll put that out to everyone.

I'm going to go back to the CS use case knowing well a couple of things. Buyers are spending less than 17% of their time with sellers right now. We know that. So I could, I could say there's quite a few use cases for incorporating AI. But I think if we're, if we're taking it from the lens of the buyer journey, I would say first and foremost using it up front to get insight with your BDRs in those first conversations. So understanding from the call scripting, where do you have opportunity maybe to hone your craft around your messaging, your positioning, your product market, fit things like that from a CS perspective, using it again in those conversations to identify trends and patterns. Going back to questions asked, what are the things that are top of mind with the buyers? What are some of the problems or some of the pain points that are coming up that maybe blind spots to you? So I think the first and probably the easiest use case in my experience has been using it from the conversation lens. What kind of insights can you gather? How do you aggregate that in a meaningful way and provide that insight back to product teams, the research team, marketing, etc?

Megan, Sandy, anything you want to add in?

Yeah, I think adding into that like thinking about gong and just like learning about what's happening in your organization right. And in different opportunities when you're winning, when you're losing and honing in on the specific use case case where AI can actually improve the results for your, your sales team or your revenue team. So I think like the way I kind of take it is look at the my sales enablement programs, the metrics we measure for each of those and then you know where I would want to invest more in right or make improvements in. So I don't think you have to go back to the drawing board but kind of take it from, apply it to your existing programs and where it the most sense the Most ROI for the company, Sandy.

Thanks, Megan. I appreciate that. Anything you want to add, Sandy?

Yeah. So I think, I think the time aspect is critical. And in terms of Cross Functional, you know, we think of the CRM, it's, it's probably the most expensive tool, right? So not everybody has a license to Salesforce or HubSpot or whatever you're using. And getting Cross functional buy in gives them that visibility to where you can gain insights in tools and places in the organization where other silos are operating and extract that information. So things like even identifying subject matter experts within the organization and pulling out nuggets of that information. So I think it goes beyond the CRM from a visibility perspective and that can be very valuable across the organization.

Thank you for that. I've got one more question for you. We're getting close to end and I'm loving where we're going. And that is, and this is to each of you, so I'll give you a chance to think about this for a moment. What's one thing that the audience can take from today's discussion and put into practical application right now? Because the last thing we want to do is throw out stuff that they can't go do. What could they walk away from here and go do right now? So I'll open that up broadly.

I'll go, so I am, I'm doing this right now. So I'm practicing what I preach. Take a look at what tools you have and how they're being used. So what I'm learning so far is the tools that we have today are not being optimized. Even things like within the Zoom platform, you know, the AI toggle button is off, right? So I'm like, well, we already have this, so how can we look to optimize some of this? So exploring those options within the tech stack that you have today, that's something that you can literally do right now when we get off this call.

Thanks, Sandy.

Ladies, I would jump in and say again, plenty of things that we talked about earlier that could be applied. But if you think about top of mind for managers RVPs, it's how do I have enough time to coach? And it's an expectation organizations have. So that's a really quick win for you. If you can start thinking about where could I start small in leveraging AI to come in and help scale the coaching efforts, providing insights based on what they're hearing, providing that first round of coaching through a coaching form that can then be validated and reinforced with an rvp Helping to uncover where there might be potential gaps or opportunities for that seller. So finding ways within that coaching framework is a great win. It's easy to scale, but the key is one, you've got to start small. You got to make sure you're aligned with outcomes, and you've got to get adoption and keep working on that over and over and over again.

Iterate, iterate, iterate. Because nothing is always right. Megan, how about you?

Yeah, no, I agree with both of the. Both of the points made. And I think adding to that is I've been thinking about kind of being a micromanager of your AI tools, if you will.

Right.

Like, not something you would do to a human, but I think you need to be very clear, have very specific objectives, very precise instructions, like just iterate as much as you can so that you can really make the most use of your AI tools, whatever they are.

One thing really quick, and I just want one, because if I didn't, it wouldn't be me. You know I love my metrics, right? And I'm not about the smiley sheets and butts and seats. So each of you give me one metric that AI your AI initiatives should be focused on.

Ours is conversion rates. Right now we're looking at in each of the different enablement tracks that we've got in play around Personas, use cases, et cetera. There is a maniacal focus on two specific areas in the sales process and how we're helping to convert those deals along the cycle.

Love that, Megan. One metric.

Yeah, I would say just resource hours, like hours spent. Right. Being able to leverage AI across programs versus, I don't know, using other tools or doing more manual content creation.

Dare I say doing more with less.

100%. There you go.

Sandy. One metric.

I was going to say conversion, but what I'm going to say is take a baseline on whatever your most important metric is and then measure from that. So ensure that you have a baseline.

Love it. Thank you to each of you ladies for your input, for your experience, for being a part of this, and for sharing with our hashtag enablement tribe. I want to leave them with one thing, and that is enablement. Excuse me. AI is great. And I look at AI no different than PowerPoint, Word, Excel. It's a productivity tool because it brings out whatever you put in. So remember, you can use AI for a number of things, as you've heard in this discussion. But I want to leave you with one thing to remember. AI will give you content. No lack of content. It will not give you context.

Yet. So until it can remember it's a content machine, it's not context. That's why it's important for you to check, recheck, and then triple check again. And also make sure you've got some boundaries around that thing, because everyone's not using it the same way, nor should they be, but there should always be parameters to make sure it stays within the vision and scope of your and I want to say again, your given companies and the direction that they're going and where they are in that maturation cycle. So with that, to each of you, Megan, Terry, Sandy, thank you so much for all of your input today.