The Right Way to Scale

Jessica Ly: I'm here with Debbie Varela, who is the director of sales enablement at Unisys. Hi, Debbie. Welcome to the show.

Debbi Varela: Hi, thank you for having me.

Jessica Ly: I am excited to talk to you because I think that in large organizations, I think there are challenges because there's a lot of business units. And sometimes, you've got the hiccups of silos. So wanted to get your thoughts on what are some of the challenges organizations have and best practices to overcome them?

Debbi Varela: Absolutely. So being in sales enablement, I tend to see as I talk to organizations, usually three common challenges. One is that they need the sellers to have one consistent message that they're bringing to market that's helping define their value and that value wedge for them. The second one is that either the sales team is newly formed, or they just don't even have a sales enablement program in place period. And the third one that I see is that the training materials that they currently have in place are developed primarily by a product group or a marketing group. And so, the quality from a sales perspective isn't necessarily what it needs in order for the sellers to help drive those value conversations out in the marketplace.

Jessica Ly: Yes, that's true. I think that a lot of technical content is good is needed. But there's also a need to understand the business transformation and how that technology can help the corporation achieve its mission. So it's more of a consultative approach to selling with a lot more content around industry trends and use cases that you can apply. And that's what salespeople are really hungry for.

Debbi Varela: Correct. Yeah, and going back to what you said around the silos, I think that's one of the challenges that promote that what you just said, which is, the sellers are getting this content to them, which is very product-driven. And it's extremely hard for them then to take this product-focused. Training material or even marketing material, laid that out into business outcomes, could help them figure out how to even solve like to your points, a consultative piece, how to consult, solve those problems with their client or prospect.

Jessica Ly: So are you in charge of creating those kinds of use cases, competitive analysis, market trends that are very relevant to that sector?

Debbi Varela: I'm not responsible for creating that type of content. But in sales enablement, one of the things that I think is really unique is that we are almost like the glue or the funnel for the whole organization. So as I hear these things from the sellers, that they would need something like you just said, a use case or a white paper, or whatever it may be, we then go and we work with all the different areas within the business to get that pulled into a type of sales asset that would be valuable to them.

Jessica Ly: So you're responsible for the sales readiness. You’ve got a team of four to six people impacting about 600 sales, customer-facing clients, agents. How do you take that content that's been delivered to you give it to you? And how do you make it that is effective in the heads of these folks and retaining that knowledge?

Debbi Varela: Yeah, you bring up such a great point, especially right now in our current environment where we've had to pivot very quickly, like many other companies, going from many trainings that were in-person to now, it's 100% remote. And so one of the biggest challenges, I think, from that perspective is how do you still engage the learner when you're in this virtual world, and you know, that it's a lot easier to have distractions when you're in a home office, or you have your email upon your second monitor over here. So one of the things that I found very successful is just by implementing a lot of different types of collaboration tools, so that as you're working with a seller, whether it's in a training environment, or roleplay, coaching whatever it is, it's in a way that's very interactive, obviously, using cameras. But beyond that, it's bringing up collaborative type tools where you can actually have the person on the other end of the line contribute in real-time, whether it's a whiteboard type application you're using or any type of video recording where you're then able to give either live feedback, live coaching, or even like down to the minute so, across time zones, you're still able to create that very in-person intimate experience and provide like in like to the minute coaching to help them.

Jessica Ly: I hear a lot about the journey. So you've got people trying to learn and then kind of go at their own pace. They get the feedback. Some people have students go back and repeat those modules more than others. But I think that's where it's really helpful it just giving that self-service option for people to learn at their own pace and different format, you know like I enjoy listening to audiobooks a lot more than reading the physical book and watching videos on how to do anything is so helpful.

Debbi Varela: Exactly. And going back to the point of, we're all having to be very flexible right now with the way that we're even structuring our lives professionally and personally, sewing, giving, you know, the employees that ability to take this learning whenever and however they can, I think also helps, right? If we can give it to them on a mobile device, if they can download that to their mobile device, they don't even need an internet connection to take the training. I mean, all those things, I think, help increase the adoption there and the learning and skills.

Jessica Ly: Yes, I think having the analytics to give feedback on what content is effective or what teaching method is effective is so important to then invest in the right resources, right? How do you do that now? Is that something that you're working on to improve the process?

Debbi Varela: Actually, yes, we are right in the middle of figuring out a process that will work with us internally to ensure a couple of things that I mentioned about making sure you have the quality content, which then translates into, how do you manage it? And then how do you make sure people are using it? And is it even effective? So previously, what I've done in just in my career, any type of content management tool has really been key for me to help drive much of what I just stated, right? It helps me get the content in one centralized location. I can then see who's accessing it, how many times they're accessing it, versus maybe other pieces of content. So that'll tell me if it's something people like or don't like. And then, we can also have version control as well. That's another really big challenge. I think within organizations is the massive amount of content that's just out there and available to anybody internally that is maybe two years old, six years old. So yeah.

Jessica Ly: Yeah. So I think that's very important. Having the ability to control the content being updated, you know, as soon as it's updated, those other people who've been looking at it can see the latest version, because I think one of the problems with PDFs is that it's outdated as soon as you download that, right?

Debbi Varela: Yeah, I agree. And, you know, right now, that's one of the projects, I'm really focused on myself, because I think in order to have that consistent message and ensure everyone across the organization has the consistent message is you have to make sure they only have access to the right pieces of content, and not something that was done, who knows when.

Jessica Ly: Right, the version control. But it's hard, I mean because so many people share that information. So the salespeople have it, and then they may share it. And then prospects, my habit or a general partner may have that. And so, it is not easy, but it's absolutely necessary to be able to have the content tracking and update it in an automatic way.

Debbi Varela: In a perfect world, I always envisioned when you think about content and content management, in like my euphoria of how that would work is that the content management tool would actually tie into any type of like sales management or like a customer relationship management platform, to whereas sellers would go into this platform and change even the stages of the sales cycle or buying journey where the customer that but this tool would get a flag and then be able to send the right piece of content to the seller at the right time. So they know this is something maybe I should use with my customer. Or maybe this is a good nugget of training that I should take to remind myself of some key things I should be communicating at this point in time in the buyer journey.

Jessica Ly: Right, so if you can automate that and recommend the right content to share, that would be very helpful. Because I do know salespeople spend a lot of time just searching for the right content. And that is such a waste of their time, right?

Debbi Varela: Well, and you bring up a great point because then they search for the content. It takes them too long. So they stop and then they go develop it themselves. And so they're taking time out in the field to do what shouldn't be their job. So one thing that I've been calling a lot lately and we've got a lot of like Shadow content happening, which is also not a great place so.

Jessica Ly: Right. You know, I think LG can help businesses thrive and accelerate. And this whole digitalization of business, definitely, you can see how it's so important to have the right tools in place to enable this kind of efficiency you're talking about. And at Scale, right. Without my large organization, Unisys is a global organization. So it is so critical. And I love hearing how you're seeing opportunities to improve and make them a big organization.

Debbi Varela: Yeah, is that fun? Honestly, it's a fun role. It's a fun career to have. Because like I was saying earlier, it's just; I really feel like sales enablement is a unique role to where you're almost the core of everything, every role within an organization to help everything kind of flow smoothly, right to help enable more sales and close deals right.

Jessica Ly: Yes, that's true, because you're right in the middle, where marketing is giving you a lot of content, product information. And then you've got industry information that you have to put together. Customers just put all of that together and package it in a way where you can deliver the right content to the rep at the right moment. And then also through the stages of that journey that they're going with prospects. So thank you so much for being on the show that we appreciate you talking about your own journey of sales enablement. But when you look at the book now, I think it's getting more and more important over the years that what do you see the evolution of your career in sales enablement?

Debbi Varela: So for me, where I think the biggest evolution for me is, and where I'm most excited, honestly, is sales enablement, has earned a seat at the table, in my opinion, and voice is now being heard. I really feel like we have this moment where we're able to make such a huge impact on the business. And that's what I'm excited for is sales enablement used to be seen as only training and now we see from a more strategic way and that's what I'm excited to do from sale enablement.

Jessica Ly: Yeah, well, it's about time they recognize it because you're impacting the bottom line.

Debbi Varela: Thank you so much for having me.