Enablement Starts With Why?

Pete Thornton 0:00
All right. Welcome back, rampants, to The SaaS(ramp) Podcast. I’m your host, Podcast Pete. Awesome guest on today. We’ve got Jonas Taylor, Team Lead revenue enablement at Lattice. Welcome to the show, Jonas.

Jonas Taylor 0:17
Thanks for having me, man.

Pete Thornton 0:19
Thanks for indulging my DJ name over here and my little “here’s Johnny” intro. It’s not my favorite part, but it’s a favorite part.

Jonas Taylor 0:29
I love it. Because we’re both from Atlanta, we got to rep the DJ names.

Pete Thornton 0:35
Okay, yeah, let’s do some geographic referencing. So like, Yes, both from Atlanta, both at Allianz if you’re old enough to even catch the reference. And then where are you? Where are you right now? Because I recognize the nice booth background and I’m this my booth, as we were previously talking about.

Jonas Taylor 0:52
This is actually my own personal phone booth. No, no, I’m at a leadership off-site right now in San Francisco, with the Lattice sales management team, so really stoked to be here. Typically, though, I’m a digital nomad. So I actually I hop around every month. A couple months ago, I was in New York, Toronto, LA for a little bit. I’ll be back in Atlanta. Probably next week, catching up with some friends.

Pete Thornton 1:17
Yeah, yeah. Very, very cool. I love that. Yeah. When we spoke the last time you were in Toronto, and like, and you were kind of given me the lowdown on Toronto, which was, which, which sounded nice. So I like that digital nomad atmosphere you got going on, I’m gonna have to leave the puppy the wife and the seven-year-old, behind if we’re gonna, if we’re going to take it on the road, or otherwise, we’re gonna have to get a super cool podcast ready RV. My life is more complicated now.

Jonas Taylor 1:39
Very fair.

Pete Thornton 1:41
Well, I’ve been in touch with you for a while and just seeing your progression through your career and everything. And you’ve landed at Lattice now and like, definitely very familiar with Lattice. For audience members who don’t know, would you tell us a little bit about it?

Jonas Taylor 1:54
Yeah, absolutely, man. So, okay, to start with the lay of the land. Like everyone’s probably pretty familiar with the great resignation, right? People are leaving their jobs, because maybe you don’t have great managers. Maybe they don’t find work meaningful. Maybe they don’t feel fairly paid, or there’s not enough opportunity for them. Obviously, COVID happened. remote work is a big benefit that people are like aching for. So all this stuff’s kind of happening in the world on how do I feel more valued at work? How do I feel more valuable at work? How do I find a job that aligns more with the coaching and development I want? All of this stuff is happening, right? Well, how do we actually enable that for companies? And that’s through that through Lattice, right? There are three things Lattice does really well, we want to help companies reduce regrettable attrition, we want to help increase employee productivity, I want to help companies build the culture they want. And that’s really, really hard to do at scale. A Lattice provides a platform that happens to have a full suite of products, everything from performance management, to compsci matrices, to manage your one on ones to compensation, all of that living in one platform as a source of truth. To better connect all of your people programs, and make your people more successful.

Pete Thornton 3:07
Awesome. And there is a one phrase out of that I just picked off because it just rolled off so well. The whole value pitched it actually just from an enablement standpoint.

Jonas Taylor 3:19
I love it, man. Gotta practice what you preach.

Pete Thornton 3:21
That’s it. Yeah. Drink that Kool-Aid. Like make sure it starts with you. It’s regrettable attrition. Yeah, incredible. Whoever tell whoever, like if it’s product marketing or not, like I love the ideology, almost that like that throws out at you right away. That’s cool. Who then just to get an even more clear understanding, like, who is the ideal customer profile? Whose business problems does this help solve?

Jonas Taylor 3:50
Great question, man. So we’re in the process, any hypergrowth tech company, right? Well, we’re now kind of expanding into other verticals expanding into like other segments. But I’d say like our sweet spot for the longest period of time has been tech companies, a tech companies with pretty globally distributed workforces. They’re in hypergrowth. Maybe you have a first-time people that are coming in, and they’re like, holy, holy smokes, dude, why are we managing all of these people processes and people programs in Google Sheets and Google Docs? Like, why are we not capturing all of this really essential information in one place that’s user-friendly? Because it’s one thing if you buy a tool, and then nobody uses it, that tends to be the case with a lot of HR software thing, one of Lattice’s strongest value props, just that people love to use Lattice. And so when you have that adoption in there, it’s more likely that you’re going to get ROI from a tool or from a platform because people are using it. So that’s kind of been Yeah, I’d say like hypergrowth companies. First-time people, leaders, seasoned people, leaders coming in to just want to run track and measure get some valuable insights from their people programs. That’s what we do man.

Pete Thornton 5:05
Awesome Okay, okay, I do love that so high growth SaaS so like what we’re speaking about today as far as SaaS(ramp) and like the various companies like this is bread and butter this is who Lattice speaks to all day every day.

Jonas Taylor 5:17
100%, man. And yeah, shockingly enough: we here at Lattice, we use Lattice.

Pete Thornton 5:24
Drink the Kool-Aid one way and the other it doesn’t look good it’s a question they asked to like, well, how does Lattice use Lattice? How does what’s another famous? How does Gong use Gong? That’s one that I pick up a lot and stuff like that, too. It’s every company wants to know, how does Postman use Postman? Like how do you become API first, as far as the Postman value prop goes, it’s definitely a helpful thing for each. And so the context for hypergrowth. What is it that made Lattice boom? Was there any is there anything environmental that made that happen?

Jonas Taylor 6:01
Anything environmental, I think, kind of the overlap, right of the great resignation. And then the great resignation kind of morphed into this idea of like, the great rethink, where it wasn’t just like, because everyone kind of coined the great resignation is like, oh, man, like, everybody hates working and like, everybody’s tired of, of working. So like, there’s this mass exit in the workforce, obviously, driven by COVID, driven by a lot of people, I think, getting to retirement age as well. They’re just like, why do I need to, like go back to work and, and risk my life in the office with this, this virus. So it’s kind of morphed into this idea of the great rethink where I think a lot of people are shifting careers, to one or two things. Like, I want to align my career and my job with either work that aligns more with what I want to achieve at work. So more aligned with what I want out of my career more aligned with what I want to get developed on the skills that I want to build, what has the best career opportunity for me? And then my been given prescriptive guidance on how to get from point A to point B, what’s the gap in skills? Do I have a manager? Do I have a team that’s investing in me to build those skills, so you have that side of things, but I think you also have this fear of like, a growing importance on what you want outside of work. Like, for me, that’s a big thing, right? Like, that’s why I’m at Lattice is I’m fully remote. I’m living this really cool, digital nomad, lifestyle a lot, a lot of cool things happen in my life, where I just wanted to find a lot of meeting push myself build a new motion on, like, how to develop, meet new friends, how do I adjust to change and stay on my toes, and personally invest in myself. So that’s been, I think a big piece of it for a lot of people, as well as this idea of the great rethink, which is, hey, I’m leaving work to either I’m leaving my old job, you go to a new job that’s going to develop me more professionally, like where I want to go or give me what, give me the benefits and the perks that I want outside of my life to give me a better quality of life, better work, life balance, etc.

Pete Thornton 8:08
Yeah. Yeah, it makes sense. And you hear that a lot, actually, that the great resignation was yeah, it’s a bit of a misnomer because like, like, unemployment did not skyrocket or anything necessarily, we started to positions for every one person available in the states on like, so like maybe the great reshuffle or something like that people looking for something different that like resonated a little bit more with for me for what I was seeing. So that’s yeah, I can see something like Lattice completely taken off at that point.

So you sit in revenue enablement and so when you are not y’all are not only helping Hyper Growth teams, you are a hypergrowth organization with that go-to-market organizations is taken off as well. So what challenges have you guys experienced maybe more recently, like over the last six months, that just come up this Okay, these are problems we’re just solved. We’re tough to solve still trying to solve whatever that happens to be.

Jonas Taylor 9:04
Oo. Yeah, that’s a really good question. I’d say there’s this thing happening and that we’ve think contracted GDP for two quarters now. So informally be called a recession. I don’t know there’s a lot up in the air there on are we in a recession or not? I’m not an economist. So I’ll try to try not to give everyone the wrong opinion here.

Pete Thornton 9:28
There’s been on TikTok recently, you have an opinion you saw it in a three-second blurb just shout it.

Jonas Taylor 9:36
Rinse and repeat, man. I’m an expert. No, the macroeconomic climate makes it tougher for people to buy software. Therefore, it makes it harder for people to sell software. Therefore, it’s harder to hit quota for our sellers. So there’s been like this shift a Lattice in our morale, seller morale. Obviously seller morale impacts my team, the enablement team It impacts the management team as well. When morale is low, the really interesting thing with enablement is that it tends to no longer be a priority. As a rep, when I’m in survival mode of “I need to hit quota,” “I need to adjust all these things happening in the market,” “I need to get better at value selling right now.” There’s a huge behavior change that needs to occur there. Enablement’s no longer a priority, and so it’s like, Okay, cool. Thanks for the content. Thanks for the training, but how is this gonna help me do my job? How is this gonna help me hit my number? I think that’s been the biggest challenge. And just kind of two ways, I think, where we’re pivoting and we’re adjusting to that as an enablement team right now. One way is, and I call it like, enablement inception. So like, the, you’re familiar with movie Inception? Yeah. Playlists? Yeah, totally. Course, great, great Leo DiCaprio movie. You’re literally right. They’re going into these dreams. And they’re giving people they’re incepting, these ideas that people had, and they’re thinking or, and they’re thinking that these are my own ideas. I feel like what we’re doing with enablement right now, which is, how do we do enablement, without doing training? And one way we’re doing that is like, really, really so reinforcing. Like our revenue methodology, for example, in the form of like, weekly Gong drip campaign, inside of slack, isn’t right, is it’s like sharing a gong snippet. And really calling out what went well in that gong snippet really calling out and breaking it into three-minute four-minute bite-sized bits for reps to be like, Oh, my gosh, I love that question. I love the way the objection handled with this prospect or this fire. I want to do that I can do that like, and we’re celebrating them. Like that’s basically training people. And they don’t really see it as training because we’re not asking reps to go finish a quiz, we’re not asking reps to go do a work ramp Guide, which is the LMS we use, we’re not asking them to go view some guru card and read documentation, right, where we’re sending them videos of their peers. And there’s just like, a lot more engagement there. And people are learning. People are getting trained people are being taught without really feeling like they’re being taught or being trained. And I think that’s been one motion that we’ve been trying to do a little bit of a better job with. And I think it’s sticking. So that’s been really cool.

Pete Thornton 12:32
Love that one. So that’s the inception. You’re calling it the inception, do we? We do that too. And it solves other problems as well as like, with product releases, what’s working today versus what was working even last quarter? Like you’re not having to create content all the time, the content is there waiting for you, you can have data behind what’s working and then it’s anything you offer on top of that is now contextual. So like, this is a closed one deal. This is a highly coached highly scored deals. So anything we offer now, like in your bought in like it’s instantaneously, like, that’s what success looks like. Great. How did we get there? So I love the fact that you guys are doing that one? What? What’s the other one? Like? Inception is the first one. So like, I’m digging it like, yeah, keep going. Don’t let me stop you.

Jonas Taylor 13:22
No, it’s Yeah, I mean, it’s so interesting, right? Because, as enablement practitioners, we love what we do. And the things that we’re like really concerned with, right, which is like all of these kind of back office, oftentimes processes and things we have to think about that go into building an enablement program like, are we updating onboarding? Are we updating pre-existing documentation? What’s the Khans plan going to be for this? What’s the sign-off plan? Do we have all stakeholders like there are all these things that we think about we take are, like the instructional design of our content of our trainings really seriously as well. These aren’t things that sellers or sales managers are that concerned about. So like, how do you focus on the right things, and it’s been enablement inception. And then my second bullet point here would just be like, always lead with the why.

Pete Thornton 14:13
There it is. Okay. So if anybody wants background on that one, it just seems like it makes sense. But there’s the Simon Sinek TED Talk that went viral, upon viral, upon viral, and everybody loved it. He geared it towards millennials as well. So anybody of a certain age was just like, even if they didn’t know what was in there. They’re like, this guy likes me, like I like him. But tell us a little bit more about that one and then why it’s so powerful, essentially.

Jonas Taylor 14:43
Absolutely, man. So I think like, I’ll give a real example here right now. And it’s a kind of program and an initiative that I’m thinking of probably for next quarter, which is how do we incentivize our reps to utilize our solutions consulting team more? Right. So we have a lot Have reps here at Lattice that have been here for a really long time. They’re they know the product like the back of their hand. And they feel really confident in their ability to both sell as well as demo the product. However, there’s so much benefit, and value right for having a Solutions Consultant. So our equivalent of like a sales engineer, solution engineer, whole, same, same thing, right? Same fan of job roles, having them in the deal to really run the tech side of things, the product fit, run those demos and kind of tag team or technical discovery with you so that you the AE can focus on multithreading, you can focus on commercials building urgency, right? All the necessary stuff to get a deal across the finish line. So how are we going to incentivize those reps that have been here for a long time, there’s probably a little bit of ego attached. I think they take a lot of pride in the buyers that they get to work with and what they know about Lattice they’ve been here for so long, how do we incentivize them through an enablement initiative or whatever to Hey, you solutions, consultants, and deals leverage the resources you have? And it’s leading with the why and the why right now is, hey, we have better win rates, like two 3x, better win rates, when we have solutions, consultants attached to these deals, deal size in one of our segments is also like 50%, larger when we have solutions consultants attached to the deal. So you have to lead with the why and tell reps tell sellers, what’s in it for them. Otherwise, we’re just seen as consultants, right? Like I’ve worked with third-party consulting firms and stuff like that. And one of the biggest things they lack with us is they lack business context, I think a lot of consultants don’t do really good discovery. So they don’t ask us good questions. And then they don’t come at us with a solution of leading with a, this is why we’re giving you this solution. This is why we’re giving you this recommendation. And to me, as an enablement practitioner, that’s how you bridge the gap from being seen as a consultant. And oh, my gosh, you’re a non-quota carrying role. Cool. Thanks for the advice. Thanks for the theory, like, I may apply it, I may not. That’s how you shift from that mode, into a mode of being seen as a business partner, which is, hey, we have the context, we share this number with you. We care about the same things you do. And what’s in it for you. And we’re giving you this recommendation, we’re leading with the why I want to help you close more deals, I want to help you increase your win rate, I want to help you increase deal size, I want you to hit your quota, I care about that. I care about you. And again, that’s that, that trust shift from consultant to business partner. It’s an enablement team.

Pete Thornton 17:39
That’s very cool. It’s a great example, I think, is an example that a lot of teams probably actually struggle with, but if you can lead with increased deal size, two to 3x win rate increases. That’s an attention-grabbing headline. That’s a way to, especially in these times be like, Hey, this is not anything new. You have to implement, like, we’re just taking what we already have so that we can get to this, this outcome that is larger, faster, better.

Jonas Taylor 18:10
Exactly. For each man leave with the why. And I do love that Simon Sinek video, by the way.

Pete Thornton 18:14
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it is very cool. Yeah. I love those. Okay. Okay. Very cool. So that’s the biggest challenge, you’ve kind of given us something that you were working on, and then have gotten in the flow. Now, some things you’re going to be working on in the future. So looking forward to hearing about that one.

You’re a team lead in enablement. We have a lot of leaders on here. These were the heads of sales, typically, maybe head of CES, we had a VP from a venture capital firm on as well like leadership in general. What is it? What is it about that type of position? Is it leading by default? Like, you’re like, Well, I just had a little too much work to do that. I couldn’t just do all my own. Is there something about being a Team Lead that I mean, because it’s like, it’s scale? Is there something more anything particular for you like a favorite leadership moment? And why?

Jonas Taylor 19:01
Oh, that’s a really good question. Yeah, so I think like, for me fav leadership moments, this is my first time people managing, and it’s really interesting, too, because I’m managing other enablers. Right, right. And it’s so funny man, because like, it’s all the coaching frameworks and the guidance that we give to sales managers or biz dev managers or CX managers of tell, show, observe like that framework. It’s the same thing I have to do with my team. Like, I have two amazing enablers working with me and we’re building a really awesome sales enablement program. I think I have some awesome experience from another company. I was at Oakley I was leading enablement there for a bit when my boss said, I had left and then it’s been cool, man. It’s yeah, it’s I don’t know. It’s been it’s been it’s been rad. My fav leadership moment, I think right now would be right now I’m at an off-site, with the team, with the sales management team with my stakeholders, the people that I work with. I think the coolest takeaway from it, for me, has been that we’re all human. I know that seems really silly and like, dumb and like not super revolutionary. But it’s, it’s been the coolest thing to just remember that. Everyone here on the sales management on the sales leadership team, like every single one of us, like have, like shit that we’re dealing with outside of work, we have things that we care about outside of work, things that we care about outside of Lattice. And I’m always fascinated by like, what motivates people outside of work, right? Like, yeah, like, you may, you may want to make money, you may want to hit your number, but like, the reason you want to hit your number is go travel, right? So you didn’t get to do that much travel as a kid or you didn’t get to do that much travel because of other life scenarios that came up and happened and in life and in career and, and whatnot, or, Hey, I want to hit my target I want to make my bread because I have a lovely family at home that I want to take care of, or, Hey, yeah, I grew up very poor. And I’m very insecure about these things. And I want this like, it’s just, it’s cool remembering and being reminded that like, every single one of us are human, something different is motivating each and every single one of us and honestly, it’s gonna make us like, I think become better collaborators better partners together, not just because like we got to hang out all in person this week. And it’s been phenomenal. So for me, man, that’s probably like, so far, like, that’s my favorite. I think leadership moment is just getting to be a part of that being reminded that every single one of us are human.

Pete Thornton 21:42
That definitely strikes me as genuine. I saw, like you had a Postman’s back and it was the first time you got to meet the team in-person, things like that at Lattice. And so. And there’s something there’s, there’s something to it, if anybody goes to work every single day, like in an office like it will not resonate, but you’re speaking to the right audience to understand what you’re talking about. And I had the same situation, whereas we hadn’t been together in so long. And then last November, when we went out to it was like, halfmoon, Bay Area, SFO. And then and then there was this one particular leader who like I had to work with a lot very far outside of the go-to-market teams, but like I was, couldn’t get through to this guy and very tender, very senior very, and I just couldn’t like do slack messages, communicate with him. I was like, what I don’t know who I’m dealing with as a human being unnecessarily. And we went out to this off-site. And he had a soccer ball tucked under his arm. I’m telling you, he is there is no way he is under the age of 55. And I was like, What are you doing? He goes well, every off-site. At some point, there’s a break and we can go play soccer. And he was so intent on like, we were going to go outside and play barefoot soccer and I love soccer. So it’s not just that he has soccer ball. Like, this guy is a big kid, like kinda like I am. And I was like, Okay, I understand because those five messages are probably all super annoying to you and you just want to go play soccer. So I’m like, I got it. Let’s like just get to know each other a little bit. And then the next message I’ll start with Diego marathon or Pele like one of these like classic soccer greats. And then maybe I’ll slide in my little business question after, like, but it’s so funny that those things like can only happen in person. Like I could only see him like, I bring a change of clothes. Because I like to play hard. I’m like, I feel Yeah. Like, I totally understand not who I thought I was going to be dealing with at like the sea level. And I love it.

Jonas Taylor 23:32
I’m here for it, man. Yeah, I have the utmost respect for him. And yeah, it’s been really nice. I have Yeah, I’m just I’m honestly I’m on a high of it right now. Like, I’m still a little bit at a loss for words, just kind of processing and all but it’s been great.

Pete Thornton 23:47
Dude, I shouldn’t even coax you into the booth for a podcast this week, I should have let you like bring your size five soccer ball, take off your shoes and go play with your Lattice homies. For the whole time, but since you’re here anyway since you’re here.

Okay, then let me just— I’m jumping all around here. We have some things we talked about. But I do want to know about this one thing in particular. And that would be like vision for scale, you kind of gave us a glimpse into the future about what you’re hoping for on like an initiative to solve a business problem. lets you know when rights deal size, and you think you have a solution for that, that you’d like to present to the team. What about a vision for scaling the motion, ultimately? What do you have in mind for that?

Jonas Taylor 24:29
Oh, great question. So yeah, I think the theme from like a very strategic partner kind of bird’s eye point of view, is we’re trying to pivot enablement perception from being seen as this like completionist checklist type of thing into and being very reactive into, hey, like, we’re your business partner. We want to be proactive, I want to be programmatic. Right? And for me being programmatic, the primary difference there between like very transactional reactive and enablement. So kind of moving up the maturity scale into like modern enablement is we need to over-index on reinforcement. Like you can have the best enablement content the world, you can have the best enablement program in the world. But if you don’t have manager buy-in, if you don’t have rep buy-in, and if you don’t have it reinforcement strategy built out, like the enablement programs not going to go out as the equivalent of the New York subway with zero riders, which would just be terrible. And so that’s kind of like that’s kind of the motion, I think that we’re we’re trying to build right now. There’s obviously I’ll give a framework here in a minute. But there’s obviously a time in place as well, for more reactive enablement, I do want to call that out. Like, especially when you’re in a season of just rapid change in business, you’re bringing in a lot of external leaders, you’re bringing in a lot of people that have new ideas that have done this scale before they’ve done Series B, they’ve done Series C before they’ve done 100 million Arr, right, they’ve done these things before, and they’re like, Hey, these are the engines I want to build, these are the things I kind of want to pick at maybe modify tweak a bit, and you kind of have to roll with that. It’s an enablement team. So you do get kind of pushed in, you’re kind of standing on one backfoot to be like, a little bit reactive because you’re just keeping up with all these different changes happening across the org. And I think the beautiful thing is when enablement can really lean in on to like, Hey, everybody, I love that we’re doing this, I think a lot of this pain was necessary. And we’ve been doing a lot of change these past two quarters. But have you all checked in with like, the field lately? You checked in with sellers? Have you checked in with reps, they’re overwhelmed by this stuff? And then you just ask a really, really upfront, like, question of just hey, is, are all these changes sticking? How’s it going like, is the hypothesis that we had like working or the desired behavior changes occurring, and typically people are like actually haven’t been thinking about that. And that’s where you get to kind of again, like, move into that business partner state of, okay, like, we want to be programmatic with you. So that one, we’re not overwhelming the field. And we’re being really intentional about change. And we’re hyper-focused, because that’s the way you achieve hypergrowth. That’s what you succeed. And hypergrowth is being really hyper-focused on the desired behavior that you want to change. And then the business outcomes, positive business outcomes that come from that.

So the motion that we’re building, so that’s kind of the strategy and like context, at Lattice, I think the more tactical bit of it is this framework that we utilize, called LAMP. And I’ve modified it a bit, it used to be LAAP, and I’ll get into each of those letters mean, but as a former enabler, I worked with an old boy, his name was Ray, gray dude introduced me to the LAAP framework. So I want to give credit where credit is due. But I have modified it a bit for my team, we call it LAMP.

And so you have L, Learn. So that’s where we’re focused on. How do we transfer knowledge to reps. So this is very much going into the curriculum design of an enablement program or an enablement, initiative intervention, whatever you want to call it, you have the Learn bit, which is how are we going to transfer knowledge to reps that could be everything from a live session to excuse me to a work ramp guide it’s our LMS via loom, how-to video can be the a guru card, there’s a lot of different ways to transfer knowledge and you kind of have to gauge that based on really how much change management is required. Right? If it’s a really intense change, that you have to support a really intense behavior change. It’s very business-critical. You should probably make a live session in there, right? You do a live training, do some office hours, do some q&a action? If it’s a little bit lighter? Yeah, do just do a Google car guru announcement, make sure people get informed and people are aware of the change in process or whatever it may be the new pitch deck, etc.

Then we go into the assess bits. So the A is first a of lap just assess, which is this concept of did it stick? Right? So if you’re transferring knowledge, how are we gauging that knowledge stuck? And you’re doing that with maybe it’s a workaround guide with a quiz, right? So it’s knowledge check can also be something as simple as, hey, we sent out a guru announcement or we build some new collateral. Let’s actually go see if people are using the collateral. Like it’s that simple. Like go look at content usage, go look at viewership go look at analytics, what teams are utilizing the resource, what teams aren’t having to follow up on that. So that’s the assessment.

And then we go into apply and apply is this idea of, hey, more practice new behaviors related to this training. And so that could be we’re doing a live session. Now we’re doing breakout rooms, like we’re gonna do some roleplay right? We’re trying to build a stronger roleplay culture here at Lattice. Maybe it’s, Hey, we’re gonna give managers a package of reinforcement activities that they can run in their team meetings, right? Let’s be really prescriptive with the types of things that we want them to reinforce the types of things we want managers coaching on etc.

Then we have the M, which is my new addition to Lambda. And for me, it’s manager enablement. For me, I’ve talked to a lot of the neighbors about this. And I don’t know if this is like REITs. But this is kind of my opinion right now. And I’m just kind of throwing it out there. I don’t see manager enablement as a separate program from other standalone enablement programs. To me manage enablement is a layer that should get baked into every single enablement program we run.

Pete Thornton 30:43
Yeah, that’s a good, so that’s a good point. So you often hear about stakeholder alignment, but it’s kind of thrown in. And it’s not its own step. And it’s never as specific as manager because you can, you can kind of like that can often mean like Reb ops, alongside revenue enablement, which is a completely different thing, because these are not the people who are directly in charge of sellers. So I think that’s a great, great point. And something that like, like, I got a lesson at one point, when we brought in an entirely new management layer, almost overnight, all from another company, it completely changed the atmosphere, the culture, essentially, like almost within like a 45-day window. And, and then I was like, oh, so the thing that we had done that was like, this very, like rhythmic, cultural, but like, ingrained process was like, disappeared overnight, and was like, oh, that must be a stepped in because it was the emergency at that point. It was the new fire. And I was like, oh, no, this is interesting. And it is one of the things they mean when they say hypergrowth companies a new company every six months. And so these things have to level up very quickly. It’s really interesting how that happens. I mean, you can even end up with a group who’s all moving from something as simple as a PC to Mac. And all of a sudden, you’ve got yourself a crazy on an fathomable, like, enablement challenge on your hands. And because it has nothing to do with like, value, deal value, business problem, but it is a problem. And it usually comes your way.

Jonas Taylor 32:16
Dude, preach. Yeah, I can’t second all of that enough. Yeah, and yeah, so yeah, manager enablement. So we got learn l assess a apply a manager enablement and it’s what you said buy-in and reinforcement support. And it’s kind of going through this list of questions of, do managers know what’s expected of them? Do managers require their own training? Do managers need separate assets? Do managers feel equipped to coach the new behavior? Do managers know what good looks like? And you have to ask yourself those questions so that you’re building the right solution. And you’re taking into consideration what managers need to ensure that your enablement program is successful. So that’s been I think that’s been key. That’s kind of been the missing, I think layer for I think it’s the missing layer for a lot of enablement programs. So we’re ensuring it gets baked into all of ours. And the P, perform, confirm that the behaviors so this thing that we wanted to train on, right, maybe we want to reinforce, we want to train reps on how to do better discovery, right aligned with our revenue methodology. How do you confirm that these new behaviors are evident in external interactions, and this is where I’m the biggest Gong fanboy in the world, right, you can create Gong score trackers, you can do a gong scorecard initiative with your managers, you can create deal alerts and Gong stream notifications and slack like that is a really good way to ensure that the behaviors are happening in external interactions. And this happens for any type of enablement program on the SDR BDR side, this would be spot-checking emails, right? How do you build an accountability mechanism, motion muscle, whatever you wanna call it with your management team and enablement. And we’re spot-checking emails for quality on an email training that we did, right? Like, you have to ensure that these behaviors are happening in that initial 30-day, 60-day window in external interactions or reps are gonna forget, as they have other priorities, they’re gonna go back to doing their the old way of doing things so that it’s that 30-60 day window, that’s really, really key on that, that perform bit of LAMP.

Pete Thornton 34:32
Love it. Yeah, it completely makes sense. And that’s where you can kind of get your ultimate measurement that you might want to, like roll up to leadership and say, this is full circle. Let’s go again, what’s the next initiative those kinds of things?

You mentioned the revenue methodology a few times and so like in this seems like a great example to utilize with it. Is there a is there something that Lattice prefers there are so many different versions of it because you mentioned value selling as well again, different brand names of how to take those things and roll them out anything you prefer? And have you utilize your LAMP framework with trying to coach and reinforce it?

Jonas Taylor 35:07
Yeah, absolutely, man. I think the Yeah, the kind of short the TLDR. There is like, we’re pivoting like a lot of SAS organizations that are trying to move upmarket that are becoming more global as well. We’re also in a pretty saturated software market, you heard of Workday or heard of heard of HR software, like there’s a ton of stuff out there. HR software is in this new space, it’s been around for a long time, and there are a lot of big players there. So we’re moving from feature selling to solution selling, right? Like, how do we not get caught up on? Hey, look at this cool thing that this product does, look at this cool feature and all this fun stuff? And how do we shift into a culture of like doing really, really good discovery and sometimes asking uncomfortable questions to quantify pain. Like, that’s the motion we’re doing right now. And we’re absolutely utilizing LAMP with that. Everything from Gong trackers to a gong scorecard initiative to we’re sending a decK to managers every week with reinforcement activities that they can do. The one thing I’ll kind of add there is I think the really interesting thing about this enablement program is it’s a huge changed huge shift in behavior, it’s very business critical. The initial 30, 60-day period, it has to be very enablement lead. And what I mean by that is the promoting the celebrating the, I talked about earlier, that gong kind of drip campaign inside of slack and surfacing really good Gong calls and Gong snippets, that has to be very enablement led at the beginning because we’re the masters of the methodology, we have this idea, we have this vision with our leadership team of, we know what good looks like. And we know what we kind of want good to look like, that’s obviously going to change and adapt and evolve over time, as managers become masters, as reps become masters of this methodology, and we’re gonna all be able to kind of redefine together, what does good look like what is excellence, but that initial window right now, it’s very, very enablement led because it’s kind of tough like you’re a manager and it’s like, cool, thanks for rolling now this methodology. Thanks for all this cool stuff. Jonas enablement team. But what does good look like what do you want me to do? Right, so we have to kind of lean in a little bit there and then managers get bought in and then we’re gonna get to the point right to where we’re not, we’re not sending and sharing all of these cool Gong snippets and stuff reps are going to share them managers are going to share them and then everyone gets bought in and you kind of have this reinforcement motion moving from being very enablement hands on very manual it’s a little bit more of a kind of autopilot thing that just naturally happens naturally occurs and I think that’s the learning ecosystem that we really want to create.

Pete Thornton 37:57
Yeah, build that coaching and learning culture like and it does it takes time and it does have to start somewhere so unless it’s like a very like coaching driven CRO or VP director sales, something like that, then it’s surely an LAMP enablement which is great. Awesome. It’s gonna be I ops, I love LAMP. I love LAMP. I can’t help to say it. I’ve come up with a different title for this one already. But I love LAMP is was is still in the hat.

Okay, tremendous. Really appreciate it. Jonas, how about one to take us away. This is The SaaS(ramp) Podcast, you are in hypergrowth SaaS, you sell to hypergrowth SaaS. You are a digital nomad in enabled by hypergrowth SaaS, but there’s probably no one better to ask the question to so in any way you want to interpret the question, what does SaaS(ramp) mean to you?

Jonas Taylor 38:50
Whoo, I love that. I’m biased. Yeah, I’m biased that I love talking about ramp that can be a whole nother podcast that defining what ramp is versus ramp milestones and stuff. I always I immediately think of onboarding. But really honestly, like, the concept of ramping. It’s an ongoing thing. And I think that’s been my biggest learning and enablement. I think initially, I saw ramp as it’s something only associated with onboarding. But truly, it’s, it’s a life thing. It’s also an enablement thing of just we’re always ramping. And what I mean by that is, there’s always going to be a new enablement program, there’s going to be a new product rollout, there’s going to be a new process that gets rolled out, there’s going to be something new we uncover in the business. That’s really good behavior that we want to enable every single rep we want to democratize that best practice. And reps then have to ramp up on this new behavior. Like it’s always an ongoing thing, that concept of ramping, you’re always ramping on something and, and for me, man, it’s really a lifelong learner type of thing. Like I’m learning new things every day. Sure. I’ve done enablement and I think I built some really, really cool stuff that I’ll go with some other enablement superstars, but at the end of the day, I’m still learning a ton at Lattice. You can’t copy-paste. It’s not cookie-cutter, this worked here. I’m gonna roll this out here. That’s a new team, a new amount of resources, new culture, new context, new products, a lot to learn. So, always ramping. That’s the catchphrase. I guess for me, man.

Pete Thornton 40:23
Always ramping. Yeah, yeah, look, there’s that term rampant and like, that’s when I started like referring to SaaS(ramp) audience as because it’s like flourishing and spreading unchecked. And I was like, Oh, my God, flourishing and spreading unchecked. I was like, Oh, that’s so good. It’s so good. I love that love your definition, because it’s a constant thing. It might have plateaus, where you’ve reached one on an altitude, maybe deal one coming out of a new job, or maybe you reached attain quota, two months, two quarters, over top of each other. But then here comes the new people product process, what have you. And so it’s on and on. It’s great when we’re glad to capture you when you’re in SFO. I mean, you’re jet-setting across one end of the continent to the other. So we’ll have to catch you again in a year. See how the vision played out and then and then see Yeah, just see how bright that LAMP is shining.

Jonas Taylor 41:16
Oo, light bulb.

Pete Thornton 41:18
Oh, come on. There’s my “here’s Johnny” to wrap it up.

Jonas Taylor 41:22
Oh, that’s awesome. I love that. There’s been great. Hey, thanks for having me.

Pete Thornton 41:26
Yeah, appreciate it. Jonas, go play some soccer.