Expert Interview: Simon Gilks, GoCardless

With last month’s Future of Sales Fest well and truly wrapped up, we wanted to share with you a few of the top audience questions – and our speakers’ answers – on all things sales enablement....

“Growing up” also means that instead of just reacting willy-nilly to all of the separate requests and departments, there needs to be a creation of clear responsibilities. Charters, processes, methods and expectations across departments are a good start....

How do you build for a long term plan while managing that push and pull of the short term? Who do we rely on to really get things done? Our 4-person panel take on these questions and more, discussing how to scale sales onboarding....

Scott took us through how to make sales enablement better at doing what it is supposed to do. From insights on what exactly to be training reps on, to the metrics you should be focusing on, Scott gave a thorough run down of all things sales enablement....

Sapphire Reels took us through a case study and provided practical tips for scaling sales enablement to win the hearts of your sellers while driving the right value-selling behaviors. Sapphire explained how product marketing can have a great impact in sales enablement....

Pere Codina believes battle cards, when utilized correctly, can help close deals. Talking us through what makes good enablement content, Pere highlights that information has to be current and easily accessible to your reps. Growth happens as you close more deals, let's see how to make that happen....

The first thing you want to do is to start with the managers, the heads of state, and interview them on what they define they need right now and don't even use the word enablement. Just say this is what I do. Start with the highest head of state. Doesn't have to be a long conversation....

Stepping into a new sales enablement role is tough. Even if you'd had great successes in the past, one size certainly does not fit all. Kira Greer has a career spanning almost 20 years in sales roles. In that time, she's made some mistakes and shared them with us at the San Francisco SES....

Shilpa Prasad gave a great talk on the problems facing a small startup like hers, YouNoodle, in the context of sales enablement, sales leadership and the overall world of sales. "I'll kick off by saying that we're not a noodle company."...

Kyle Doerflin gave some tips and tricks to help build some more credibility and find ways in which you can present ideas and get enablement to operate more in a strategic role, rather than just a training role....

Steve gave his perspective on the purpose of sales enablement at the San Francisco SES. From observations on the changes in the role over the past ten years, to fantastic insights into how to get your reps hitting quota, Steve's masterful take on sales enablement is one to sink your teeth into....

Why do we really want to create these playbooks? What's behind all of this? 60% of deals in our current pipelines today, never close. Of that 60% of deals that never closed, the question is, what the heck happens to those deals?...

Emily Payne told us the story of Shopify's Sales Academy at the San Francisco SES. From it's conception through to it's first batch of graduates, Emily ran through the highs and lows of attempting to get a new generation invested in sales....

I'm going to give you some areas that you can focus on to either help your team roll out a plan, that you should be focused on when implementing a training or going into some sort of presentation. The first one is building trust with your sales team...