Slowing Down to Speed Up

Steph White is the Senior Director of Revenue Enablement at Loopio. She Joined host Jody Geiger for the Season 2 Premiere of Winning as Women to talk about how she’s learned that in order to enable others, she first needs to take care of herself.

1️⃣ Press pause and take stock 1️⃣

An absolute whirlwind. That’s how Steph describes the last three years for anyone working in B2B SaaS. The uncertainty of the pandemic, followed by an unprecedented tech boom, followed by serious fears of a deep recession. It’s been go, go, go.

For enablement pros — and for everyone frankly — now is a good a time as any to press pause and take stock of where you’re at. Because you can’t enable someone else if you aren’t taking care of yourself.

“After a couple of years of running ragged start asking, ‘Where are you at now? How are you feeling?'”

Being in revenue enablement at a time when there is less revenue coming in and less revenue to be had in general is challenging.

For Steph, revenue enablement is about people enablement. That’s why Steph says enablement pros need to make an extra effort to check in and see how their people are doing.

And it’s just as important to do the same for yourself.

Catch up on Winning as Women with our favourite moments from Season 1!

2️⃣ The right way to recharge as an extrovert 2️⃣

Steph was burning out. Amid the pandemic lockdowns she was starved of the kinds of meaningful connections that fuel her as an extrovert.

Her first attempt at overcoming the void was scheduling time for virtual socialization. But that turned into more of a quantity play than a quality play. (Think five 15-minute meetings jammed into just a few days).

Even though she was interacting with other people, the real connections — the ones that actually recharge your battery — were lacking.

“None of it was going deep enough. It was all surface level. And while shaking hands and high fiving new friends is great, I learned it was really the deep conversations and meaningful connections I needed to invest in.”

A bunch of 15-minute conversations were eventually replaced by one or two 45-minute conversations. And those conversations were with people Steph knew would inspire her, challenge her.

The last piece of the recharge puzzle for Steph is physical activity. Getting outside and moving your body is always a healthy way to reset and recharge. When you’re in a better place emotionally, that’s when true connection happens.

Watch host Jody Geiger talk about life as a revenue enabler on the Competitive Enablement Show

3️⃣ Budgets have changed; has the customer too? 3️⃣

Looking at overall win-rates and deal velocity are valuable measures of success. But revenue enablers need to get their hands dirty and support reps well before a deal cycle becomes a win or a loss.

Steph’s approach is to look at win and loss rates by stage in the deal cycle. She then looks at when in that cycle her reps are losing, and compares that data to six months ago.

“I want to figure out what’s changed with our customers’ buying journey. By focusing in on those elements, it allows us to get a lot more tactical and strategic with how we’re enabling our sellers.”

The key here is to look at how, if at all, buyer behaviour has changed. If budgets are of a bigger concern now than they were in the near past, objections around price should presumably come up earlier in the cycle.

If that proves to be true, that’s Steph’s key to get into action and make tweaks to her seller enablement at those critical moments of the deal cycle.