AMA: Shopify Director, Revenue Marketing, Kevin MacGillivray on Sales Enablement

This one is always a challenge, especially in organizations with a large product suite. Here are a few tips. Create and prioritize updating a single source of truth that sales, CS, and support can access to understand what is launching, when it's launching, and where they can go to learn more. Give as much notice about new features as you can. Even if all the details aren't finalized, get upcoming product releases documented in the calendar so supporting teams know what is coming (and the volume ...Read More

It can be challenging to enable a sales team that covers multiple verticals or multiple products. A few things that help here: Limit the P0 priorities for the sales team to 1-2 major programs each quarter. Pick the top couple of programs, incentives, marketing campaigns, hero content etc. and lean heavily into these areas to drive focus. You don't need to ignore the other verticals/products, but this really helps focus training and enablement efforts. Build modular content and enablement materia ...Read More

Who am I speaking with? How often? I have a regular connect with the Sales Director for audiences my team is accountable for where we speak about high level performance to strategy, gaps to target, escalations, themes we need to address etc. I also have a regular group connect with a collection of cross-functional revenue leaders for a more holistic conversation - sales leadership, enablement, merchant success, finance etc. These conversations happen on a bi-weekly basis and act as a mini-govern ...Read More

Here are a few winning strategies to keep sales on message including: Sales often crafts their own variation of a product message to fill in gaps when the official version falls short or is incomplete. Ensuring that you've got clear, strong messaging that is up to date and readily accessible for reps to see helps prevent this from happening. Prioritize the single most critical message(s) and make sure reps are hammering it home. Learn from rep behaviour and adapt accordingly. Reps going off mess ...Read More

Here are what I think are the top (3) things to keep in mind with enablement for a global product: You will always have to prioritize based on the regions with the largest TAM and biggest opportunity for impact. You don't have to create everything all at once. Select the most critical regions and create a backlog for enablement to follow in smaller markets. Wherever possible, create modular content where you can leverage 70-80% of the material at a global level and create modular slides (of what ...Read More

Generally speaking, I start with a relatively uniform bill of materials for each product to make sure we've got the basics covered in a consistent format. This includes things like pitch decks, one pagers, demo videos, claims etc. We leverage content management tools (i.e. Seismic) to monitor how/how often sales assets are used and adjust what we build based on efficacy and usage. We always listen to what our sales teams are asking for on top of this and build out a backlog, prioritizing what is ...Read More

I'm going to go a layer deeper on this answer (vs. traditional stuff like pitch decks, one pagers etc. --> which of course are all very important must have). Here we go: A set of data driven claims that show what has been possible in aggregate for existing customers/users of the product in question. A library of case studies that demonstrate HOW existing customers/users were able to achieve positive outcomes (like the ones illustrated in the claims above) by using the product in question. An ...Read More

Here are four great ways to measure effectiveness: In the data --> what hard data can we look at (through Seismic, Salesforce etc.) that identifies how often enablement is used or how often it is leveraged when closing deals. Talking to reps --> talking directly to reps and asking them what they are using and what is the most helpful is a great way to get a pulse on enablement efficacy. Especially if you've got a trusted group of seasoned reps you can check in on on a regular basis. Listen ...Read More