All about Sales Enablement Training: In Conversation with Jaren Krchnavi

0:00
Hey there. Thank you for tuning in to the e-learning Champion Pod.

0:04
I'm Shalini, your host for today and I'm very excited to announce our speaker for today, Jaren Krchnavi, who is an accomplished go to market and sales enablement leader, who's known for his collaborative approach in driving revenue and enhancing sales effectiveness. Jaren has a robust background in sales excellence, communications and marketing, and he navigates cross departmental teams to develop successful initiatives that elevate sales to new heights. He's currently serving as the Head of Sales Enablement at Siemens Smart Infrastructure. And beyond his role at Siemens, Jaren serves as a sales enablement ambassador for the Sales Enablement Collective where he generously shares his insights with aspiring professionals.

0:52
So, a very warm welcome to you, Jaren, I would love for you to just add a little bit more about yourself.

1:02
Sure. So as you mentioned, I have a background in in different areas. So, I worked a little bit in the sales operations field, sales excellence, and then also on the more communicative side, marketing communications and it helps me see things from different perspectives and bring together comprehensive initiatives to make an impact on sales.

1:26
I'm also very interested in making sure that the initiatives that we do with enablement have an impact on the go to market organization, the sales organization, and also impacting the bottom line in revenue.

1:37
And as you mentioned, I'm excited to join external agencies, organizations like the Sales Enablement Collective where I get to share my knowledge, but also meet a lot of professionals out there who are also in some areas, maybe more advanced to me, and I can also learn from them. So it's really exciting to go to these events, present, join panel discussions, and meet new people and build my network.

2:03
Great. Thank you, Jaren. And we have been greatly enriched by the insights you share at our community of practice, Learn Flux, and we are really looking forward to that as well.

2:13
So let me dive right into today's session. My first question, Jaren, for you would be, in today's rapidly evolving training landscape, what challenges do you anticipate in implementing learning and development programs? And how do you overcome then?

2:30
Yeah, so I see that there could be an upward spiral or a downward spiral. And I'll start a little bit more on the negative aspect.

2:39
I've seen what happens in a lot of businesses, also within the L&D environment enablement, is that you are stretched thin with your resources and you're struggling to try to put together an impactful plan. Your management is not supportive and you're again, working really hard just to, for example, get the resources, the budget to have one or two simple training courses. And it all kind of keeps spiraling down because you're not able to then pull off a great initiative. You're not getting the resources. The management doesn't see the impact.

3:13
And what we need to do is we need to flip the switch and actually turn things up into the upward positive spiral. And this is where you're really taking the time to put together a comprehensive program. You're really making sure that you understand the business objectives and how your initiative is going to support those. You have the management buy in, the management leadership who really understand the impact that your L&D initiative or enablement initiative can have on the business. And this is where I think again, we need to as a community, really make sure that we're getting more of this upward positive momentum to build these impactful initiatives.

3:58
Yeah, that's key really. And I think we're at a good time in the sense that more and more L&D leaders are being called upon to have a place at the decision-making table. So that is a good opportunity for us to really move in a very strategic way.

4:15
So you mentioned something about aligning L&D initiatives with what the business wants, the business goals. So can you share something about that, the importance of aligning these with organizational goals and priorities?

4:30
Yes, this is of utmost importance. So it's essential that you as an L&D expert or enablement expert understand the market environment, the business that you're in, what are the business objectives for me in an enablement role. Then I need to understand, of course, what is the sales strategy that's supporting those business objectives, and who's the leader in charge? So who's the VP of sales, who's the revenue leader, and also what's important to this individual?

5:04
So it shouldn’t just be a generic view of how to support sales or the business strategy, it really needs to what is also at the heart of the individual who's in charge, because this is also the decision-maker who will give more budget, who can make or break your strategy.

5:26
So once you understand what the sales strategy is and also what's important to that person, you need to make sure that your initiative aligns very nicely into those buckets that is going to move the needle, that's going to really impact the business.

5:43
And I've been in the situation where sometimes I'm really passionate about something, and I actually wish it would have been as one of those important initiatives. And if I would talk to myself in the past, I would encourage myself and others to really try to pitch and sell that concept to the sales leader. And then make sure that if you're supporting that, then they’re giving you credit for that.

6:09
What you want to avoid is kind of going off into a parallel stream and working on something that your leader is not really supporting, or they don't see the value as you do.

6:21
So again, it's just very important that you understand your key stakeholders who are making the decisions about the resources you have, whether your team's going to grow, whether you're going to get more budget.

6:36
And of course, I've seen in the enablement field where there has been a lack of this understanding and a lack of this clear connection. And because of that, in 2023, you've probably seen the LinkedIn post about the enablement industry kind of taking a hit and losing jobs. So I think we've kind of come back again to that realization. We really need to make sure that everything we're doing is clearly aligned, that we're trying to measure as much as possible the impact that it's having on the business. Of course, you can always say your one initiative is the one thing that moved the needle, that you can definitely work to make correlations, and say, OK, yes, it was my initiative together with marketing, together with the outreach of the sales organization, and other elements. But that all comes together, which is really making an impact in the business, whether it be improving the number of opportunities, shortening the sales cycle, those opportunities, creating more leads, what have you.

7:42
Thanks, Jaren. I think that's a very valuable insight that all these need to be aligned together. Otherwise you end up working on parallel initiatives, each one focused on one aspect and then it doesn't come together cohesively. I really like what you shared about finding out what is important to the sales leader as well. I think this is something that we intuitively know, but we probably don't focus too much on because we're aware of the overall sales strategy, the overall sales outcomes that we are driving towards. And then this part, getting the pulse of this sales leader somehow may tend to get missed out.

8:23
So thank you. That's a very useful tip.

8:25
Yeah, if I may add to that, I mean that comes also from the sales methods that we teach our sales organization. Because if you are a seller and you're going out and you're wanting to do C level engagement, then reach out and get in discussions with that C level management. And of course you can go and do your prep work, and you can look into the annual report, and see what is the company's statement. But that's again, just kind of the general company statement in your discussions with the C level, you need to then ask those discovery questions and find out what is at the heart, what is really on the mind of that person for this next quarter, these next upcoming quarters. And you can use that same methodology internally when you're pitching and promoting and making sure that your initiatives are very strongly tightly linked to the key stakeholders at the top.

9:22
Yeah, I think what you outlined is critical to getting that kind of stakeholder buy in which eventually will roll up to impact.
Now coming to the technology aspect of L&D, what role do you believe technology should play in modern learning and development strategies and how do you leverage it effectively?

9:49
Yeah, this is an important question. And I would go to say that technology is as important as the training itself. I've seen a lot of times in the past where resources have basically been burned. So you're running a training, and it's again a one-off, and it's quickly rolled out and everybody kind of claps their hands and pats themselves on the shoulders, and say, OK, we got a good attendance.

10:21
So we did a follow up to get everybody to complete it. But then in the end, you don't really see the impact. You don't see the behavior change from the sales organization.

10:32
So technology is in place to do multiple things. First, it can be there from the learning management system, just to help to make sure that people are attending and making sure that they've followed through with what was expected of them.

10:47
But also, technology can be used to reinforce the training. For example, you can have automatic learning nuggets sent to the person who did the training so that you have this regular automatic reinforcement. Because as you're well aware, when you do a training, a lot of the information is quickly forgotten. So you need to make sure that you're reinforcing.

11:10
We also use the technology to, for example, embed a sales methodology, so that if the seller is working on their opportunity close plan, then the sales method that we trained is actually seen in that close plan itself. And then you can actually tie that to the analytics aspect, and you can say, OK, our sales leader, they really want to make sure that all opportunities that have a certain value, they have an opportunity close plan or a mutual success plan.

11:46
And then you can really see we did the training, we're asking the sales organization to do this. Now let's look in the data.
Has that behavior change taken place?
Can you really make sure that everything that you're doing is connected and you're seeing the results that you want to see?

12:04
Right, right. So I think you've mentioned learning being available within the flow of work at whichever point they are in the sales process, for instance. And of course the analytics part, which will demonstrate the effectiveness of that particular initiative.

12:25
So there's another point to add in the sales process, that's also important. So technology can also be used to add bite-sized learning nuggets or slight little bit of a push or a gentle reminder to do something. And it can be given in that exact moment.

12:48
Because again, you can do a training, you can just dump everything on a person, and then say, OK, now go perform and do all that. But it's difficult to really capture and remember all that.

12:59
But if they're just doing their normal workflow and then in certain steps that training comes in as a gentle reminder to them. That's again, very impactful and it'll be valuable for the sales colleague themselves.

13:17
So typically, do you have this refresher and reinforcement training planned out alongside the actual training initiative scheduled and all set to roll out? Or do these two things happen consecutively, the planning, the designing and the planning?

13:39
Yeah, it should be. And again, I won't say that I have done everything correctly in the past so that I always have the perfect conditions in place, but I'm pretty confident I know what good looks like.

13:54
And when you're putting your L&D initiative together, your training together, you need to put equal amount of effort or even more in ‘How am I going to reinforce this and how I'm going to make this, you know, this stick in the long run?’

14:11
Again, I've seen a lot of money being burned because you're really quickly pushing out training and hoping that sales or whoever your user is, is going to accept that less than that training, say, yeah, now I'm going to make that change and I'm going to go do it.

14:27
And that's just not realistic. So you need to make sure that in your preparation what is the outcome that you're trying to get, do the training, make sure that the reinforcement is there. And of course there's a lot of other elements you need to take into consideration.

14:44
I also do a little bit like this systems thinking. So of course the training is one element, but you need that leadership and possibly marketing.

14:55
So, other elements that is going to make that really stick, right, right.

15:00
The reason I mentioned that is because with everyone so hard pressed for time, sometimes the reinforcement bit comes as an afterthought. You just sort it out and then you're sitting around planning.

15:12
So, Jaren, sales enablement is a high-visibility, high-stake area, and digital learning has really served well so far. I was just wondering what are your views on where digital learning is especially impactful and where it may not be that suitable when it comes to training salespeople?

15:38
Yeah, it's also an important one. So I've seen that digital learning can make a difference. It can help people learn something, can help change behaviour. But I've also experienced where we did a digital training and then I had that direct comparison of going in-class and doing the same training.
And for me it was just, it was worlds apart.

16:08
So when we brought the people together in the classroom, you really saw their eyes light up, their attention spans increased dramatically. Smiling, getting to sit next to people, doing breakout sessions, discussing with each other.

16:27
Of course, you can do these breakout sessions in a virtual environment, but even I was absorbing more in person. I got to see the personality of the trainer, the way they walked around the room, their personality really was shining through.

16:46
So yes, digital, but I think we shouldn't completely ignore the impact that in-class training can have.

16:56
And if you can bring the people together, if you have the resources to do so, I would strongly recommend to continue trying to people bring people together in-class to build those networks, also some things, just jokes, going out to dinner in the evening, stuff that that really bonds people together, which is difficult to do in a virtual environment.

17:21
You're right, traditional classroom-led training is never going to go away. And I think a judicious blend of both to drive the maximum impact is really the need of the hour.

17:34
And I think that also puts a greater responsibility on those of us who are designing and developing digital e-learning, for instance, to replicate as much of the classroom as is possible within that learning experience, infuse the course with personality because the course is the facilitator, and give adequate opportunities to learners to reflect on thought provoking questions.

18:05
Ask them questions that really help them become aware of their own perceptions and their own attitudes and their own biases, if any, towards that particular learning. And I think with social learning platforms also being integrated into the LMS, you can have an e-learning experience and immediately follow up with collaborative learning opportunities.

18:36
So, Jaren, another question that I had was this whole thing of building a culture of learning. How do you ensure continuous learning and skill development among employees? Because without a culture of growth and learning mindset and agility, it's difficult to make progress.

18:58
So how do you foster, how do you nurture, and how do you maintain this culture of learning in an organization?

19:06
Yeah, that's something where I can say that we do a really good job here at Siemens. I'm really, really, really proud of that. We actually can see the learning hours of the employees and really encourage employees to continuously learn. I think it starts at the leadership and with Siemens, up to the board members. It's a clear tone from the top that's coming through the organization.

19:31
So, working in an organization that has strong leadership who is aware of the importance of continuous learning, this is I think the number one.

19:42
So having that growth mindset as an organization, even if you're not in such an organization, you can try to influence and find like minded individuals and possibly influence the management to try to get them to see the importance of that.

20:01
That's all.

20:02
I also, I think our role, but again.

20:06
Great.

20:06
If the leadership understands the growth mindset. So we also do trainings on that with Siemens.
And I think Siemens understands the importance of this because we're a long-standing company,
over 100 years old. The only way a company can survive that long is through the continuous learning of the employees who are there because there's so much change going around us.

20:35
You just look at the artificial intelligence topic, like the way my workflow is, I'm sure yours and your fellow employees, things are rapidly changing. Markets are changing, customer behavior is changing, how much information access they have to, how they're preparing their own buying decisions, how many people are involved sometimes in these buying decisions.

20:58
So, you constantly have to stay on your toes, make sure that you're staying up to date on the market developments, the products are constantly changing also. So making sure you are aware of why they're changing, what are the benefits for the customers, all that is essential for the organization to stay afloat and be successful.

21:20
And I've seen some vendors that I've worked with where I was a little bit disappointed that they didn't embrace, for example, the AI topic. And it just gets a little bit like this. OK, is this company really forward thinking? Are they really at the cutting edge? Are they staying up top of things?

21:41
So again, if you're not staying at the forefront, and continuously learning and accepting and embracing these developments, it can also have a slight negative impression to your customers and stakeholders.

21:57
And one other thing that I want to mention is the topic of customer experience. So we're wanting make sure that our customers have a great buying customer experience.

22:10
And also when they purchase the product, we look into customer success and that they're adopting it and they can do upselling, cross selling, and then the customers will hopefully become advocates of our product.

22:21
But to be successful in customer experience, you need to start with internal employee experience, me as an individual employee, I want to continuously develop and learn. So if I'm not in a company, if I'm not in an environment where I'm getting support to do so and continually develop myself, then you're gonna be asking these people to be brand ambassadors to your customers.

22:51
So this is something that companies really need to think about. Take care of your employees, give them opportunities to develop, and then they will also take care of their customers.

23:00
Absolutely. And as you mentioned, it's so critical to have leadership leading from the front in encouraging and fostering this culture of learning.

23:10
I was also wondering, Jaren, about the role of managers, for instance, in enabling their teams to meet their learning goals.

23:23
So is there something that you have at Siemens where managers are coached very actively on empowering their teams to achieve their learning goals, not just their sales targets and their sales revenues, but also that commitment to learning? Is there some kind of a strategy or some kind of mindset that is encouraged among managers as well?

23:48
Yeah. So managers play an essential role in making sure that the business objectives, for example, the sales strategy is implemented successfully. So not just within Siemens, but within a lot of organizations, you'll see that a lot of times, you'll have a sales strategy or business strategy and it's well understood at that top layer. And as that trickles down the organization, a lot of the strategy gets lost in the middle layers, the management layer.

24:23
So they have such an essential role to grab on to that strategy coming from above. I'm getting excited about it. I'm bringing that to their teams, their employees, and then constantly reinforcing that.

24:38
So the idea of the coach and really working with their team, not giving always directed, and telling them exactly what to do, but having the employee themselves come to their own conclusions about what is necessary and how this strategy is going to be impactful for them.

24:58
So I would say one of the biggest areas where you can move the needle, make an impact is if you focus not only on the field sales or the sales teams, but you really focus a lot on that middle management.

25:12
Because again, they're the ones if I'm a sales colleague in the region and my manager, kind of looking above like, org chart, it's not telling me, hey, this is important, we need to focus on that.

25:26
And he's giving me other directions and saying congratulations for doing this or that.

25:33
And then this CXO level, the top management is saying something else. And I'm going to most likely be listening to the person who is deciding whether I'm going to keep my job, am I going to get a pay increase. So again, that all needs to be tightly aligned.

25:50
And the previous business that I worked for was very impressed with how we did that. It was a very open culture, the way the management, the leadership put together this strategy and they brought it to the middle management, the middle management understood it and they got excited about it, and we brought the sales team along. So I think pulling that off is a very challenging task.

26:21
But if you do so, that's the real way you're going to make a change and make that impact that you're looking for.

26:29
Thanks, Jaren. That was insightful indeed.

26:32
You mentioned something in the context of learning agility and growth mindset about the impact of AI tools and staying cutting edge. So in what ways do you foresee AI tools shaping the future of workplace learning? And how can we as organizations be better prepared to leverage these to the optimum?

26:59
So what I did within my team I would also recommend to others. First go to your vendors, go to your technology partners that you're already working with, and ask them what is your AI road map? What AI do you have already? What AI is now infused in the technology that our sales organization, for example, I'm coming from the sales perspective, what can we already use, and make use of in the sales organization?

27:31
So I would start there before running off and looking for the next shiny tool. And I've already seen that there is, with a lot of the technology players, a lot of AI already infused.

27:45
And also Cummins, I just was watching recently from one of our technology partners their quarterly update. And I was really impressed by the amount of focus that they had on AI, how they understand the correlation that it has with the sales motions, and how it's going to support the sales organization, but also other supporting organizations as well. And we can already see AI taking shape and making things work more efficiently.

28:13
It can be simple things. For example, if you're putting together a training and you need to upload into a system, then the AI can generate an automatic title for you. It can generate an automatic summary for you.

28:26
So this are little things that will help save you time and it just reduces the friction to get up to. You also have this kind of ChatGPT functionality which is being embedded in all sorts of different tools, which is also useful.

28:46
And one development that I see which I think is very promising is the idea of kind of a digital AI coach. So as I was mentioning before, the managers and coaches, they're essential to make sure that the strategy is implemented. Also, all the training that we're providing to the sales team, that it is really being followed through, that's being implemented correctly.

29:12
But this middle management, the issue is that they're also themselves often stretched thin and especially if their team size keeps increasing, then just imagine putting aside that half an hour time for each seller each week, when it could easily be that your whole calendar is fully booked with just coaching sessions and one on ones.

29:35
So if you can use the technology to first of all provide that first digital level support.

29:43
So first insight to the sales, like are you hitting the key messages when you're doing your outreach to your customers?

29:51
Are there certain stakeholders within a buying center analysis that you're missing, which can be automatically reminded?

29:58
And it could also be that they're summarizing all the call scripts of the sales organization, getting a summary from the AI, which says, your sales in general are really strong in this area, but in this area they're not as strong.

30:14
So as you continue your coaching cycles, make sure you focus on these areas with your sales team.

30:22
Yeah, I think that's really a happening trend now to use digital coaches and especially for, sometimes there are a lot of repetitive questions that come across and people are hesitant to walk across to somebody and ask them. But this is where a digital coach removes that barrier. You can ask as many times as you can and reinforce what you need to know. And you have these chat bots also with personality now, you don't feel you're interacting with an impersonal medium, but it's somebody with a personality, an actual person out there. So that makes it even more engaging.

31:07
Yeah. There's another point I mentioned. There's this interesting development. I don't know if you've seen that, where you actually have this virtual coach or assistant. It's like a role play scenario.

31:20
So we're often giving our sales colleagues a lot of new messaging and saying, OK, take that story, take that messaging to the customer. But we don't always have the time to create these role plays and then create that safe environment for them to practice it. So there is actual technology out there. It's not perfect, but I've seen it in action and it's quite promising.

31:43
And I think it's making rapid development, which is where the sales colleague can go.

31:48
And then I would be doing that customer dialogue and the AI robot is acting like the customer and asking the question. And you can practice in that safe environment before you go out and do your discovery calls with your customers.

32:02
Yes, Jaren, I've seen that video, the demo. It is impressive because what you mentioned about the classroom training, one of the biggest, the most engaging aspects is dynamically adjusting your conversations depending on what you're hearing, what you're saying. And that's where these digital coaches really up the game when it comes to digital training, they replicate the live interaction very effectively. And yeah, I think that's an exciting space to need to watch out for.

32:39
So, Jaren, as we near the end of the session, I was just wondering, what advice can you share with L&D professionals who want to grow their careers?

32:54
Yes, yeah, very important question. And because most everybody wants to grow their careers right now. This is a very personal topic and I have experienced this myself.

33:09
Like what small steps you can take to make an impact. One of the books I'd recommend everybody reading is this Atomic Habits from James Clear.

33:24
And in the book they mention this topic about trajectory. So if you imagine you're in a plane and you're flying halfway across the world, if your trajectory is slightly off, then just imagine where the plane is going to land. It's going to land nowhere near the destination.

33:43
So it's the same thing with us as individuals, as humans. You can make very small changes and build in these positive habits into your everyday that are going to make a huge impact in the long run.

34:01
I remember, when I was younger and I'd be on LinkedIn. I'd look at these different profiles and I'd be like, this person seems unreachable. How did they do that? How did they accomplish so much?

34:14
And I just looked at, OK, how can I continuously learn, stay passionate about what I'm doing?

34:25
So I think if you're not passionate, then you don't have that drive to stick with things. So I continuously try to learn. You'll see me reading books constantly. I'm on my phone, learning also LinkedIn from other experts. I'm also, when I have that downtime sitting on a train or something like that, also connecting with others who in some way or another are really advanced than you and can help you develop.

34:55
In addition, you can also, try to go out of your comfort zone. I'd imagine that most developments that I've taken was when I took a little bit of a step out of where I'm comfortable, whether that be a new position, whether that be doing what I'm doing right now with you.

35:14
If I think about where I've come from, I was a very shy person. I was not eager to get on the stage. And with time, I would always push myself, OK, this is going to be great for me to do something that I'm not comfortable with.

35:30
So I would strongly recommend that everybody try to take little steps each day, do something that goes out of your comfort zone, continuously learn, develop, network.

35:41
And the last point is, I think those who are willing to take a risk in life, the ones making calculated risks, are the ones that are going to really see a big payout in the end.

35:55
Those are excellent suggestions, Jaren. And I think it really makes sense to have a learning road map for each of us as individuals as well. And make sure you're hitting something new every day, it would even just be a 2-minute commitment every day to start anywhere.

36:15
It's very small and simple.

36:18
Thank you so much, Jaron. And I'm really excited with this upcoming event that we have where we have you as one of our speakers. Would you like to share anything about the Learn Flux community of practice event? What you're likely to be talking about? Just to give a sneak preview to our listeners.

36:41
I think the first thing is that I'm really happy and thankful to you and CommLab India that you put together a platform for experts, for professionals in the L&D environment or learning environment to come together and share best practices and exchange.

37:03
So I think this is what we need because we don't want to be like lone warriors out there. We need to make sure that we are part of a community that we see what's going well at other organizations that we can take that and then try to replicate the best and then fit it to our own business strategy and sales strategy, whatever department that you're in.

37:26
So, yeah, I'm happy to stay involved and share my expertise on different topics, whether that be the training aspect, aligning to business strategy, different initiatives I've done. I've talked in the past about the sales kickoff events and how they're building together this coalition and making sure that the whole organization is following One Direction to get the support of the product team, of the marketing team, of sales enablement operations, that all comes together.

38:03
So excited to stay involved and share my knowledge and my experience with the community and appreciate all that you guys have done.

38:14
Thank you, Jared. We've thoroughly enjoyed having you as our speaker and on our panel discussions. And we encourage all our listeners to sign up for Learn Flux, which is coming up in October. And once again, thank you so much, Jaren, for giving us your time and your insights and for inspiring us and our listeners to continue making a difference. Thank you so much. It was a pleasure having you with us today.

38:40
Thank you, appreciate it.

38:43
Bye. Have a great day.