E41 – Effective Sales Enablement Strategies with Jen Dunn
In this episode, Gary welcomes Jen Dunn, CEO of Grit Fueled Marketing Consulting. Jen shares her journey from corporate marketing to founding Grit Fueled, where she provides strategic marketing solutions for entrepreneurs. The episode explores the importance of sales enablement, detailing how close collaboration between marketing and sales teams can drive successful outcomes. Jen emphasizes the value of partnering with the sales team to create effective marketing materials and discusses best practices for preparing and conducting successful webinars, including a unique follow-up strategy to maintain momentum post-event. She also offers insights into optimizing LinkedIn profiles for business growth and provides listeners with a downloadable camera-ready checklist for webinars.
Discover:
00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:21 Jen Dunn’s Background and Grit Fueled Marketing
01:14 Understanding Sales Enablement
04:05 Bridging the Gap Between Sales and Marketing
12:30 Effective Webinars and Events
20:42 Post-Event Strategies and Follow-Up
27:09 How Jen Dunn Can Help Your Business
29:34 Conclusion and Contact Information
gritfueled.com
Jen’s downloadable Camera Ready Checklist: https://www.gritfueled.com/pipelineology
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Gary Ruplinger: Hello and welcome everybody to another episode of the Pipelineology podcast. Today I’m excited to be joined by a very special guest. We’ve got Jen Dunn, the CEO of Grit Fueled Marketing Consulting. Jen, welcome to the show.
[00:00:17] Jen Dunn: Thanks for having me, Gary. Pleasure to be here.
[00:00:20] Gary Ruplinger: Great. Well, for anybody who’s not, familiar with you and your work at Grit Fueled, can you give us, a little bit of your background and how, you know, how you started and how you got got here today?
[00:00:30] Jen Dunn: Yeah, absolutely. So I am a, I’m a marketing and sales consultant. But I first had my start in the corporate world. I spent 20 years in marketing and sales in telecom and also education technology. And I spent the last six years of my corporate career in field marketing and sales enablement.
That all led me to creating Grit Fueled. It’s marketing consulting for entrepreneurs. And essentially the reason I created that is entrepreneurs have so much grit. They work so hard and try to do absolutely everything. So working with them on strategic marketing to help their business thrive is where my company comes in.
[00:01:13] Gary Ruplinger: Excellent. Well, I think that kind of brings us into the topic of what we wanna cover today is, which is sales enablement. So I’d kind of love to get kind of your take on what is sales enablement and, and how do we use it?
[00:01:28] Jen Dunn: Yeah, absolutely. So as I mentioned, I worked 20 years in corporate, and as a person in marketing, I did everything from events to campaigns to really kind of every aspect of launching products. and what I really found with field marketing and sales enablement is there’s, it’s an interesting tie when you work very closely with sales.
You know, marketing can be a lot about building brand and helping explain what the company does does overall. But when you get very close to the sales team, you start to realize what they need in their pipeline, what’s really gonna help close in year. So a lot of that work was, helping the team prepare for trade shows they were going to, even just creating simple little flyers or email campaigns to really help them get close to the customer.
But you, even just in the language that’s used and how, they would work directly with customers, helping them really move that needle forward in a way that was very fast moving, but really was very effective to helping them close their sales. and through that process I was able to also take on a leadership role within our sales enablement team.
And one of the things that really carried forward for me, actually reminded me when I first got my start, in, in my career straight out of university, I came into a telemarketing. So I was right there making outbound calls to consumers, and really of course, eating some humble pie as, as telemarketing goes. And we had a, a marketing lady, her name was Laura. She was lovely. We all thought Laura was a very nice person. but she would come to us with. Here’s the new spiff, here’s the new offer, and here’s the new script or you know, sales resources that we could use. And we’d all sit there quietly and listen to Laura.
And as soon as she left the room, the sentiment was always, marketing doesn’t get it. And as someone who went to school to be a marketer, that was always an interesting piece for me to hear from sales is if marketing doesn’t get it, sales isn’t going to use it. So what we actually did is we. Pretty much threw out the script, sorry, Laura.
And we would take the offer, we would take the spiff and we would do what we knew how to do, knew what we knew how to do best, which is to sell. so we would run ahead with that and, and make the campaigns very successful, but wouldn’t really generally share that feedback. Marketing doesn’t get it. So as I moved into my corporate career, I really carried that lesson forward.
And through field marketing, of course had a bit of that empathy with the sales team to know how challenging it can be to take something that’s, you know, written by someone else trying to implement that on your end. so with our sales enablement team, the teams really it’s, it’s not just making marketing pieces to make selling easier, it’s also in.
Ultimately, what I think sales enablement is, is freeing up the sales team to sell. That’s its job. So we actually had an operation side as well as a marketing side of that team. So sometimes we were freeing up, administrative tasks for the sales team because then they’re not selling, if they’re doing admin.
And then also there’s all the sales pieces that would go along with it. So all the different resources and tools. one thing that we recognized is we really needed to not only. Create pieces that made sense for sales, but work in partnership with them. you know, and when you first start your company, you’re, you’re doing everything.
And then you start to build a team and you start to grow and you get further and further away from sales, and usually marketing as well. And so when you’re marketing and your sales teams are on opposing ends or just not working true partnership, that’s where you start to get that disconnect. so.
With this team, we were really able to be that bridge between the wider marketing team and the sales team. so as we would go and, and create, you know, marketing pieces or different aspects that would help, the first and fundamental thing we would do is partner with sales before we’d really begin.
You know, we might have the strategy, we might have our theory baked out, but without working directly with the sales team, we knew that resources would fall flat. They’d be missing that, that true, almost that real connection to the customer journey. so generally that would mean, you know. Meeting with sales members, it wouldn’t always have to be the leadership.
It could be, you know, the guy that’s in the field going for ride alongs, doing sit-ins. However, as a marketing person, you can get closer to sales even if you’re not in enablement. I always recommend it because you learn So much you get closer to the customer. so what we would generally do with these webinars, is we’d almost treat it like a bit of a show to be honest.
I got to host it, which is one of my favorite things to do. but we’d always prepare. So every time a team member was bringing a tool to the team, we’d really walk through what’s in it for sales. why should they use it? Who did you partner with, and how are they gonna use it? So as we went through each of these, resources that were being presented, we were telling a story.
And so that’s really where the selling to sales would really come in. It was, here’s what it’s for, here’s who we worked with, here’s how it’s going to be used. And in some cases we’d also done a bit of a trial, you know, with a smaller team or a few sales folks that were using it to really share that social proof.
You know, as you, as you promote your company and you’re, and you’re learning what’s really resonating in the market. Most of what will draw in customers are testimonials and for sales it’s no different. It’s just social proof. It’s, it’s give them the confidence that this is really working well. you know, Gary, if I said to you we should create, an email marketing campaign that targets your listeners and really helps them, you know, move into the next step in their business, that’s one thing. If I framed it as, hey, Gary, I sat down with your sales team and they’ve identified a gap. This is where the gap is and this is how we’re gonna fix it with email marketing. And they recommend that we first start with this target group of your audience, which are you more likely to wanna use?
[00:07:57] Gary Ruplinger: Number two, obviously the first, the first one just comes off as, I have no doubts that the, that person has the expertise, but it’s generic. I’ve got 15 messages that say that in spam right now, going on read. The other one says, I’ve already talked to your team, and they’ve like, I’m sorry. We what?
Tell me more and tell me right now what’s going on? What, what am I missing? Where, what are my blind spots?
[00:08:25] Jen Dunn: Very true. And, and that’s, and that’s the piece of it. And it’s, it’s really, it’s, it’s helping them, but it’s, it’s truly helping them. And one other, one other piece that we used to use, so we would go through and share all these resources, all the tools, all the operational changes. we also had a global sales team, so it was North America and also, our global team.
We also recognized through working with the teams enough that the needs in North America for our solutions was different than, than it was globally. So we would do breakout sessions at the end of every webinar. and this is where we got the true dialogue because back to my field marketing days, back to remembering being on the sales floor, it was recognizing we needed to ensure that marketing not only got it today, that we continue to get it.
So in these breakout sessions, we’d actually send out questions. A couple days before the webinar, so the team would come prepared and we would put them on the hot seat and we would ask them these questions, ask for their feedback, ask for what’s working, what’s not, what did you think about what we shared today?
and really act upon it. it’s one thing to ask for that feedback. Take it all in. And even if you think you’re displaying it in what you produce. You need to draw the lines. so we would actually, at the beginning of the webinars, we would start off with, okay, last time we talked about, you know, A, B, and C and this is how that’s going.
Or, you know, we talked about this a while ago. We’ve now got some feedback. Sometimes the feedback we would get from sales are things we couldn’t do anything about. But even just being able to address that, we’re listening, we’re trying, we’ve maybe had a conversation with leadership. all really kind of pulled it together and helped it make sense.
And that’s really, that’s really why that call was so successful. It’s actually the. Most successful call I’ve ever been a part of where a marketing team was presenting to sales. even it even topped, you know, when product marketing would share the new resources that were brand new coming out from the new launch product.
This is the one that the sales team always attended. They always asked for the recordings, if they couldn’t make it because they traveled. And it just really brought the two departments together in a very strong way and it, and it continued. It was amazing.
[00:10:45] Gary Ruplinger: Oh, that’s, that’s awesome. I know in, in my corporate career, I had a brief, brief bout of sales work I worked in, automotive. So I. Sold for a little while and then moved over to, the marketing side for, and then eventually into business development. But I, I will tell you that having that background in sales, even, even briefly, was just made everything that, you know, you’re trying to do in the marketing department, that much more connected to what’s going, because you know, you know what the phone calls sound like.
You, you, when somebody comes up with this brilliant idea that you say. Oh yeah, the general manager came up with that one. We’re gonna have to, you know, we’re gonna have to work our way through that versus, oh, this was actually, this is what is, is what people are saying. You know, they understand the problems, what the website costs.
They’re the ones getting the front frontline feedback, not the, not the person doing, doing that in the back. So, yeah, definitely appreciate, you know, breaking down that, you know, those walls between sales and marketing being. Really important and yeah, you, you, you just wish more organizations found ways to do that and just get people involved on both sides.
[00:11:57] Jen Dunn: I agree. I think my advice to anyone who’s, who’s running a business or just even anyone starting their career in marketing. Spend time with sales, even if it’s booking regular sit-ins, if they’re on the phones, going for ride-alongs, or even just having conversations. It’s, it’s getting closer to sales no matter, almost really, wherever you are in the company, even if you’re in operations, if you can hear from customers or the people dealing with customers, what’s going on on a regular basis, you’ll stay connected.
[00:12:26] Gary Ruplinger: Yeah, I think that’s, that’s really smart advice.
[00:12:29] Jen Dunn: Hmm.
[00:12:30] Gary Ruplinger: I think that kind of brings kind of the next question here is, I know you have a webinar framework from someone who’s done a lot of this work. I would love to kind of get your insights into doing webinars, hosting events and things like that. I know on the, the last episode we recorded, talked to a guest all about trade shows.
So the, the belly to belly, you know, out in the field type of thing. now. Kind of making the pivot over it to what does that look like online now? The webinar, the events would, would love to kinda get your insights there. How, how that, how that looks.
[00:13:03] Jen Dunn: Yeah, absolutely. it’s funny, I’ve spent so much time in trade shows, I’m gonna go listen to that one. Yeah, I find with webinars, you know, whether it’s. internal webinars, or even if they’re a sales webinar, there’s, there’s, generally speaking, there’s a story that you’re there to tell. and even if a person’s coming in, they’ve just, you know, just heard about your company or they’re, they’re really just learning through their journey, helping them.
Get almost a quick win, helping them understand something about what you’re trying to, to share, or about your company, or even just a quick win on their side. and helping them move through the process of being ready for the next step is generally the point of most webinars. whether it’s we want the sales team to understand how this resource is gonna help them and we want them to use it, or we want this customer to be ready to, to meet with our sales team.
It’s getting them through that journey. A lot of that is just how you frame this. Story. So definitely wanna build, credibility upfront. Make sure they know that they’re, they’re hearing from someone that they can trust. so building that upfront is very important. helping them move along in their journey in some way, even if it’s a very small step.
And then really painting the picture of what’s next to be kind of that natural next fit. And just being very prepared for what you’re gonna do. So I actually put together a PDF resource that I’d love to share with your audience, Gary. It’s, it’s, it’s called a camera ready checklist.
So I designed it for, if you’re going to be setting up a webinar, and a lot of folks, sometimes the hardest part’s, the tech side. So it’s kind of a checklist to go through of all the things that you might just wanna think about before you go live, to make sure you’re ready. But then it also takes the side of.
A webinar is a presentation, so how to really prepare for that presentation. So it’s as most effective as it can be. So you just go to my website and I think Gary’s team will drop the link in the chat. It’s gritfueled.com/ pipelineology. You go directly there. You just download the resource. And hopefully it’ll help you whether you’re setting up a webinar, a sales meeting, or just a presentation.
Because remember every presentation, you’re selling.
[00:15:24] Gary Ruplinger: Excellent. I’ll make sure we get that, in the show notes. That was gritfueled.com/ pipelineology.
[00:15:30] Jen Dunn: You got it.
[00:15:31] Gary Ruplinger: Okay. Yep. I’ll make sure we, we send, send some people there for people who wanna, you know, really, you know, dig deep into that. But could you give us maybe some, some tidbits behind the scenes of what, what they might, you know, what, what should you do before, before the event is how, how do you get prepped to make sure your tech’s ready and, and that, because I think I’ve.
I, I’ve done a lot of events myself, and I’ve told, I’ve recommended it to clients and I say, what do, what do I need to do? How do, how do I pick a topic? I right, that one comes up a lot is what, what, what do people wanna hear? What will people show up to hear? Because usually what I see is they pick a really big, overarching, generic, bland, boring topic that is like, I wanna talk about entrepreneurship today.
I’m like, whoa, okay, let’s, let’s not. We bite off a small, little, little piece of that. So I’d love to kind of get your insights into kind of some of that, you know, how how do you that set yourself up for success essentially, right from the beginning?
[00:16:32] Jen Dunn: Great question. you know, I think some of the, the fundamental pieces, what are you there to do? you have to begin with what’s in it for your audience. So. Of course you wanna be expert at what you’re sharing, but you need to be able to tie it back to what is the audience going through. So, knowing where they are, what their pain points are, what they’re trying to solve for, and maybe what they’ve already tried, and how your solution can fit it well. That’s kind of how you wanna frame your topic. So, you know, I’ve been in marketing for a very long time. There’s many topics I can talk about.
But Gary, when your team reached out and, and was looking for guests for the Pipelineology, I knew what I needed to talk about was my time in field sales. because that is the piece that’s, that for me has been closest to, the pipeline. so that’s really important. when you wanna think about, even on the technical side of things, there’s always tests that you wanna do.
So obviously knowing the platform you’re going to use, making sure your audio works is probably number one. Testing it, testing it, even, you know, like a dry run before you go if you haven’t done it before. or even if you have, but even, you know, before we started, Gary, we tested our audio. We made sure their cameras were working very well.
If you’re sharing any content, test your screen sharing. one of the, The toughest, toughest hits I took, when I first started my career, first webinar I ever produced. I was with a fellow named Michael. He was in another country, and I was helping him produce the webinar. He was the presenter.
It was an amazing presentation. He did a great job, first webinar I’d ever produced, and for about 10 minutes, Michael’s audio went out and. I was brand new to the company. I was able to kind of spitball a little bit of my onboarding training to keep the audience there while we got him back. But we hadn’t established a way to communicate with each other.
If the internet went out, I think it was a storm or something in his area. he came back about 10 minutes later. He had no idea. You know, I tried phoning ’em, couldn’t get ’em. It was nothing I could do. so since that time, one of my tips that I always give, if you’re gonna be hosting a webinar, or presenting on one, is have a bat phone.
Have a way to communicate with the other side, especially if you’re not in the same room. So often that’s just text. If you just have their phone number, they’ve got yours. You know that if you see this thing light up that you need to take a look and make sure that. It’s your, your other end speaking and, and needing to quickly get over there.
so we would’ve avoided a lot less stalling had I been able to reach Michael in the moment. yeah.
[00:19:29] Gary Ruplinger: That’s, that’s interesting to hear you say that. I know when, when I’m doing like a, a live session on LinkedIn or something like that, there’s my phone, my phone is sitting next to me on that screen. Over there is the LinkedIn, like how it shows on LinkedIn, and then next to it is my Slack channel for my team who’s watching behind the scenes to make sure things are going okay.
because I, it’s like backupup, back up backup. because I’ve, I’ve been on those ones where things start to fail and you say, how can we. Recover as quickly as possible and, and, and get it going because you know, most of the time, the vast majority of the time they go off without a hitch. But boy does it feel like the end of the world when you are live and you know, you’re 15 minutes in and you’re just getting to the good part and then something breaks and your video speed goes down.
Oh my gosh.
[00:20:16] Jen Dunn: Yeah, it’s true and, and technology has come so far, technology’s amazing. But you sure notice it when it goes out and just, it’s being, it’s being prepared for the, I mean, that’s, I was events manager for many years and, and that’s the biggest thing that you’ll learn in events is you need a backup plan and you need a backup for the backup plan because things do sometimes go wrong and you keep your cool when you can quickly pivot.
[00:20:40] Gary Ruplinger: Oh, I love it. So with events, I’m curious, what is your strategy for a post event?
[00:20:48] Jen Dunn: Mm-hmm.
[00:20:48] Gary Ruplinger: How, how do you kind of keep the momentum going is to turn the almost ready to buy people into, that’s now a meeting for the sales team to close. would kind of love to hear what, what your insights as you know, somebody who’s done so many of these, how, how that that side looks.
[00:21:07] Jen Dunn: Oh, that’s, I mean, that’s the hardest thing, right? Is how do you actually then convert? so follow up is one of the things that, Is critical. It’s also how you close, during the live event as well. So if it’s a webinar, making sure that at the end of the webinar that you’re very confidently laying out that next step, there’s ways to do it, that it doesn’t feel like a sleazy sales, that it’s actually a very natural next step.
if the audience is ready to take. Then if you stop there, you’ll, you’ll lose the majority of the sales you need to follow up, pretty quickly after give, give your audience, a good reason to open that next email, not just to buy the product. So sometimes there’s going to be, urgency in terms of a sale.
Urgency in terms of timeline. Marketing does thrive with having a bit of that, that urgent need behind it. because generally people, it’s, they need a reason to take action now, whether that’s for what’s going on in their business, they, they really need to move things to the next step. so that timing’s right for them.
Or it’s a Black Friday sale and that sale’s gonna be closing soon. So they need to take that next action. One of the, we used to do a webinar, that was to a, a resale, or sorry, a, a reseller. So we made the product, but they actually sold it through to their end customers. and so getting a sales team onto a webinar is hard anyway, so we would get them on there.
We also used to do a draw, for, gift cards. And what we would do is instead of giving them away live, we’d actually do it afterwards. And the reason behind that is I wanted to make sure that we continued the journey with the sales team so we would have everyone who joined the call was entered into win.
And then directly after the call, we would actually record a quick video. It was a legit draw. We would actually put all the names in. We weren’t cherry picking. I would have the sales, person who’d been leading the webinar, Take the moment to record a one minute video. Just to be very conscious of time, we recognized we had a captive audience, and they would, just share one to two key things about what we were talking about.
So whether it’s, you know, the key feature in this product and why it stands out, or you know, we have a limited time offer. Whatever it was, it was the two key things, of that captive audience because they’re listening. And then we would announce the winner in the video. The email that went out, its subject line was really around did you win?
Ultimately we’re all a little bit selfish. We want to know what’s in it for us. That’s take anything from this podcast away is what’s in it for your audience, is what you need to lead with. So we would lead with, dig You Win, and we actually were able to achieve, a very high open rate, and the click through rate, which means those who open the email also click it.
Usually you get about 5%. We got to a hundred. Using that strategy. Yeah. So you could steal it, but it, and it was all very carefully curated. So that’s how we got, I mean, in that end, our customer was the salesperson. We needed them to be bought in to be excited to want to work with our brand, to be very successful.
So that’s my number one tip.
[00:24:38] Gary Ruplinger: That one’s, that’s a, that is a smart one. I’m, I’m al- my, my wheels were already spinning in my head about how, how are we gonna adapt something like that and borrow it for, for some of our own internal, you know, events and what we’re doing or for, for any of that because, a hundred percent click through rate on a, on a follow up email is, unheard of, but.
[00:24:58] Jen Dunn: Right. That’s the big one. And I actually find generally, events, the post-event email, even without that strategy, those are going to be your most open emails period, as long as. If the event was good and you have something to give them, whether it’s the drawing, even if it’s, you know, we said we were gonna share this resource.
Here it is. or here’s the link to download, or whatever it is. It’s having something of a follow-up that was mentioned at the event as long as the event was amazing.
[00:25:30] Gary Ruplinger: I’ve definitely noticed more. This is me stumbling on things as we would, Think about a year ago I started giving out, you know, the handouts during, an event is here’s a little flow chart that basically encapsulates everything we’re gonna talk about for the next hour in one one page PDF. And that was, you know, something I would push right at the beginning of the event and you to get some people to take it.
But I noticed when I started doing the follow up email right after the event and mentioned it again. That was the highest uptake of it, right there is That’s where the people were interested. That was, that was the thing that they really, they don’t wanna spend an hour on a webinar if they can get a one, like a one page.
Like that’s what I want.
[00:26:13] Jen Dunn: Mm-hmm.
[00:26:14] Gary Ruplinger: One page. One page PDF. Oh, you got a video that can explain it in two minutes? Yeah. Yeah, that’s, that’s what I have time for today. So, yeah, I signed up for a one hour webinar. I don’t have time for a one hour webinar.
[00:26:28] Jen Dunn: Yeah. But yeah, just to get the resource. And you and I find too, there’s been such a shift in the marketplace of, it’s not just. People want, people are willing to pay for what they find valuable. and I think there’s always been kind of this thought of if you provide more value and give more content and give just more, more, more, more, more, that it’s more valuable.
And actually time is just so incredibly precious that if we can get you from, you know, A to B in, you know, 10 minutes in an hour, whatever it is. it’s far more effective. and it’s, it’s worth their time because that speed to delivery is what’s winning.
[00:27:09] Gary Ruplinger: I think that’s smart and it probably probably brings me to my, my last question here is if somebody says, I am in fact limited on time. How can Jen help? Give me some of that back, Jen. How can you help give some of that back to them? What, what can you do to really help them with, with their journey?
[00:27:26] Jen Dunn: Oh, I love that question. I mean, one of the big biggest place that I find success with clients is, is really helping them and simplify their message, their market, and really their marketing strategy. and so even just booking a consult with me and we can. Take a look under the hood of the business, see what’s working and what’s not, and find ways that we can draw those lines.
For example, I’ve had clients that are running webinars and they’re not getting enough people to attend. There’s a lot that we can do in the lead up to an event, with great communications that will bring more people to the event. That ultimately that’s gonna fill your pipeline a lot more. Like I said, the follow up, having that strategy, to make sure that you don’t, you’re not losing clients at the follow up, is really important.
and even just for individuals, I’ve actually set up, a, your LinkedIn profile, is that really that piece that can really open so many doors for you and so many people under utilize it? so I’ve actually set up. A, a one hour one-to-one workshop. We sit down, we go through your, your LinkedIn profile, and we optimize it for what’s your next step.
so all of that is on my website. or gritfueled.com/linkedin for the LinkedIn Lift and just go to gritfueled.com to get in touch with me and see if you’d like to book a consult or just figure out what it is the next step for you. because it’s so hard sometimes, especially as a business owner, and I’m guilty of it too, of being too close to it and, and having someone with an outside perspective who can take a look and help you even just move the needle a little bit can make all the difference in your business.
[00:29:17] Gary Ruplinger: Well, yeah, I think, I think we’ve all all have that blind spot for our own own business of it’s, it’s all great. It all makes sense to me. That headline is perfect because I wrote it.
[00:29:30] Jen Dunn: Very true, very true.
[00:29:34] Gary Ruplinger: Well, Jen, this has, this has been great. Really appreciate you sharing, for anybody who wants that camera ready framework. What was the link for that again?
[00:29:43] Jen Dunn: At GritFueled.com/ Pipelineology.
[00:29:47] Gary Ruplinger: All right, so go download that, that framework. If you need some help with your, with your LinkedIn profile, need some help with your events, get in touch with Jen and, she’ll, she’ll help you with, with getting all those things set up and working, that’s gritfueled.com?
[00:30:03] Jen Dunn: Yes, it is.
[00:30:03] Gary Ruplinger: Grit Fueled. Jen, thanks so much for coming on.
Really appreciate you, having you on the show.
[00:30:08] Jen Dunn: Thanks for having me, Gary.
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