WiSE: You had a successful career in sales before you moved into enablement, how did you make that transition?

Irina Soriano:  I was in Sales and moved to Asia-Pacific (Singapore) in my 20s, we went through a huge acquisition and the opportunity presented itself to move into Sales Enablement at that time to build up the department for the region.

W: With Seismic being in the enablement space, how do you define enablement?  

IS:  At Seismic, our vision for Enablement is to foster a customer-centric go-to-market engine that delivers an unmatched experience throughout the customer lifecycle by creating an Enablement ecosystem providing consistent enablement on processes, knowledge, role-based skills, and content. 

W: Tell us about your favorite enablement program you've been a part of.  

IS:   We recently rolled out what we call Enablement WAVES at Seismic. We are doing bi-annual GTM Waves for Enablement education (i.e. we review our Enablement charter), so our GTM teams know how we think and what challenges we face. We are doing quarterly Leadership WAVES to deep dive into the data and discuss what we are aiming to achieve each quarter, this also includes a workshop with leaders so we understand where we have to focus our OKRs in the coming quarter. Lastly, we run Executive Waves to provide a high-level overview of the Enablement business impact. It’s a brand new initiative and I am excited to see how it plays out. 

W: What is the most important advice you can offer to someone who's looking to get into the enablement field?  

IS:   Right now, anybody can get into Enablement. Every week more and more Enablers are needed, companies are realizing now more than ever that Enablement is a must-have, not a nice-to-have. If you wish to embark on this career path, I would recommend connecting with Enablement leaders and practitioners to learn everything you can and then look for the right leader who is willing to bring in talented folks that might not yet have the Enablement experience. At Seismic, we are very proud of our Enableship program. We will be hiring two people next month that come from diverse backgrounds and that wish to join this field. We will provide in-depth coaching to ensure they will be successful on our team and can build strong core Enablement knowledge. 

If you're a woman in enablement and would like to be interviewed for the site,

 email WiSEGlobalContact@gmail.com with the subject line, 'Interview'