WiSE: You've had an interesting background that has led to success in sales and eventually enablement.  Can you tell us about your path to the leader you are today?

Petek Hawkins:  I studied biochem and sociology at school.  After trying out the lab environment, I found that I was not meant to be working at a lab and started my sales career right after graduating college. It was a commission only role selling Aflac, they were the only ones giving a geek a chance in sales…

I had to learn what “good” looked like very quickly, and started finding sales training, mentors, and in less than a year landed one of the biggest accounts in the Chicago region.

Once I had a little bit more leverage with big wins, and continuous top performer titles under my belt, I was able to find a role in “tech” world.  The company I got into was pretty rough to survive with average turnover being every 6 months. I remained at this company a few years doing everything from cold calling, account management, team lead, to finally managing a team.  

In a few years I found myself climbing the ranks to VP of Sales and Marketing.  There was a moment that I had to do soul searching and find out for myself what makes me successful- I can deliver great results, and feel fulfilled. And one commonality throughout my years of experience was I found myself the most fulfilled when I lead enablement projects. So I applied to Zoom for my first enablement role, and started owning the global onboarding. The rest is history…

W: Enablement can be a lot of things to a lot of different people.  Tell us what enablement means to you and your organization.  

PH:  Enablement is understanding the customer journey in a holistic way, and giving the customer facing teams all the skills, tools, knowledge they need to successfully meet the customer where they are, and help them take the next steps. 

W: There's a lot of enablement technology (and platforms billing themselves as enablement technology) out there, what's your favorite enablement tool and how do you measure its effectiveness on your enablement efforts?  

PH:   LMS (Learning Management System) is an absolute must have. The reason is because it is the best way to scale efforts, engage the leadership in real time, and provide just in time (on-demand), bite size learning the reps need to be successful no matter what they are doing, where they are, and whenever they need.

There are a few ways to measure LMS effectiveness

Completion rate: Completion rate is a good indication for people finding the content easy to go through, meaning the information was simplified and packaged in a way that motivated learners to finish their learning.

Pass Rate
If the average learner is getting above a certain percentage that means the concepts were clearly presented in the learning, and the learner is able to answer the questions regarding the key takeaways with ease.  This is a successful training.  If you see that a question is missed constantly, this means that the enablement team needs to revisit how the concept was communicated in the training, and fix it, then re-assign it for employees to relearn.

Completion to conversion KPIs connection
If you can tie certain certification or learning to sales conversion stages this is the ultimate testament to your programs’ success. Example: Prospecting certification correlation to pipeline conversion to opportunity.

Ratings
This is a simple way to understand the end user’s (employee) satisfaction with the training that they received.

If none of this is available because you do not have an LMS, and you need to do Google Forms in place of LMS (trust me I have been there), you can always do a survey question at the end of the Google Form made up of no more than 3 questions.

Sample questions that you may find useful

• Rank how this training contributes to your success in your role. (Scale 1-5)

• How satisfied are you with this training? (Scale 1-5)

W: You've led multiple enablement teams and helped grow the role, what do you think is the most challenging part of being in an enablement position and what is your top advice for overcoming this challenge?  

PH:    As a supporting role, the support, resources and the growth you get depends on the organization you support. So if your company invests in the organizations you support, you will also get more support, if not, then it will be challenging to get the support and resources you may desire. 

W: Your voted as  a  '2022 One to Watch' enabler,  what are some of the skills you possess that make you successful in the enablement position?

PH:    There are a few key skills that are transferable no matter what your enablement role is, and will become even more critical in the next few years in the macro-economic trends we are observing.

Here are the 3 Cs to master:

Communication
Enablement is the conduit between multiple organizations and leadership at any given time. Effective, proactive, and succinct communication is key to success.

Critical Thinking
Yes, enablement professionals are devoted to helping their people out. But saying yes to everything is not the best way to help our people out. So critical thinking, and asking the right questions to ensure the problem solving is done effectively is vital to an organization's success. Once you ask the right questions, understanding how you measure the success for utmost effectiveness and tie it to business results will help you get noticed, and make you a sought out party at the table.

Creativity
The only constant is change. If you can master creativity, you can stay agile, and continue to reimagine how enablement remains relevant, and something people are thirsty for.

W: Your a leading subject matter expert in the enablement world and always have so many great resources to share.  What are your go-to recommendations for someone looking to learn more about enablement?  

PH:    WISE has been a great support group for me that I see real unique conversations happening. Beyond that there is Sales Enablement Society, Sales Enablement Collective, and ATD that you can learn a lot from. 

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'