Benjamin Ard00:00 — Welcome back to another episode of Content Amplified. Today is a special Content to Close episode where we talk to amazing enablement leaders. And today I'm joined by Erika. Erika, welcome to the show.
Erika Robertson00:12 — Thank you for inviting me, Ben.
Benjamin Ard00:14 — Yeah, Erika, I'm excited. This conversation is going to be golden. I can already tell from the pre-conversation, all the notes that we have. I think it's going to lead to a really productive conversation that people are going to enjoy. But before we dive in, Erika, let's get to know your background, work history, all that fun stuff so the audience knows who you are.
Erika Robertson00:33 — Absolutely. I am currently with Citrix as the director of enablement and that includes our internal go-to-market teams, our partners and our customers. And my career in enablement has just happened to be within software companies. So I've been in the tech space almost all of my career. I thought coming out of college, I was going to be a teacher, but ended up training adults instead of kids. And I was just fine with that. So it's just gone on from there and just gotten better. And I love enablement. I love this space. I am passionate about the whole enablement, go-to-market enablement, instructional design. So I'm excited to talk about it and just share some of my learnings from my career.
Benjamin Ard01:18 — I love it. That's incredible. This is going to be so fun. Erika, we're going to really focus on a couple of things here, starting to measure the impact of enablement. Everyone's kind of got this question top of mind. How do I really prove the value? How do I see it? How do I improve it? Things like that. And your philosophy is so cool. The way that you pull this off is you start with the end in mind. So what do you mean by that? What is the end and how do you work yourself backwards?
Erika Robertson01:42 — And thank you for bringing that up first because it's really the pillar from a solid enablement approach. Because in thinking about, especially today in the world of AI where things shift so much, often we're just trying to say, hey, look at me. I integrated AI here and prove that we can use it. The key is to stay true to instructional design and performance consulting principles. And starting with the end in mind is really key to that. We don't need to reinvent the wheel to support our go-to-market teams with your content to close, amplify in mind. Of course, it's about meeting the need, not just about publishing large amounts of content. So to start with the end in mind, from the beginning, we're supporting our go-to-market stakeholders by earning our position as a trusted advisor, and we uncover the need. We're often finding the problem. We're not just solving the problem, we're finding it to begin with. And once we, in the enablement space, identify that need, we confirm the desired outcomes with our stakeholders. We're not doing this in a silo. We're true trusted advisors. We outline the learning objectives. What behaviors should shift? What knowledge should be applied? What tools or process should be adopted? So we have to think about what the end goal is. We can't just be order takers and someone comes to us, I need training on this product, and we don't ask any questions, we just produce a new product course, when really if we'd gone through the process correctly, it turns out the team would have benefited truly from guidance and coaching on negotiation during the phase. It's not product related at all. So it's important to understand what are those desired outcomes. And once we have those outcomes in mind, then we're crafting the learning objectives, which leads us to how should they be assessed. So we haven't built any content yet, but we're already thinking of that end game. So how are we going to know that they learned this, that they can use this tool or process? So in true instructional design, the assessments are created right after you outline the objectives. So is that assessment a certification exam that must be passed? Is it a simulated role play that needs to be passed? And then through that, again, no content has been created yet. So we have to talk about the measurement. How are we going to know if it worked? Because we all would love something we did in enablement to be the cause of some change or shift in the business. We can never claim that. You can only claim a correlation, never a causation. But I can't all of a sudden claim impact if I haven't gone through a stepped process. And a differentiator in my career with a master's in instructional technology, once I got to VMware, so starting in the software company, Cisco to SAP and VMware, that's when the team invested in our getting certified through the ROI Institute. And the ROI Institute with Jack and Patty Phillips crafting Phillips ROI methodology is different from the Kirkpatrick methodology, which many, most of those in enablement and L&D use. And the difference there is that it's a separation of impact and ROI. That's been key, is to make that a clear separation. And even though the Phillips methodology begins at level one, I kind of add a level zero. So level zero, okay, completion. How many butts were in a seat? Okay, I at least know the number, the percentage of target audience that I reached. And then level one is the reaction. And not just a smiley sheet as we often call them, it's truly what's this relevant? Does this provide value? Trying to identify those leading indicators. So we have an idea if we hit the mark, will this be adopted? So early on we try to do that. We can set those surveys in place, those focus groups. And level two is, did they actually learn? How many of that target audience passed the exam? How many successfully went through a role play simulation, for example? And level three is really the minimum that we should be striving for. The behavior change, the adoption of that behavior or that tool or process. Solid enablement focuses at least getting you to level three. So we can go back to our stakeholders throughout this measurement plan and say, this is what we're seeing. This is what we're seeing, keeping them involved. They're part of that conversation. And then level four is the impact. How am I gonna know if this affected the business? What change was affected because of these enablement efforts? Often, well, hopefully you can do that. I've done that in the past for a control group analysis. Here's who went through this enablement. Here's who went through this content. Here's who did not.
Erika Robertson06:56 — They leverage these learning plans or this intervention, this methodology, now look what they're doing. They are having deals that are two times as large. The sales cycle has now been shortened. So there are so many different ways that you can look to the business to have those identified. Again, we still haven't created any content. The holy grail is ROI, but only about 7 percent of initiatives get measured to that level. So by the time we get to the content creation, we've gone through this. We've prepared the end. What is the end? How do we know if this works? Because I want to go back to my stakeholder and tell them, this is how I'm going to tell you if this worked. This is how I'm going to tell you if your teams are changing a behavior, they've reached these outcomes. And this is how I'm going to show you that enablement is worth the investment, the investment of budget, and that we still deserve this seat at the table. And so then after that plan, then we pull together all the instructional strategies that are going to directly align and help them meet those outcomes. And that's really how we've always started with the end in mind. What do we want to, where do we want to go? Then we talk about the content.
Benjamin Ard08:06 — I love it. There's a ton that we could dive in there on and I'm excited to do. I'm excited to double click into a couple of these things. So starting with the end in mind, I love how you talked about building the measurements right there at the beginning, right? And I think this is something I did in marketing all the time. If someone wanted to run a campaign, they needed to come to me and I said, okay, show me the report that you're going to use that's already built that will show if this campaign was successful or not, because otherwise we're going to go and spend this time and effort, we're going to go do something and all we're going to have is qualitative opinions about if it worked or not. And no one's going to agree because we don't know how it actually performed. So that was often difficult for people to wrap their heads around it. How have you been able to do that productively? Are you building reports? Do you have success metrics? Like this is the pass fail of this initiative. This is the main thing we're trying to accomplish. What does that pre-measurement actually look like before you start moving your way backwards?
Erika Robertson09:12 — That's a good question. As far as pre-measurement, you mean like baseline metrics?
Benjamin Ard09:24 — Yeah, or like, how do you know what you're going to test and all that kind of fun stuff? And how are you getting sign off on that beforehand?
Erika Robertson09:30 — That's a great follow-up because it's different in each organization. Because in previous companies, for example, it was, what are we gonna measure? So does it relate to what category? Is it product usage? Is it customer lifecycle? Is it cross-sell, upsell? So you have to look at that business you're in and look at the metrics that they are tracking. What is the go-to-market, what is the company as a whole, what are their KPIs? Because if your KPIs don't support the business's KPIs, what are we serving? Now, it could also affect customer sentiment. So there's a low or a high sentiment. It could be just operationally focused or adopting a tool internally. So starting with that, really that category or the bucket and then looking at what are the metrics within that that you can get a baseline for. The ideal state is you can start with those metrics. So at one organization I was able to pull first, this is the average deal size for this group that is about to go through this program. I also knew the average deal size and the sales cycle time through each stage. So if you don't have a baseline, it's going to be hard to make the statement of, hey, our efforts correlated to this shift. So starting with that and then having that sanity check with your stakeholders. Okay, will this help show you this is what we're trying to support? It also shows that enablement understands the business, that we can connect. It's not just about, we shove this many people through the learning plan. We understand your business and we can relate and support to your KPIs. Because many companies, which is great, they have this cascading goal. So what starts at the company level is then going down, and enablement often has in the past experience, it's hard to connect some of what we do. And that's probably a good time to reflect in the mirror, should we even be doing it. Because if we can't connect it back to the business and we can't even talk about how it connects to those KPIs at the business level, then it's probably not worth the investment. So then it's that category, and if it's product usage and we're trying to expand that, it's frequency, the depth of that usage, the adoption rate, time to value. So it's being able to break apart and understand what the business KPIs are, connect that with what we have, and often it's reaching out to the operations team in the business, IT team, whoever is monitoring those, tracking those. It gives a Tableau dashboard, whatever tool that we have at our disposal that can pull in that number, that can show us this is who's completed it, now let's look at their business. So I could see in the past, this group, this team that had gone through this now had twice the deal size, the adoption, or excuse me, the sales cycle was shortened by this percent each time. So you have to get those baseline metrics and that's gonna vary within each org that you're in. But talking about them helps build the credibility. It really shows that you are all in and you understand their business and you're talking to them about it.
Benjamin Ard12:51 — I love that. That's so cool. So when you're doing the start with the end in mind and you're getting the measurement, it's imperative that you have a good baseline. I love that. You know, if something goes up or goes down, you will not know that if you don't have the baseline figured out. Now we only have time for one more question because these episodes go by crazy quick and this has been amazing. You talked about how the content isn't created until the very end, right? And a lot of systems, content's created, now go use it, close deals with it, all that kind of stuff. How does that impact the quality and the quantity of the content that is getting created? If you're starting with the end in mind and after you go through all the stages you just outlined and then content is created, how does that impact that whole process of content creation?
Erika Robertson13:37 — It definitely depends. Again, I hate the answer, it depends. But if you're in an organization where you have the tools to put through, you've got this content creation and you have a separate team in development that can be already working on development, well, you're still focused on another aspect. You really have to look at the engines, the factories, the tools within your organization to see what you can implement. We have an AI engine for product course creation that we just launched at Citrix, and that has improved, instead of from months, now it's down to days and weeks on course creation. So it's really what tools can we use? And that's where the AI helps make us more efficient. It's setting up the framework for this is the clear roles and responsibilities, the handoff. Okay, now I've got these, now it's time for content creation, goes to this team and I can get to work on another project. So it's really having that process, that RACI, but also looking at what are the tools. And these days, AI embedded in so much of our tools can help us be that much more effective and efficient.
Benjamin Ard14:44 — I love that, that's cool. Okay, one bonus question, because we'll figure out how to sneak this one in real quick. Erika, you talked about how your team sits in marketing and how that has made such a big impact. How does that work? What are your thoughts on it? And why do you enjoy that whole process in general?
Erika Robertson14:47 — It's been a game changer in rebuilding. I won't say building because my company is 35 years old, but it's rebuilding enablement. The game changer has been the fact that enablement sits within the marketing organization and it's not your traditional marketing. It's what my leader describes as modern marketing. And we have within marketing, which is a part of the go-to-market organization. Marketing has my enablement team, we have the performance marketing team, we have the platform marketing team, we have communications, events, account based marketing, we have marketing operations. So we have all the teams, there's no daylight between us. So we all work well together. We just are working in a pod format so that again we can all be working together. It's not working in silos, because often enablement is separated. We still might be under go-to-market, but in the past we've still been in our own island and we haven't had that true seat at the table at every meal. So we are there with the business and then we can react quicker, we are more efficient, and we ensure the sanitization and the amplification of the messaging that comes to my enablement team from the platform marketing team, because they've set the message. We're not making it up. We're not going rogue. We take that, we package it, we publish it, we amplify that. So it just ensures a better engine, from the crafting of those stories to getting it out to those who needed it, our internal go-to-market team, partners, and our customers.
Benjamin Ard16:40 — That's so cool. I love how it connects to everything. It gives you the access that you need to be successful. That's so cool. Well, Erika, we have run out of time, sadly. This has been a great conversation. Thank you for sharing your insights. This has been great. For anyone listening who wants to reach out and connect with you online, how and where can they find you?
Erika Robertson16:46 — I'm on LinkedIn. Find me on LinkedIn and absolutely reach out, send a message and we'll connect.
Benjamin Ard17:04 — Love it. For anyone listening, scroll down to the show notes. You'll see Erika's LinkedIn profile linked right there. Go ahead and click on it. Go and say hello to Erika. Tell her that you came from the podcast. All that fun stuff. Erika, again, thank you so much for your time and insights today. Really do appreciate it.
Erika Robertson17:20 — Thanks again for having me, Ben.
