Work Forward Paradigm | Sales Enablement PRO

Before I ran sales and marketing at Motus, I was pre-law — a philosophy and communication double major who spent a summer interning at the Clinton White House and decided watching lawyers work looked like no fun at all. I ended up finishing a master's studying how people build community online, back when a degree in social networking sounded like a made-up field, and told Shauna Simon on the Sales Enablement PRO podcast that it's the same lens I still use on go-to-market problems today.

The best story we got into was our own sales kickoff, forced fully virtual by the pandemic. Instead of settling for a webinar, we partnered with Chicago's Auditorium Theatre — a 100-year-old, 5,000-seat venue that had been dark for months — and had their stage manager walk our cameras through the rafters to show how they make it thunder and lightning on stage. We mailed every rep a box of theater concessions, and twenty of our salespeople performed an online Zoom play in costumes they'd ordered off Amazon. It sounds like a stunt, but it held to the same three things we'd have wanted from an in-person kickoff: training, community, and doing something good for a local organization that needed the business.

We also got into what I call professional persistence: across every company I've measured it at, it takes about 17 touches — calls, emails, social — before a cold prospect actually recognizes your name. And on productivity, I told Shauna the trick I don't usually admit to: I quietly set the first-quarter goal a little below what I know the team can hit, so they start the year at 120% of plan instead of scrambling from behind. A goal without a plan is a wish, but a goal set with no evidence behind it is just a guess dressed up as a target.