# Enablement without the eyerolls with Colin Specter

## Метаданные

- **Канал:** Orum
- **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otLvKCerJkk
- **Дата:** 12.03.2026
- **Длительность:** 25:26
- **Просмотры:** 9

## Описание

*An award-winning podcast presented by Orum*


*EPISODE SUMMARY*

In this episode of *Bold Calling*, host *Adam Sockel* sits down with *Colin Specter*, SVP of Revenue at Orum, to talk about *sales enablement that actually works*—without the usual eye rolls from sales reps.

They dive into *how sales and marketing can align*, how to create *content that gets used*, and the *best ways to drive accountability* in a fast-paced sales organization. Along the way, Adam and Colin swap stories, challenge assumptions, and share *real-world strategies* that any sales and marketing team can implement today.


*KEY TAKEAWAYS & GREAT QUOTES*


🔹 *SALES & MARKETING: A TWO-WAY STREET*

_"Marketing can't say yes to everything, just like product teams can't build every feature request. It's about business impact—how many customers will benefit, and what's the revenue impact?"_ – *Colin Specter*

_"Every time you say yes to something, you're saying no to something else. Prioritization is key."_ – *Adam Sockel*


🔹 *ADOPTION STARTS WITH CHAMPIONS*

_"Reps love reducing uncertainty. The best way to get adoption? Find a pilot rep who others respect. If they use it and win with it, others will follow."_ – *Colin Specter*

_"I'm a people pleaser—I always want to say yes. But before I do, I go to another team and ask, 'Would this actually help you, too?' Because if it's just a one-off, it's probably not the best use of time."_ – *Adam Sockel*


🔹 *THE ROLE OF PRODUCT MARKETING*

_"Salespeople don't want to learn about product releases at the same time as customers. Marketing needs to be ahead of the curve, ready with assets before a launch."_ – *Colin Specter*

_"We don't want to be learning about product updates in real-time with sales. If that happens, we're already in trouble."_ – *Adam Sockel*


🔹 *DEVELOPING ACCOUNTABILITY FOR SALES ENABLEMENT*

_"Repetition is the mother of learning. As a sales leader, your job is to over-communicate. If people aren't rolling their eyes at how often they hear a message, you're not saying it enough."_ – *Colin Specter*

_"I can hype up content all I want, but if I don't have buy-in from sales, it's just another link in Slack that gets ignored."_ – *Adam Sockel*


🔹 *HOW SALES TEAMS CAN AMPLIFY MARKETING CAMPAIGNS*

_"Sales leaders set the tone—if your team sees you posting and amplifying content, they'll follow. But don't assume they will naturally rise to the occasion—train them on what good looks like."_ – *Colin Specter*

_"Attitude reflects leadership. If sales sees me hyping up content, they're more likely to use it. But if I just drop a link in Slack and disappear, it's getting buried under 100 messages."_ – *Adam Sockel*


*ACTIONABLE TIPS FOR SALES ENABLEMENT LEADERS*

✅ *Start with a listening tour* – Talk to your top reps and sales leaders to identify patterns in what's needed.
✅ *Prioritize by impact* – Assess the revenue and adoption potential before investing in new assets.
✅ *Use a pilot approach* – Get buy-in from respected reps before rolling things out at scale.
✅ *Create a structured request process* – Leverage Slack workflows or structured intake forms to gather details.
✅ *Over-communicate* – Ensure that both sales and marketing teams know where content lives and how to use it.
✅ *Align marketing with product sprints* – Ensure that content is ready before major feature releases.

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## Содержание

### [0:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otLvKCerJkk) Segment 1 (00:00 - 05:00)

You're listening to Bold Calling, an award-winning podcast presented by ORM, where every episode we're bringing on the biggest and brightest minds in the tech and sales industries for a discussion about their biggest challenges and the unique ways they're working to solve them. I'm extremely excited today because my guest is Colin Spectre, the SVP of revenue here at ORUM. Colin, thank you so much for joining me today. — Absolutely, Adam. Thanks so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be on the show. Uh obviously love bold calling, love orum. So uh looking forward to getting into it and uh sharing some insights with the audience. — Yeah. So we are going to be talking about sales enablement today. And this is um honestly this is a little bit selfish of me getting to bring you on to do this because as the content person here at ORM, obviously you head up our revenue team. For me, this is almost like making sure that I'm doing the things I need to do, then benefiting all of our listeners by doing that. So, because of this, I creating all the content that I do, I always have as a marketer, I always have this fear that it's just going out into the ether and no one's using it, no one's seeing it. Um, which is where sales enablement comes in. So, so I want to kind of dive right in and ask you as a leader from the sales side of things. The first thing I want to ask you is just like when marketing is creating all of this stuff. We, you know, in our minds, we're the center of the universe as marketers. We think our campaigns are incredible and everyone's going to just their mind's going to be blown by this new video we roll out or this new t-shirt. And then we can send it to sales people. And in many cases, not here at ORM, but in many cases, sales people just roll their eyes and they're like, "Okay, great. Thanks so much. " So the first thing I want to ask is when marketing people are creating things that we do want to provide for sales reps to actually use, what would you say like the formats and structures should be that we should be providing that content so that it's actually usable? And this is this could be like email snippets or one pages like what are the actual structures that a sales leader and then a sales team would use when this content is created? Yeah, it's a great question. Um, so I think a couple thoughts there. One is meeting the reps where they already are uh is super helpful for adoption, right? And so if we're talking about just logistically like where the content should live, I think you know what I what I've seen and I'm not saying this happens at ORM, but what I've seen just in general in my time is you know marketing might have some sort of content hub or some sort of other system that they love to live out of. And if uh the frontline sellers or field team are not, you know, used to going into that system or they don't really go into that system for any other reason, um it's not something that they're going to often check for like content updates and you know and things like that. So ideally marketing and sales can be on the same like internet and uh it's already a place that like both people live whether it's like in specific Slack channels or notion or specific shared drives and there's uh a mutual understanding and shared understanding of like the language of where things are when they are described and uh the kind of organization structure of those things versus like learning an entirely new like content system versus like you know your sales enablement system you know might be different and so I think as long as like sales enablement and marketing you know product marketing are on the same page in terms of the kind of learning framework then it becomes easier to get the right adoption and kind of meet people where they are just more structurally there yeah I love that and for larger like very well established companies they very well may have a tool like uh like Revspot and highspot where they it is a sales enablement tool where like marketers can put stuff into a specific tool and it says for all the sellers like this is the part of the buyer's journey you're going to need to use this and here's exactly what to say but for you know companies of various sizes and ours as well like you always don't have that specific like access. So it is it really just as simple as saying like you said like we're all living in notion let's just keep everything in there like it or is there you know a better way for marketers to like develop a cadence and saying like here is what's going on and we need to tell you this every single month like is it just as simple as saying like you guys live in notion we need to live in notion too — I would say like the best way to get adoption is versus you know trying to get the whole group to adopt at once find a pilot rep or two with a new uh a new asset or new, you know, talk track or new demo flow or new, you know

### [5:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otLvKCerJkk&t=300s) Segment 2 (05:00 - 10:00)

description of features, whatever it might be. And like it helps, you know, like reps love reducing uncertainty because reps, get stuck in their ways, especially if they're doing, you know, well, they like have like a flow down. They have certain assets they like to use. They're more resistant to change with like a new sales deck, right? And like you know, you often like have reps roll their eyes when there's like a new marketing deck like every year, right? Especially like folks finally get dialed into a certain flow, a certain deck, certain types of assets. But, uh, I think showing examples of success and what good looks like with the new asset can definitely help with adoption. Yeah. So I don't think it's like it's not just as simple as like yeah we all use Google Drive and you know I think more just that's like let's reduce as many controllable hurdles as possible and then you know to spark adoption like tap the rep that folks you know respect their opinion and their use of different uh different decks and tools and so forth. So that's that would be my advice there. Speaking of creating champions and finding like you said like pilot reps to adopt these pieces of content, I want to ask you and this is kind of connected to our experience here at ORM. When I first started a little over two years ago now, like that we had a content debt. There wasn't really a content person. And so I remember when I first started, I came to you, I came to our other sales leaders, CS team and I said, "What do you need? Like what exactly do you need? " And I started creating, you know, whether it was like our calling culture guide or decision criteria checklist, anything you guys needed. I was like, absolutely tell me specifically what you want. And now we've gotten to a point two years later where we have a lot of content. And some might say create too much at times. There's almost you can't do something with all of this. And like what I want to ask you is like is there a certain point that you would say as a sales leader when you guys come to marketing like is there a process that you think about when it's like hey this enterprise rep needs one specific piece from product marketing or they need a single sales one pager but it's really only going to be used in this one situation. like how can marketing and sales create an understanding where sometimes someone has to say no because you know insert rep here is asking me for a piece of content that's going to take me a week to create but in order to create that piece of content I can't create something that the whole team is going to create. So, how do you I guess the long- winded an question is like how can marketing and sales create a relationship where you can sales people can ask for things and understand they're not always going to get what they want. Like how do you create that relationship between the two teams where there's an understanding of we're going to do what's best for the whole sometimes at the detriment of like a single rep. — Yeah. So, I think it's less about the rep and more about the impact the business impact which you already nailed right. So, um I would say it's the same exact thing with like feature requests, right? It could be a marketing asset or a feature request. Very similar like what are the actual dollar impact of what's the dollar impact of uh building a feature like let's say we have a big enterprise whale of a customer. It's going to be a million dollar deal and they need a certain custom workflow built, right? Like okay, that's worth dedicating an engineer towards building and delivering to land that seven figure contract, right? a seven figure account and customer um versus yeah like if it's you know I don't know a 20k 30k account um and it's a custom thing for them some sort of custom integration for them probably uh not like unless we have evidence and data that there are multiple customers that will benefit and how much that is like yeah you got to make informed business decisions like you can't go and kind of react to every rep you know from the sales rep perspective the most important request is like the one in front of them, the customer like they're working with like in that moment. And so like for them it's like this is the world, you know, if you're an SMB rep and a mid-market rep, like a $20,000, you know, account, a $50,000 account, like you're like, how can you not be prioritizing this? This is my quota. This is like such a big thing. And so, yeah, taking a business lens perspective, right? It does come down to your most valuable customers. like who is giving you the most dollars is going to get the most attention and most kind of care in terms of features and marketing assets, right? That's just the reality of business, right? And so that that mindset of like marketing can't say yes, product can't say yes to every single request, but we'll weigh the impact. You know, for example, an enterprise customer asked us for a workflow diagram. on a call yesterday like I was like oh we like a workflow diagram specifically with Salesforce which we have a great Salesforce integration and I didn't easily find you know an asset like this that like showed the like fields and kind of a flowchart between Salesforce and ORM

### [10:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otLvKCerJkk&t=600s) Segment 3 (10:00 - 15:00)

specifically and I like well you know we service I don't know thousand plus Salesforce customers I think at this point like uh it probably would be something that I will likely come up more often and is probably worth prioritizing to deliver that type of asset, right? But if it's, let's say, a flowchart with, you know, Bullhorn or or, you know, a longtail kind of CRM that's more niche or an industry we don't like focus on specifically. We focus more on Salesforce, HubSpot CRM, then we have to weigh like, okay, maybe the rep needs to go build that on their own, you know, and modify like one of our other assets. Um, so that's just a train of thought, right? Business impact. I would look at the revenue dollars, the number of customers it impacts and can help, whether it's a feature or marketing asset. — Yeah, I love that. And for me, I'm a people pleaser. I'm a like problem solver. I get this from my mom. I constantly want to like make sure I'm keeping everybody happy. And a lot of times, even when uh like you said, like one of our mid-market or like SMB reps asks me for something, I'll go to like another team before I say no and be like, "Would this be beneficial for you as well? " Because to your point, like if there's an enterprise company asking us for a very specific thing, it may seem very specific in the moment, but like if it's an enterprise company to land a big deal, whatever they're asking for is probably going to be beneficial down the line for another enterprise deal. So, it does make sense to do those things. But yeah, I it's I still my boss Tinking routinely is telling me like, you know, every time you say yes to something, you're saying no to other things with, you know, passively. So, just try to remember that. And it's really wonderful to hear that. uh you know from a sales leader saying like yeah we just boil it down to ROI a lot of times and that's a good way to approach it. Um yeah uh I want to ask you know do you in your mind have like a cadence of how frequently we should be connecting as sales and marketing teams on sales enablement like is it once a quarter once a month? What do you think would be a good cadence for marketing to come to sales and say like hey here's what's new let's implement this into your process? — It's a good question. Um it probably comes up maybe more structurally during the QBR right when we get the sales asks right every quarter we get a summary of you know what does the team need right and that's where typically we'll find patterns of uh of you know certain asset requests right that maybe we're missing or more you know feature enablement or sales sheets on certain features that we haven't yet developed but yeah I mean stuff always comes up ad hoc you know of course over those three month periods. Yeah, I think like more maybe more formally once a quarter we audit and take inventory and then of course in between that time there's going to be some we should always leave some capacity to handle you know the more impromptu kind of ad hoc requests that come up as certain deals come up and we recognize patterns of things we're missing right like you know we just did a big like global launch like we sometimes you don't know what you don't know until you run into it and people like well Can you give me like a guide for these like new European countries we support? Right? Like what like how does the language modeling work there and all of that, right? So like we sometimes like oh like you're right we probably should build that like we didn't you know but you don't you can't like think exhaustively uh you know the first kind of release of things. So action brings information right. So as we're taking action in the marketplace we're going to get feedback and information about what we need. And so I think like yeah just let's put a bow on it. Let's do a quarterly uh more formal sit down of like what do we need to build and what we should prioritize but then keep capacity with one another to prior you know prioritize things as they come up in more of a maybe two week sprint you know basis like with product I feel like if marketing and product kind of mirror you know one another in terms of like research and development we'll be in a good spot. — Yeah. that one and especially like the unsung hero in that is like product marketers. We've got great product marketers here and if they if it's not on this on that same sprint, what's inevitably going to happen is product is going to tell us about a really cool new feature and of course the first question from uh sales people are going to be a when is this available and then b how can I tell this to the world? So yeah, if sale if product marketing isn't on the same page with product, I'm like when the releases are getting rolled out, they're going to have egg on their face when the sellers are like, "Okay, do we have one cheaters? Do we have a video about this? Do we have snippets? Like what can I use? " So I absolutely love Yeah, I love that so much. And like we don't want to be as marketers, learning about product releases in real time with the sales people cuz then we're like, "Oh no, we are we're in trouble here. " like a demo flow and even better if we have like an actual like proc video we can go like you know celebrate like shout out

### [15:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otLvKCerJkk&t=900s) Segment 4 (15:00 - 20:00)

on LinkedIn about and like show like what it like we've got live transfer coming out right by the way and I'm sure by the time this episode releases it'll be live right and so now I'm like thinking okay we need to get some assets around this like what's like a great workflow we want to pitch and everything around this new feature — I will say something I do as a marketing person we're my job is a little bit easier here at ORM because we are selling a sales tool so I can go to our sellers and it like basically say okay you're the person being pitched forum what questions do you have and then we can create content around that but like if your ICP is finance or devops like go to those people and say we have this thing coming out what questions would you have so that you can kind of like to your point like when we have a thing that comes out like you said our international expansion now it's you know 160 plus territories like there's going to be questions we don't think about if someone's going to say hey I have prospect in I don't know Manila or wherever like we're not going to be able to be exhausted with that. So it's always good to just ask what is your ICP internally for those types of questions. — You know ideally you have and if you don't already you should form a customer advisory board right and so with your ICP right yeah I mean we drink our own champagne so we can use our own internal we are our own internal customer but that's not always the case with many companies. So yeah, you can either talk to your internal persona, like the person that works at your business, or even better, you should form a customer advisory board with your ideal customers, your top customers, and let them be that first kind of feedback soundboard, give them some equity, and you know, h have them feel really a part of the journey. — How can sales leaders develop accountability with the sellers? Like again, I have a wonderful relationship with our sales team, but like you know, we're recording this at the very end of January. In fact, you're being very gracious with your time a week before the end of our fiscal year, but you know, and so I know if I release any content and I put it in Slack and notion, all the places, like it's going to fall on deaf ears this particular week, and that's just the nature of business. Um, but how can, you know, there's only so many times I can be like ORM's big hype man and talk about how great this content is before people are like, "All right, Adam, we get it. " How can sales leaders develop accountability for their sellers to ensure that they are using all of the assets that are available to them? Look, I think uh repetition is the mother of learning and uh the job of the sales leader is communication and overcommunicate and you need to communicate to a point where folks are uh tired of hearing like you want them rolling their eyes like a here you go here's call it again like saying I got to use this talk track or here's call again say I got to use the first call deck and I need to use this customer slide and uh and so like yeah like I want to be annoying with my people and as a leader You have to be and look, we're a remote company. We don't get to put posters up around the office like with the objective and the mission statement. So like we have to repeat it over and over again whenever we're in a sales floor or Zoom call or what have you on Slack, right? So we have to be over o like intentionally overcommunicative, especially because we're remote, but it goes, you know, even within office. So — I love that. And like for us, like you said, it's being overcommunicative is so important because we have, you know, ORM as a virtual sales floor and like we as marketers jump on there. I listen to our SDRs all the time like ripping cold calls and like get understanding what our ICP sounds like. But that, you know, that is one thing where like you can hear other people talk a certain way and be like, "Oh, I'm going to try that. " But the unseen things is the LinkedIn messages that they're sending or the emails that they're using and the different cadences and like that stuff. to your point and it is something I've gotten good at is like overcommunicating to the point where I'm just like yeah someone's probably going to roll their eyes at the things that I'm saying but it'll help a few people and if it helps a few it's a kind of like a ground swell. It's not it's believe me you want to overcommunicate then undercommunicate and then all of a sudden scratch your head wait how come they said that or how come they didn't know the answer to this and we had that right so over overcommunication always air on overcommunication for sure — yeah I want to I got two more questions for you one do you have a thought prepping on this ahead of time so I apologize but do you have a personal like preferred best practice for how to how sellers can make requests from a sales salesman standpoint like would it be a Google doc or I guess it's like what way would you prefer like do you think would be the most efficient way for people that are listening in and just trying to set up sales enablement — I think we're getting in a good habit using the new Slack workflows feature right and I'm like we do it in a revops channel we're doing it in a product feedback channel I think um if we don't have it already we should add a kind of marketing asset workflow uh just because again like kind of meeting people where they are and the structures that they're already used to like engaging with. Um I

### [20:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otLvKCerJkk&t=1200s) Segment 5 (20:00 - 25:00)

think that's a you know kind of stay consistent right between the most common teams that are most you know often getting requests. I think if we teach one system let's try and speak that same language and it make it easier for folks to know hey I know I'm going to go submit a request workflow for this asset right I think we just set it up for swag as an example which is great. So yeah, we do it for swag, features, do it for revops changes. Let's, you know, also do it for uh marketing assets where it makes sense. — Yeah, if you're if you're a person listening in and you guys use Slack and you're not using the Slack workflows, they are awesome. I do I am obsessed with like not only just being able to request specific things like you said for Slack, like it's wonderful to see the reasoning, too, because a lot of times someone will just like go into one like a Slack channel and be like, "Do we have this thing? I would like it. " But like with the workflows, you have to put like what is this for? What's the what is the business purpose? Yeah. — Well, to the point we made before, you can even we can you can even ask like what's the ARR potential that this asset will help or like what customer profile is this asset for? Oh, it's for all customers in Salesforce or oh, it's this one mega deal that is like a very niche thing I need built for security, right? Or whatever it is. — Um, okay. What is how can people listening in ensure that it's also a two-way street that like yes sales is getting everything they need from marketing but then you know our biggest thing as marketers is always when we're rolling out these campaigns or reports how can we make sure that it's a two-way street so that sales are you know using their networks to properly amplify marketing messaging as well — I think that's a great question and I've been wanting to do more of this I think it happens naturally But because you know we set the example we lead from the front as a leader. So if your people see you out amplifying the marketing message and on LinkedIn and Twitter and they see you amplifying then people will follow and see okay that's what good looks like. That's the prototype. But also I think putting more intention behind it and train people and really like invigorate and empower people to go and do their own amplification is also important because not everybody naturally rises up to the occasion like all right well Colin's posting and Adam's posting I should go start posting. Some people do and some people do it better than others. Um, so I think yeah, doing a like specific training and enablement on what good looks like and how to ideulate and uh and start to what channel should you be posting and what type of content should you and how should you structure posts and all of that. I mean it's a great reminder like I've been wanting to do a training internally and like reinvigorate uh that motion for us. So — I will say I will leave us with uh there's a quote from um remember the titans. It's attitude reflects leadership. And I will say like I'm not just saying this because you're on with me. Colin is such an advocate for all the content and marketing channels that we have and all the different campaigns and like if anyone is on LinkedIn and knows ORM, they also know who you are because you are such a big champion for that. So I wanted to have you on and talk about sales enablement because I know this is something you believe in and the marketing and sales relationship. So I one last question before I let you go. If people are just like starting the sales enablement journey, you know, what's like the first thing you would do? What is that could kind of get people on the path? Like if they take one thing away from this conversation, what's the first thing they should do? — Uh I mean, if you're just getting into it, you should do the listening tour. Talk with the top, you know, the top people, the top leaders, and is there a pattern in what people need? And that's a great place to start, right? Triage, triage there. um focus on you know after that like the next level is let's look like you want to make impact to certain metrics and so try to identify the behavioral metrics that you want to impact so a behavioral metric might be uh or a like the metric is a result of certain behaviors right so when I say behavioral metric that that's what I mean like connect rate would be the behavior of making calls to the right people uh connect to meeting rate would be the behavior of am I good talking and booking a meeting. Is my message relevant to that person once I get them on the phone? Um my win rate is the behavior of how I run deals and how many I close versus the ones I speak with. So identify the behavioral metrics that need the most help that have big variance between people. And if there's someone that's way better than the group, you deconstructing what they're doing different uh and and put the blueprint of what they're doing differently to share with the others. Uh and is another great place to start. So I'd say after do the listening tour, focus and triage with what people need immediately and then be proactive in identifying the behavioral metrics that you can impact next. — That's a perfect starting point. Colin, you have been very gracious at the end

### [25:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otLvKCerJkk&t=1500s) Segment 6 (25:00 - 25:00)

of our fiscal. Thank you so much for joining me today. — Adam, thank you. I'm I'm, you know, what you said about amplifying the ORUM voice and everything is right back at you. I I'm so thankful for our partnership here and uh and look forward to continuing to amplify and make it all happen.

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*Источник: https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/51412*