Stephen Pegler: “My session will give you a template to use in your enablement planning”

A pre-event interview with Thomas International’s Head of Sales Enablement

Our Sales Engagement Summit is rapidly approaching, taking place on December 6^th at The Brewery in London. The event is set to welcome 500 like-minded professionals, eager to network and hear from industry leaders such as Stephen Pegler, Head of Sales Enablement at Thomas International.

Ahead of the summit, we reached out to get a sneak peek of what he will be talking about. In the interview below, find out what you can expect to learn from his session and what he predicts for the future of sales.

PLEASE INTRODUCE YOURSELF, YOUR COMPANY, AND YOUR ROLE.

Thomas is a talent assessment platform that uses psychometric science-based solutions (behaviour, personality, emotional intelligence, and aptitude) to help businesses understand their people better, to help them make better people choices across the talent management lifecycle. More specifically, we offer a variety of solutions, from sourcing candidates that will be a better fit for the organisation to onboarding, developing, and retaining key talent and includes things like leadership succession planning, team effectiveness, 360 insights and even organisational engagement.

I was brought into Thomas back in 2021 to define and build out a new sales enablement function that brings strategic value to the global sales organisation to help drive effectiveness and efficiency across the sales funnel from lead gen right through to customer growth, expansion, and retention. I’ve been working on redefining the sales process, tooling, and methodologies as well as helping the organisation transition into a specialised, segmented sales organisation aligned to lead generation, new customer acquisition, customer success and channel. Each function needs processes, tools and competencies defined, built, and enabled.

We are going through a period of private equity and have ambitious sales targets and objectives to match. We are making progress but there’s still a lot of work to be done.

WE ARE DELIGHTED TO HAVE YOU SPEAKING AT OUR UPCOMING SUMMIT. CAN YOU GIVE US A SNEAK PEEK OF WHAT YOU WILL BE TALKING ABOUT?

One of the challenges I have been tackling with this past year is how to scale enablement activities (avoiding duplicating efforts and doing more with less) while still driving meaningful and impactful behaviour change within our sales teams, improving sales KPIs. This is a tricky balance to get right which inspired me to review what works and doesn’t and share this with a broader audience to help me contextualise this better and outline a framework for how best to do this in other organisations.

WHAT CAN OUR ATTENDEES EXPECT TO LEARN FROM YOUR SESSION?

As the sales landscape rapidly changes during tougher economies, the need for ROEI (return on enablement investment) has increased dramatically. Enablement efforts have become more under scrutiny, pushing up the need for enablement to become more efficient. But at what cost? Can we provide scaled, efficient sales enablement without impacting its effectiveness?

In this session, we will explore the differences between running larger scale sales enablement activities vs. localised bespoke enablement, the pros and cons of both, and how and when to use them. This will leave you with a template to use in your own enablement planning as we move into 2024.  

LASTLY, WHAT ARE YOUR PREDICTIONS FOR 2024?

I know this is obvious, but everything will be about tech and especially AI. There is also a lot of funding and M&A within the sales tech space at the moment. Funding is fuelling the sales tech revolution and M&A is narrowing the market with less vendors but with wider portfolios.

Integrations are improving so tech should become easier to implement. The SaaS landscape is becoming overcrowded and successful vendors will need to differentiate by helping buyers understand this landscape better, almost in a vendor agnostic way.

Help buyers understand their needs, show what solutions are out there then show where they are ideally placed. I hear too many vendors leading with very similar messages about how they will make my life better and it’s all noise and one message sounds just like the other. This clearer approach will make buyers feel more confident in their purchasing decisions.

• Common challenges
• Solution landscape
• Where they fit in and how they help.  

If you are interested in attending Stephen's session and learning from other industry experts, make sure you reserve your free ticket for the Sales Engagement Summit.

Location: The Brewery on Chiswell Street, London
Date: Wednesday, 6 December 2023
Tickets: FREE!