SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Your Intention Matters the Podcast. My name, of course, is still Paul Madott. Thank you very much for being on this episode. Today we have Justin Enns. He is Sales Enablement Manager coming to us from Resolver in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. Justin, good to see you, man. How have you been?

SPEAKER_01 0:18

Hey, Paul, good to see you again as well. It's been a while.

SPEAKER_00 0:22

You know, I'm out of curiosity. I was gonna say you're from the KW. Now, is the KW a stupid Toronto term, or do you actually say that in Kitchener Waterloo?

SPEAKER_01 0:32

I say it outside of Kitchener Waterloo so people know it because that's what outside people tend to know. Um, but internally you would refer to you're either in Kitchener or you're in Waterloo. Uh the Twin City situation. You gotta understand which side you're on. It helps.

SPEAKER_00 0:48

And you're in Kitchener these days, right? I'm in Kitchener, correct. All right. Just to be clear about that, we're not in Waterloo, we're in Kitchener. Got it.

SPEAKER_01 0:55

Yeah, just an hour and a half outside Toronto, two hours of bad traffic, you know how it goes.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

Yeah, that 401. I don't miss it at all up here in Collingwood, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_01 1:04

Yeah, two hours from Collingwood. That's a much nicer drive, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_00 1:07

Yeah. Well, good to see you, man. Nice to reconnect you. Thanks for being here. Say hi to everybody, provide a real quick introduction.

SPEAKER_01 1:14

Yeah, so I was informed. My name's Justin. I work at Resolver. Uh, it's a tech company in Toronto. We sell government risk and compliance and security software, as well as some social listening online brand reputation monitoring services. And um I work specifically in the sales enablement function. So I've been doing that at Resolver for the past three years, a little over three years now, having done it at a previous role as well. So um once upon a time, I was a BDR. That's actually where I first ran into you, Paul, when we went through the source selling. And I was it's been a many years, I was trying to rack my brain on the things I remember. One of the main things I remember, I there was something about like a no information zone, right? Uh that was a piece of it. I was I was trying to think back, but having not made uh cold calls in the past little while on my enablement journey, some of that stuff unfortunately uh went out went out the door. But uh definitely excited to come back here. I remember it being really polished in a nice program. So um thanks for reaching out. Happy to chat.

SPEAKER_00 2:21

Happy to be here. Thanks so much for the time. And you're newly married, right? Congratulations.

SPEAKER_01 2:25

Yes, married as of uh October. So been settling into that, and uh yeah, things have been things have been good.

SPEAKER_00 2:34

Gotcha. Well, I look forward to talking to you today. You know, as we were talking about the podcast itself, it's really all about mindset and intention and their roles and overachievement. Because from my perspective, you know an organization can provide their salespeople with every tool and the toolkit to go dominate. You can give them product training and you can give them system training, you can give them competitive intel, you can give them skill set training, you can give them inbound leads as well at the same time. But if they're not mentally ready to go, chances are they're likely going to crumble at the as soon as they get resistance. And I'm curious about your take on that as well. Are you aligned with my thoughts regarding mindset? You can give them all the tactics, but if they're not ready to go, they're probably gonna crumble.

SPEAKER_01 3:17

Absolutely. Um, and having worked in this and working with sales reps and SDRs and many along the way, there are some that thrive on what we're able to give them in terms of all you said, the tools, the leads, or the scenarios, the support, um, and some that don't. And that's just a reality of the situation. And I think the hypothesis that the mindset is playing a large role in that. And I think, you know, in today's day, especially where a lot of folks are starting out in their careers uh fully remote, fully digital, um, and having gone through the pandemic in more formative years, it's it can be noticeable when the mindset um is not necessarily there to thrive in a high-pace sales or corporate environment.

SPEAKER_00 4:06

And Justin, when did you take your first uh professional sales job?

SPEAKER_01 4:12

Uh I guess there's two answers to this. So I did have an internship. I had a co-op in university, was my first exposure to it. So second year university, I worked for a company called Uline shipping and packaging supplies. Uh once you see the name, you actually see it everywhere. Um, but I was driving around Mississauga, part of the GTA, um, and uh in my mom's Honda Accord, driving around with uh a trunk full of samples of boxes and tape and gloves and safety glasses, and walking into warehouses and looking for the uh you know the managers to say, talk about what they're using us for. They were all existing customers as interns. We didn't do any cold, but uh sort of, hey, you're using us for boxes. Have you thought about using us for tape? Here's a sample. Let's look around the warehouse and see what else we can uh we could help you with. So catalog at hand, shoulder strap with uh samples at my side. That was my first uh sales gig, but that was for just four months in the summer.

SPEAKER_00 5:17

Gotcha. What about professionally as a paying job post-uni?

SPEAKER_01 5:21

Yeah, thankfully that page is not as much. Um post-university. Uh yeah. Post-university, uh, I started as uh a BDR at a software company in Kitchener Waterloo, in Waterloo specifically, uh called Avik. Um and they do network monitoring. So that was my first role. It was really, you know, interesting to get in because Kitchener Waterloo is known as a bit of a tech hub outside of Toronto and has a lot of great ones. You had uh a Vidyard guest, I know Jimmy from Vidyard, you had on in the past, and I'm not sure who else you may have had, but quite a few in the area that it stemmed from BlackBerry and uh some other things before that as well. Um it's a it's a really interesting vibe that was going on, and I wanted to catch on to that. So I got into that one specifically, and I had graduated and I was living back at home, just working part-time at the summer went up, did some camp counseling again just because I wanted to take it easy and do what I enjoyed. Um, and once it was time October, November hit, uh, I buckled down, was getting some interviews, um, and I had a connection from university who was working doing this business development, whatever that meant, role at the time, uh, at Aubik, and had a chat with him. The timing worked out pretty well. He was actually on his way out, but was in very good favor with the managers there. He had just found another role, said he'd pass my resume along, and um from there I was able to get into the world of BDR.

SPEAKER_00 7:00

You know, the reason why I asked the question is because I'm always uh curious about somebody's choice to get into sales because there's really no path in university or college for this. There's business school and there's things like that, but there's no real uh you know degree uh to be a salesperson. Yet there's millions of us out there all kind of you know trying to figure it out. And when I got into sales, I took economics at York University and I got into finance at Scotiabank, and then I found myself in a position where I was laid off and I was out of work. So a buddy of mine called me up and said, Hey, listen, uh, I went to university with a guy who's running a sales team at Xerox. Why don't you apply? And at the time I thought, sales, I'm not a sales guy. Actually, quite frankly, I hate sales in my head as a bit of a dirty word. I don't really know why I had it that way. So I went into the interview, I had no other choice. I was out of work. I thought, well, let's give it a shot. What's the worst that could happen? And when they offered me the job, I went into the job very much with a six-month mindset. Let me give it six months, see what happens. And if I like it, I like it. If I don't, I don't. Ended up being almost 10 years later on, which was what I'm very grateful for. But in that first year, Justin, I must have mentally quit half a dozen times. I I I was I was a territory rep in Toronto, I was 100% commissioned, had a small little base salary just to kind of keep the lights on, but it wasn't really much at all. And I'm just curious about your first year in sales. Did you kind of go through what I went through? Did it come easy to you? Was it at heart? Because the BDR role uh can be really challenging.

SPEAKER_01 8:38

There were definitely ups and downs, without question. Um I I got into it in a similar way too. I was looking to get that, you know, everything seemed like you needed that first year of experience, right? Every job looked like it was looking for having that you need experience to get a job, but you need a job to get experience. And this seemed like a great entryway. And I knew I could do sales because I did it in that internship. So it wasn't necessarily where I thought I'd be going with my career, but I I knew it was something I could do, make some money, be in a professional environment, and get that experience. Um so that's really what drove me towards this option and uh why I thought that it would be a good first step because I had some applicable skills and I knew it was hard, but I back to the mindset thing, I knew I could dig in with the mindset to do it because that internship that I was describing to you was no walk in the park. Um so understanding that, I figured, hey, I'll give this a year and either get the experience I need to go and and work somewhere else, or maybe prove to the company that I have what it takes to work here, but then transition to something a little different. So I went to school for business. I'm not entirely sure what I wasn't sure exactly where I wanted to go. I knew it was business. I thought maybe marketing, I really like problem solving. I don't know if it was working for product or I just knew I wanted to get in. I did know I wanted to get into a business and be working in a business and um trying to grow it. I just didn't know what part of it it was going to be. Um, and yet six years later, I've stayed on the sales side.

SPEAKER_00 10:16

You know, I want to get into your decision to go from sales to enablement because that's not the path that everybody takes. It's what I took, and I should be uh we talk about that, but I want to get into that in a second. But before we do that, you said to me before we hit record, I think you said you're what 28 now?

unknown 10:33

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 10:34

Okay. So I want to ask you a question about something. I was on a call uh earlier today, actually it was yesterday, with a VP of sales out of um London, England. And where we were talking about a few different things about my sales training and what he's up to with his team and so on and so forth. And he happened to mention a comment to me. He just said one of the struggles that he's having right now is that he's finding that uh something to the effect of uh the the younger kids coming in today, nobody really wants to work. And so I was interested when he said that to me, it made me think, you know, like my I I'm a Gen Xer, I'm I'm early 50s, and yeah, you're not what would you be? A Gen, what is it called?

SPEAKER_01 11:18

I think I I qualify as Gen Z, but I'm Gen Z pretty uh adamant about saying I'm kind of an in-betweener between millennial and Gen Z. I don't quite identify with millennial, and I don't quite identify with Gen Z. So some have called it a zillennial, I call it an in-betweener, but uh I'm in that in that flux.

SPEAKER_00 11:39

So the reason why I ask is because there's the there's a lot of Gen Xers out there in my generation who are the hiring managers, the team leaders, the VPs, and the directors, and so on still. And I think that our generation gives your generation a bad rap in a lot of cases. And I'm just curious about how you've managed or have you had to manage this sense of my generation saying to you, you don't work as hard as we do. Has that come up in your career so far, as far as you know, has that had to have that come up at all?

SPEAKER_01 12:12

You know what? It's a really it's a good question to ask because I in short to myself, I don't think so, but I also think that that's a part of working in tech software that are very uh meritocracy focused, right, and very pragmatic. Um, I would say where I've been, age has not really defined a lot of things in the areas. There are very young VPs in tech, there are very old VPs in tech. It's a lot of the time, it's hey, who's the best for the role? So I didn't feel that in the roles that I've experienced. Now, I've absolutely heard that discourse. I've heard people say it anecdotally, not necessarily in the work environment. And quite frankly, I have come across in my past experience a lot of folks even younger than me, maybe towards that Gen Z, that some of them do struggle with a specific work ethic, but it might just be magnified, and there could be an equal amount in the older generations. It just gets a little bit more magnified uh at this level or at this age. You know, the next generation is always uh something a little crazy, a little different, right? I'm sure the boomers said that about the Gen Xers as well.

SPEAKER_00 13:28

No, I never heard that once. No, of course, many times. My parents used to say to me all the time, you gave it just so easy compared to what I had it as, and so it's all the same, right? So good. So listen, let's talk about your transition from uh sales to enablement. And so, as I shared with you, as we were talking through the episode here, I gained my pedigree in sales at Xerox, and I kind of went through the uh I guess the Xerox uh path, so to speak, sales rep, product specialist, sales manager. Uh I moved to Calgary for a couple of years and I ran the production business for a division out there as well. And of my, I guess, almost 10 years at Xerox, I spent three of them as a national sales instructor. So I was on the training side of things, and that to me um was the best job I had uh at that company. It was a lot of fun. I love being a part of the creation of courses and programs and coaching. I got like I missed direct sales, I missed everything that kind of went with the bullpen environment, of course. But I had so much fun doing that, but that was not what I wanted to do when I first got into sales, it just kind of happened for me. And I'm curious about your decision to dip your kind of toe in the water of enablement versus versus sales. Did they find you? Did someone ask you to do this? Did you kind of gravitate to how did that happen?

SPEAKER_01 14:50

Yeah, great question. Um in my background, I think looking back on it, it seems now that it makes a lot of sense. It seems quite natural that I would end up in a role like this. And who knows what the future still has in in store for me. But at some point in my career, being in enablement, which is a lot, you know, for folks out there, if they're fully familiar with sales enablement, um, every place defines it differently. Actually, Paul, I'd be curious to understand what your definition of sales enablement is, because I'm gonna guess you and I even define it uh differently. It's a it's a bit of a fluid thing, depending on which company that you're at.

SPEAKER_00 15:28

Fair. So I think when I hear sales enablement, I hear sales training. I I hear you're arming the sales teams to achieve their numbers. That's what I hear when I hear that. I I also hear revenue enablement, which I think it obviously links to driving revenue for the company, but I link it all into are you arming your sales people with the skill sets to go dominate in their existing roles? That's what I hear when I hear sales enablement. What do you hear?

SPEAKER_01 15:57

Yeah, for sure. And and that's absolutely a part of it. And for a lot of organizations, that's exactly what sales enablement is and means. I would say, in my experience, working in very small sales enablement teams that are working at these fast-paced tech companies, my experience with the leadership that um I've had, I'll shout out my boss, Lisa Dakin Bartellos, who you've worked with as well. You know, we our philosophy around enablement, or at least the way I see it through us, is uh quite simply doing as many things as I can to take off of a manager's plate so that they can focus on doing the things they need to do to have the reps execute. So training 100% is a part of that. I can specialize in training, managers don't specialize in training, and they don't have the time to do all that training. Let me do that. But it also goes beyond that. Do we need to test new tools? Do we need to write up documentations? Do we need to cross ideas between divisions? Do we need to get in early on a new product launch to make sure that marketing is speaking the same language as sales so that when it comes out, no one is pointing fingers or wondering what the heck happened here? Right? Making sure that those launches have been translated and run through the salespeople in a consistent, repeatable, and then uh traceable or trackable manner down the line. So those are the ways that I view sales enablement. Um, and what I like about that perspective, and not all companies have that perspective, which is totally fine, but I like working for companies that have that perspective because it means I get to wear a lot of hats. So I get to I get to do the training, and I've always this kind of goes back to where I was starting. I love the training stuff. I used to be a swim instructor in high school, and so I have a background in just I I like teaching, I like training. Um, I've volunteered as a coach before, and so I like that stuff. Um, but in addition to that, I get to go in the back end of Salesforce and make things sure things are working well. I'm working with our AI tools right now to make sure that reps are using the most efficient workflows in them. I'm meeting with the vendors to make sure we're mostly using the tools and doing all of these different things, working with marketing, working with product to make sure that the managers can focus on managing and coaching and making the reps the best that they could be, and let us take all of those other things to make sure that the ship is still sailing smoothly as those pieces are going. So to get back to uh sorry, I'm not sure if another comment, but to get back to uh the original piece, sales enablement then made a lot of sense where um I was an SDR or a BDR for about a year and a bit. And uh I at about the one year point, I got I was uh I was doing pretty well and I was promoted because I was working well. Uh we had a lot of new hires and a lot of turnover, and I was working a lot with them. So I was promoted to a team lead. And doing the team lead for portion, I 80% of my role was still being a BDR, and 20% was being a team lead, uh, working and doing a little bit of coaching and some onboarding stuff. And I realized I really like that 20% a whole lot more than I liked that 80%. And I'm sure other people have experienced this as well. There is a lot of not exactly pressure, but expectation that if you're a BDR, the the path you're going down is to become a seller, right? Carry a bag, um, be an account executive or or maybe uh you know, account manager, but that's the destination. And I was enjoying those other aspects so much and the parts that not because it was carrying a bag, I didn't mind carrying a bag and having a quota, and it's really fun when you can do it and exceed it. And I I got all that, but I was just having way more enjoyment on the training side and working with new hires and that piece. So I wanted to embrace that and take an opportunity. So that's when my manager at the time, his name is Ryan Shin, and uh Lisa, as I mentioned before, who's my current manager, reached out to me and said, Hey, we have an interesting role for you. Lisa needs some help for BDR enablement. Would you like to take it on? And I hadn't even I didn't even know what enablement really was at that time. I couldn't have given you a definition. I didn't enter sales knowing that enablement was even a thing. So um you know, it's it's one of those when you get started, um, what's the Microsoft quote? You can apply it to your career, right? Um, your career is gonna change less than you want within one year, but more than you can imagine within five. Um, and that's that holds true to my experience at that point.

SPEAKER_00 20:37

You know, you certainly have seen a lot in a short period of time in your career, and as you think about it, like you're in your late 20s, you kind of survived COVID, which was unique for all of us, no matter what, no matter what we were doing. It was such a such a major hiccup in the world of the time back in 20, 2021, and so on, even into 2022, of course. And even now, as we're recording here in mid-May 2026, for a lot of companies out there, it's like a bloodbath out there. The amount of people that are being laid off, and Q companies are condensing this AI movement and so on. And so, congrats on your success to this point.

SPEAKER_01 21:14

Yeah, thank you. Yeah, it's interesting. The COVID piece, I guess we blur it out, but I got just a taste of I'll say the glory days or the golden age of tech. It was 2019, uh, October when I signed my contract and started as an SDR. So that was, of course, in office, but the office was it was cool. There was beer on tap, there was a soda pop machine, snacks in the drawers, Wednesdays. They cater to lunch. We would dress casually, but on Fridays, actually, as SDRs or BDRs, we would have fancy Fridays. So we would put on uh we dress up like I'd wear a suit on Friday and just because like it's fun and we're dressing down so much, why not switch it up and subvert expectations and dress up? And you know, I got four months of that or five months. Or six or whatever it was until March, and I guess it was November to March of 5. Um, it was great, but then COVID hit, um, and it was never the same. So I got to taste a lot of people entering and who I've worked with and onboarded in the past six years since I've started in the more enablement side. Um I did didn't even get to experience that, albeit it's coming back a little bit in some places, in some way, shapes, and form. But uh I can't tell if it's a gift or a curse that I got to taste, you know. That that was that was great that I got to experience it. And also I know what I'm still missing out being uh fully remote at the same time.

SPEAKER_00 22:38

Yeah, I appreciate that. You know, Justin, thanks so much for being here, man. Nice to reconnect. As uh as I always like to close off each episode, you know, if you think about your career to this point, uh any best practice or advice that has been given to you that has served you well that you would share with anyone? Anything come to mind?

SPEAKER_01 22:57

Yeah, am I allowed to do two, or do you want me to pick one?

SPEAKER_00 23:00

Pick five if you want.

SPEAKER_01 23:02

Okay. I think serving myself and the mindset thing, right? Getting back to that, um, Paul, I can't agree enough that your mindset is going to serve everything here in sales. Um, when I was an SDR, it wasn't if BDR wasn't my favorite thing to do, but I knew I wanted to do well so I could get to that next thing. So, anyone out there, if you're a BDR, have the mindset, even if you don't love what you're doing right now, if you can execute in this position, other positions will open up to you. They're looking for top performers to hire, even if it's different skill sets. They want to know can you master the role you're in right now? Because that's a good indicator that you might be able to master the next role you get into. So really push through that. Um in the enablement perspective, I like to take a bit of that Disney approach where it's um, you know, maybe it's the 30th person that I've onboarded this year, but it's the first time that they've been onboarded at this company with me. So I need to make sure that I train it as if it was the first and the only one and giving them the full effort every time. And I think that has led to some very strong satisfaction amongst the reps that we've been onboarding, which leads to success down the line, the tenure that they stay by being shown how important they are to the company and getting that really white glove and uh caring about their onboarding and giving it the full effort. So, you know, treat every situation that you can to enable somebody and bring them on as if it's the main one. Um, the most insightful advice I got was when I was interviewing around and I was I was doing some coffee chats with some uh connections. Luckily, my dad had some entrepreneur connections, so I was talking to them about their businesses. And the best piece of advice I got from them, which is again, I think it's about mindset, is uh if you want to get promoted, make yourself replaceable as fast as possible. And I love that quote because it's all about mindset. If you have a timid or shy or nervous or scared mindset, making yourself replaceable, that's the fear of being fired, right? And being left out and gone. But if you have a capable, strong, powerful, ambitious mindset, it's that, hey, I don't want to be tied down because they need me to do this thing that only I can do. I need to make sure others can do that because they know I know that I'm good enough to get to that next thing and do that next thing. So I really, I really like that one. Um, I think it's it's powerful with the right mindset that uh do what you can, write the documentation if you need to train somebody else on how to do it. Uh, make it less of a black box so that you're not stuck in your role because you're the only one that can do it.

SPEAKER_00 25:48

Really well said, man. Nice to reconnect. Thanks for being here, Justin.

SPEAKER_01 25:51

Yeah, thanks, Paul. I appreciate the time.

SPEAKER_00 25:53

You're welcome. Right, everybody. We're gonna wrap it up right now. Remember, as I always say, your intention matters. Why? Because that's a result you'll tend to get. We'll see you on the next episode.