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Inside: Sales Enablement

Langley vs. the Wright Brothers: Embracing the Complex Conditions that Lead to Breakthrough Results

Inside: Sales Enablement
Inside: Sales Enablement

Welcome to the Inside: Sales Enablement Podcast Episode 56

The close of the 19th century found Samuel Pierpoint Langley and Orville and Wilbur Wright in a competition to create a powered and controllable flight. Langley worked with a lot of government support and enormous public exposure, while the Wright brothers worked quietly using their own resources.

Langley built a monolithic 54-foot-long flying machine had two 48-foot wings -- one in front and one in back. It was launched from a catapult on the Potomac River in October of 1903 and it fell like a sack of potatoes into the water.

Just nine days later, the Wright brothers flew a trim little biplane, with almost no fanfare, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Their advantage? They'd mastered the problem of controlling the movement of their plane by focusing on the environment in which they operated. Windy, uncontrolled, volatile, requiring the plan to harness those conditions.

The results were remarkable, and as they say, the rest is history.

In this episode, we're joined by Amy Benoit. An Orchestrator who is also focused on harnessing the often volatile, uncertain, and complex environment that salespeople operate within. While many (most?) organizations build out their monolithic sales engines with overlays, technology, and management support, Amy focuses on working "light and lean" to get moving and get results.

There's a lesson in this episode for all of us, what do you think?

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Intro 00:02  

Welcome to the inside sales enablement podcast. Where has the profession been? Where is it now? And where is it heading? What does it mean to you, your company, other functions? The market? Find out here. Join the founding father of the sales enablement profession Scott Santucci and Trailblazer Brian Lambert, as they take you behind the scenes of the birth of an industry, the inside sales enablement podcast starts now. 

Scott Santucci 00:34  

I'm Scott Santucci.


Brian Lambert 00:35  

I'm Brian Lambert. We're the sales enablement insiders. Our podcast is for sales enablement leaders looking to elevate their function, expand their sphere of influence, and increase the span of control within their companies


Scott Santucci 00:48  

together, Brian and I've worked in over 100 different kinds of sales enablement, initiatives as analysts, consultants or practitioners, we've learned the hard way. What works and maybe what's most important What doesn't,


Brian Lambert 01:01  

and our focus is on you as a sales enablement leader and orchestrator, as you know, sales enablement, leaders need to really operate in the gap between strategy and execution. And blend those tactics and strategies together to be mission and goal focused. prioritizing the right goals at the right moments, guiding the narrative by confronting reality, to drive results by design and not effort, so that you can unlock energy and create momentum by catalyzing change through collaboration. That's our list of what it takes to be a great orchestrator. And you heard about that on an earlier episode. On this podcast, we're gonna start with a centering story, just like we usually do, and I'm gonna hand it over to Scott and then we'll introduce our guests. Scott, what do you have for us?


Scott Santucci 01:46  

Okay, I love this, this centering story. So if you don't like it, or if people don't like it, so what i love it and you know, it's partially my podcast too. So I'm gonna start out with this. So First of all to give everybody a little bit of hint we're starting. We're starting out our story in the late 1860s. And have you ever heard Brian or Amy have someone named Samuel Pierpont Langley? Samuel Pierpont


Brian...

Inside: Sales Enablement
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