Episode 4 - A Hat-Trick of Unicorns: How Celine Grey Enabled Growth & Scale for 3 Start-Ups

business. This podcast is aimed at leaders from exec all the way down to line managers. Well hello and welcome to the Growth Workshop Podcast, I'm your host Matt Best and as ever, the wonderful Jonny Adams. And today we have a really exciting guest joining us, Celine Grey. Welcome to the podcast. Lovely to see you.

goes on. But I think what's really interesting about your story, particularly which we're looking forward to diving into today is how you've been responsible for driving growth and hyper growth within a number of those organizations and your massive three startups to unicorn status is pretty impressive. So we really look forward to getting into the meat of that conversation with you. But as is customary on the growth workshop podcast, we like to kind of start off with a bit

of a more generic question. So Celine did tell us something interesting about yourself.

whiteboarding stories then and messages in pictures. And that worked really, really well.

working at SBR together, which was just fantastic. I remember our trip to Berlin, which was awesome, where I learned all about Key Account Management from you, you are one of my heroes, and the people that I aspire to to be when working in consultancy. So thank you, Celine, for joining. And you have got, as Matt just described, an illustrious career

of different organizations that you've worked in. And I can just imagine it's a treasure trove of, of ideas and sort of things that you've experienced, but just for the listeners, could you just share a little bit more about the journey that you've been on, you know, all the way from sort of Oracle Rackspace, those types of businesses, you know, maybe a little pit stop at

SBR. And then maybe talk a little bit about some of the SAS organizations just so the listeners can understand a little bit more about your career.

of consultative selling came from the US. And then from there, it led me to live in London to live in the Middle East and to really explore my carriers as a team lead. One fun fact was when I was in gateway, we were selling PCs, right. That was my job in tech. And we had a floor with 450 salespeople, and then the PC market crisis hit and so you have that call center that is completely silent. I think this is one of the most scary thing that I've ever experienced. And so we didn't

get any leads. The phone was not ringing anymore, and we were in an inbound function. And so I decided to look into ASCII linens for report of customers that didn't order any PC for have over two years because then they would the account would not belong to anybody and they would need you started making money, right? And then we set up a team. And then you know, you had

the American spirit that enable you to do things. And then from there moved from hardware to software worked for companies like websites in IT security, where we were one of the first company selling SaaS products. So that was exciting. And then

more recently working into sustainability in HR tech. But as sales enablement leader, I've decided to take a fork in terms of being a sales director or, you know, leader of enablement to go that route, I could no longer do both as a sales leader that's no longer sustainable.

am from that dinner ace are slightly younger generation. But I went through all of these motion, it was still a little bit pushy, because we have a very different cultural etiquette in Europe. And the ability for me to be bold, for example, Websense to implement these practice on Europe and Middle East, which is what I was looking out for was very difficult. I mean, I can do so half of those things in the

Middle East trade they want they want on the door. And you know, France is different, Germany's different, Benelux is different. And so what I found is, with SBR, we were able to look after the whole of Europe, Middle East, and Asia with best practice that had the customer at the center of everything. And so I was really fond of working with the teams as well, because

you're very talented and smart group of people. But you have an insight in companies that very, very few people have, because of the expertise you have in navigating each of these companies and seeing those patterns, seeing the growth working in different sectors. But focusing solely on those revenue teams, that very, very few consultancy again, managed to gain. So as a customer, when I had that divergence towards more traveling and working as a consultant SBR was the logical

choice. I didn't approach any other consulting company at the time when I was looking.

different cultures. And it's been an absolute pleasure. And I'm really looking forward to unpacking a little bit more about how you've helped businesses grow. I mean, the first question that that really curious about and and when we do these podcasts, we love sort of looking at how our guests present themselves on LinkedIn articles they write. And for those that have been listening to the podcast, we had one of our great friends Dan more on a recent episode. And he spoke a

little bit about his book control influence. And except for now, funnily enough, looking at your LinkedIn profile, you've got the banner, which actually says focus on what you can control. And it's sprung to our mind, Matt and I that we thought would ask you a little question about why does your banner say that and what does that mean to you if you don't want to share?

And they're looking at their deal and I don't know. And so, that focus on what you can control. I'm a big fan of Dunmore, right? And so the circle of influence is something we actually train on day three of the onboarding. We give examples specifically to people of how they can do that, again to whiteboard showed person, but we really break it down in terms of you can't control the weather, what can you control

your response? And so it's that ability to be able to be in the driving seat and say 95% of what happens you know, there is external I cannot control so what is it that my The focus should be, and we give them those two little tricks, right? If there's a stress factor or something that is really prominent and driving the stress level up, can you control it? Yes or No? If you can go into it. That's it. If you can't,

what should your response be for this to disappear? And so we find that people are far more resourceful with giving them this to question rather than say, focus on the control. Well, because suddenly, they have all these resources that comes to their mind, then what is incredibly wise, right is a wizard, a consultant, an expert, you could listen to him for hours, this has been particularly defining in terms

of how he's explained those concepts. And you know, how we can bring those concepts to the younger generation is also incredibly worried about everything that they do in the workplace. So providing them with a safe space for them to be able to do that. So we associate that with actually the first pancake principle.

going to be perfect. So you need that psychological safety that tells you actually, I need to make a first one, in order to be able to get the second and the third and the fourth. And we often bring that with those circle of influence, in order to say to people, that's the first pancake, and that's okay, so now we have people all over the company going, Oh, by the way,

this is my first pancake, and you listen at it. And so we listen to coaching call and things like that, but people are quite proud of the first pancake, which is the way it should be right?

It was really strange, right. And so when I came in, the first thing I did is really have that focus on, I can't control the market. Right. So there's, there's a number of external elements that were really, really hitting us hard. One, we had a really strong local competition in that country that kept going, you know, by French, this is what we do, that was a bit of a sore, I can control what they say about us, I can't control, you know, their pricing, I can't control any of

that. The second thing is that some of the bigger competitor at the time, like SAP, and so on would give the product to the customer for free to prevent them from coming to buying from us, right. And so we had all the external pressure that made it really deflating when you on turn account and you're working it and you've got some of these economic factors coming in. So we went back to the drawing board and focused on what we

could really do. And the thing I did is really dive really deep into the data and look at what we could control and not control. Is that something in my control? Yes or no? That was that easy with the data? If it was not pocket? I kind of forgot about it, because I can't do anything about it, right? And then once we had this we focused on what would the people need to do in order to change that data? And so we started looking at the people behavior. And when you have the understanding of the

data, this is one of my moto, right? Understand data focus on people, the data doesn't change itself. It's the people who change the data. But the in order for the people to change the data, it's not about telling them, it's about leadership and really holding their hand on that journey, in terms of understanding why they're here, why it matters where we are, and if it sucks at some point in time and you're in a sticky situation, you may as well just be upfront and transparent with

a team. So you can have a critical conversation in terms of what can be done prioritization, etc. The other element, which is something I've, I've not encountered very often, I did a little of an exercise, right? We had an open floor, and for two days, I set up for a couple of hours a different time during the day, I set myself up at the very, very

end of that room. I was trying to work out how the team collaborate with everybody in the circulation of people and I noticed that people stipulated in every single aisle X set out in which covered three aisles, right is quite big. So it was like some kind of island where nobody ever goes to. So my team used to go out and try other team, but nobody came in here. It was almost like it's the team that is not successful. We don't want to mean go. But there was still great collaboration

between the individual people. But leadership didn't come. And I can control that, right. So I went to see my director and asked him to come every morning and say hello to my team, one by one. And so he did. And Wednesday, he came, and everybody was just very silent. And just wondering what he was doing, saying hello to everybody individually shaking hands and all the rest of it, it was just very awkward. And then they all turn to me within five seconds that you told him to come. And I

was like, I told him to come. Because you need to build a relationship with him, he needs to build a relationship with you. And within two days, it was normal, and it became a routine. So when we look at what we can control, it's not only the sales behaviors, everything that gravitates towards influencing people to be doing the right thing, the right behavior, because this is going to impact when they picked up the phone

and talk to customers. The mindset was very different. And it was very motivating, because that we had a lot of respect for that leader, a lot, a lot, a lot. And so it was something that was quite inspiring, for example, but a tiny thing to do. And so we did a lot of tiny things. That's amazing. The amount needed to being able to shift the market within nine months friend, we also were unplanned with hiring on plan

with partnership pipeline was built. I mean, it's not only the revenue numbers, you need to see all the symptoms of that were fixed on the process. It was quite impressive.

about seismic changes. It's the slight edges. It's these small, incremental things that you do. And it's fascinating as well, I'm sure you're seeing this now, in the SAS world, and across your sort of technology career, I have a similar career in technology and the evolution into into sort of agile delivery. And there's a lot to be learned, I think in sales and

go to market revenue teams when it comes to that. And it being okay to fail, right that celebrating some of those failures within reason, encouraging people to learn from that and to develop, you know, that first pancake analogy, I think it's a really great one. And then finally that that habit, use the word habit, right. And it's developing that. As soon as it becomes habit, it becomes quite natural people get comfortable with it and creating that environment for that habit

to succeed. And then that just self perpetuates. Right. And I think that's a really, really fantastic point. And clearly a real world example of rapid transformation through making very, very small but meaningful changes in the way that the organization operates. So that is excellent. And you mentioned at the top, when we were talking about your transition on your career and going from sales leader to hang on, I can't do everything anymore. So I'm going to focus on the enablement

arguably more important, right? Because you can reach more you can have more influence. I think if we asked five people in sales, what they thought sales enablement is you might get five answers, right? Very quite quite different ones. What is it for you what is sales enablement mean?

customer centric and not self centric. A lot of people in sales enablement focus on the marketing aspect of it also depends, you know, sales enablement I've been working for, I've never worked for marketing, but I've worked for sales ops, I've worked for Reb ops, I've worked for sales CRO. I've worked for HR. And sales enablement leader worked in many different function, right? And so everybody's going to have that slightly different bias, which is a bias towards, you

know, the areas of expertise where this is right. But at the end of the day, if you build a sales enablement practice, that is customer centric, is going to be fit for purpose for your company, for your salespeople, and they're going to grow quicker, and they're going to have skills that are adaptable and flexible. Because I operate in SAS startup and scaleup. I'm always thinking of, you know, you get that big acceleration,

then you get that plateau. And it's really hard, because you don't have the resources enough until the next you know, investment round or whatever, and you raise again. And so in the back of my mind, it's what is the purpose now? And that I can still skate it when the right time comes. It's a bit of a Rubik's. cube like you need to look at all the faces in order to be able to solve it.

experience and sales experience. And I often say to the people going back to, you know, the Circle of Influence CIA? Can you control pricing? No. Can you control the brand? Oh, at your micro level? Right? Can you control the features? No. Can you control the sales and customer experience? Yes, well, that's, you know, 50%, of why people reuse. So actually, you are in control of this. But the enablement practice needs to be

centered around the customer. In order for this to happen, not around the cellar.

grow, you also need to retain clients. So that's your second and third one. And finally, the last one is cost efficiency and cost reduction. Right. So we heard a lot of growth at all costs, which when the economy change started, you know, being very, very difficult for company and they started making a lot of redundancies. So cost efficiencies, the ability to do more with the same amount of money. And cost reduction is looking at my costs and reducing that. So that's how our company

grow. And I think as enablement leaders, we have to understand that because we are going to be able to enable expansion, we are enabling customer acquisition, we are enabling customer attention. And we may be in cost efficiency by making sure that people are enabled with the right tools and process in order to be productive and efficient. So companies are looking a lot, for example, at sales productivity right now, right? So as revenue team in a SAS world, and startup and scaleup,

you're the forefront of bringing that revenue. And doing all of this is a reasonable, reasonable amount of pressure to be able to perform in a short amount of time. And so what it means is that as an enablement practice, you need to really focus on what do people need to do in order to be successful right now, that is still going to be scalable. So that's your competency and your skills. Are they doing it? Are they doing the right activity?

are they burning themselves out doing A to D that is not yielding any result? What does good look like? Even what good looks like is often missing out of a lot of companies, right? So if we don't have a benchmark, how do you know that you're going to hit it a bit like trying to play darts without a

dartboard? Right? And finally, what are the tools and processes that are going to enable your team to be productive, but also if you know what to do, and you're doing loads of it, and you don't have a system, then effectively your customer experience going back to the customer is going to suffer? Right? So the enablement practice, we need to make sure that everything we do is fit for purpose in in that aspect. And it's scalable. It requires sacrifice click on to everything.

costs. Now, I'm curious, is it I mean, there's a lot of things there, one might suggest that various different parts of the business is going to have a focus on one over the other. I'm thinking, you know, CFOs, may be looking at costs, because that's perhaps easier. And you've got a CCO who's focused on those middle two, and maybe the CEO who's thinking, Oh, we can grow through acquisition. If you've looked at those sorts of businesses that you've helped be successful in this hyper growth.

Were there one or two of those things that you found had the greatest influence or is it literally down to the circumstances of each individual organization?

amount of time. Right now, companies are not so much or fewer companies able to do that, because investors have changed the metrics that they're going to measure company towards because of the changing environment. So the environment in which you operate is very important. The market in which you operate is very important as well. So what does customer acquisition look like? Is it transactional? Are you going to do your product or service? Or are you going to need like

massive sales team? And so one of the challenge we have as enablement is, you know, first sales organization come to us with solution rather than problem. So you have to actually be a consultant and really ask them so that you make sure you're not solving something with the wrong solution.

600 and 51st. of all, if you don't mind, you know, Is it crazy, as exciting? Is it disorganized? Or what does it sound like was it feel like?

right people. And so hiring the right people, people who are highly collaborative, really understanding. So oysters got a great understanding of their ideal customer profile. So they can go after this rather than waste time in anywhere. They have phenomenal sales team and people who are spread geographically, they have incredible ways of working in a distributed manner. So the way they work, the effectiveness, the productivity is phenomenal that I've learned so much being

in that organization. And then the focus in terms of enablement, give you an idea, we hired an enablement team, right to be able to support that growing organization. And we built 11 streams of onboarding for 11 different job roles in less than two months. Wow. That's what it looks like.

early on when you've got a team of 510 salespeople fast. You know, it depends again of the complexity of the of the technology, right? If you have a product that is reasonably transactional, and you've got some good marketing process around Did you can get away without having too much of it depends on the competitiveness of the market, there's a number

of other factors that are going to fit into this. There's a number of studies and surveys that have proven the ROI of enablement, in accelerating that gross, the ability to be able to have less teething problem and also to facilitate that scale. So that you know, you don't have to rip and replace, I see a lot of rip and replace in young company where they put something it's fit for purpose, they rip the whole thing and they put

something else. And only because there's not been any thought about how could they have put that first process in the first place? Well, that first skills or training or tool in a way that didn't need rip and replace. We see that in sales tech, for example, the sales tech stack is incredible. And we see a lot of rip and replace tech. And actually, is it that the tech is not working or is in the tech badly enabled or badly embedded or not adopted? I was like, oh, it's not working.

Let's rip and replace. And I think enablement in that aspect really helps with the cost efficient and see of that, but also the ability to be able to grow the business sustainably.

great. We've got a professional service firm, or a financial service firm in the middle of bank in London, we've done it this way. And this is the way that we've always done it. And actually sales is a dirty word. When should they be thinking about sales enablement function? And how do they overcome this sort of sales is fine. And adopting a sales or commercial function that can enable the business might be valuable?

cost of acquisition of each of your client. And so suddenly, you start getting into those muddy waters, right. And also using, I think, examples of other companies that have absolutely nailed it. And that word of sales consultants is exactly that. It's somebody who's got the expertise in whatever they're doing in terms of professional services, and is able to diagnose, it's basically a patient lying on the on the

hospital bed, and a surgeon coming in with an X ray. And saying to the patient, I have fixed, you work in red with Photoshop. And so what typically happens is, companies have got an issue, they fix it in one way, shape, or form, and they photoshopped it. So the underlying issue is still there, they're not solving the problem, they're throwing money at it,

right. And so when you have a salesperson is acting as a trusted adviser was consultative was not mind, push themselves into the face of the customers and is able to go and do a diagnosis that is going to enable for proper solution to be able to be done, you suddenly build a lot more relationship or a stronger bridge in between your company and that company. And I think most CEO, and my C level executive can understand that because they out of everybody, these people want to

work with business partners. And so sales doesn't become that dirty function. And also the ability to be able to differentiate yourself as a salesperson, I think today, it's so easy to differentiate yourself because everybody's doing the same thing. And so by doing something that is different and elevated, by default, you're going to have the customers here.

stock one from Salesforce as a smart idea. And then we'll just reorganize our whole organization in that way, or we'll bring people in and we'll just have them shadow and then they can be really, really effective. In my experience, you know, this, there's so many benefits to having a well defined approach and process. We talk about it a lot. When we think about onboarding and bringing new people into the business and new people into a function. Imagine a sales

function with a poor onboarding, program and process. And that's where, again, sales enablement can help craft the way and define a bit of a roadmap for what that can look like bringing people in giving them the right support, hiring to the right competencies and capabilities, structuring the team in the right way that's helped facilitate that growth from the ground up, as you say, and not saying that that's a problem for us when we're at 200. People will actually do it right from

the start. We don't end up with sticky tape and blue tack holding our organization together. But we actually get a well crafted, well built organization and sales function.

contributor. I'm one of five people. I have a manager then I moved a team of 10 I moved to being a team lead and I don't get 85% of sales managers do not get any formal training before A become a leader. So we entrust the people who are going to deal again with our customers, right? Somebody who is going to do the best that they can absolutely given. But if they've had a great leader, maybe they will be able to emulate some of these leadership best practice, maybe in the right context, right?

Loads of maybe, if they've had bad leadership example, for sure, they will emulate some of those, as well. And so this is why I call that a roulette, right? Because you don't really know whether it's going to be black or white. And the enablement of leadership early on, and the alignment on what the sales methodology should be, what the messaging should be, what the cadence of meetings should be, what the activity looks like, what the competency framework is, what are some of

the tech stack that we're going to prioritize? How are we going to enable all of these questions are massively important? Our role is to understand the vision of the sales leader and consult with them in order to be able to align because we have to align on what that looks like for them, we're enabling them. But enabling the leaders is going to be a lot easier because otherwise you won't get out of it. Right? You just have silos.

been under in terms of leadership. And then I started seeing from the team, emails that were bold, red letters, leaders, that is the most atrocious ways of leadership, right? And neglect from individual and all of that, right. But that, but then all the screaming and shouting and all the rest of it. And so, to me, this is a perfect example of completely incompetent leadership, but then not doing it as bad intention. I don't think it's a bad attended

person, or at least I don't want to be left to right. I think it's just badly enable that those people have got to find the customers. So brand and reputation revenue cost process, internal hardship as well, for every single one, employee brand, hourglass, those review. Were not raving in that country

by that. Good, right. Yeah, the cost of hiring. So we had what I called the revolving door, we hired people fired people, we hired people fired people hired peep, and then eventually also one of the metrics that after nine months we managed to achieve is we had the highest retention of all the sales team on the floor.

so much really valuable insight with us. And with the listeners, we've thoroughly enjoyed having you it just to capture some of those key points, right, those four pillars of growth and those four key levers of growth, rather, that's helped you enabling those organizations in scaling up and then just talking

about some of those slight edges, right? There's little things sometimes big but a lot of the times just little changes that have helped you be successful that our listeners to this podcast can can surely benefit from So on behalf of Johnny and I and the growth workshop podcast, we'd like to thank you for joining us today. It's been fantastic. We wish you a great rest of your day and look forward to seeing you again soon.