The People of Procore: Alex Jaffe, Director of Sales Enablement

In this series, we spend time getting to know some of the people who make up the Procore culture.

Alex Jaffe has been with Procore for almost four years where he’s been growing and developing Procore’s Sales Enablement team.

What does Sales Enablement do at Procore?

Procore's sales enablement mission is to enable our sales team to sell more, faster, and easier. We actively ensure the success of the sales organization by sponsoring and driving strategic sales initiatives, creating partnership across teams, and aligning priorities to achieve revenue goals. We concentrate on creating learning and development opportunities for our sales team, which center on training, communication, content, and technology.

A lot of what we do is to help foster excellent conversation and experience between Procore and prospective clients. We want future clients to be well-informed with the right knowledge to make the best decisions when joining Procore. We help our sales team do their best work so our clients can do theirs. Procore has invested heavily in enablement as a leadership-driven priority and recognized it as a critical part of creating a strategic advantage for our sales team.

Tell us about founding the online blog Sales Enablement Hub.

Sales enablement as a function is still evolving across the industry, therefore many companies often approach it differently. Many sales enablement groups are focused on how to define what sales enablement is and what it should look like rather than discussing ways to accomplish its primary goal: to enable revenue. There’s an opportunity to share best practices from other leading experts, and what we are doing at Procore, with other aspiring sales enablement professionals.

Sales Enablement Hub launched in May 2018 and started with the first piece Sales Enablement: Stop Defining, Start Building. The feedback thus far has been overwhelming, and it’s evident that this community of professionals is hungry to connect, discuss, and collaborate on what we are trying to build at Procore.

Sales Enablement Hub is growing, and we’re starting to create resources, shared best practices, and opportunities to connect with professionals across the world.

What does training look like for sales employees?

Our sales leaders are strong advocates for sales success through mastery, continuous learning, skill development, and empowering employees with the resources to do their best work. To promote a culture of learning, Sales Enablement supports three types of training for sales employees at Procore: new hire onboarding, ongoing development, and access to on-demand training.

All new employees begin their journey for their first week at Procore alongside other new employees in our company Orientation. Following Orientation, all sale employees attend either our Sales or Sales Development Bootcamp. We want our teams to ramp up quickly and effectively so that individuals are confident when interacting with customers immediately, familiar and set up with the technology they’ll be using, and excited about their journey with Procore Sales. The days are long and intense, but I think one of the greatest things about Bootcamp is the sense of comradery that is built when going through this experience together. We’re a close-knit team, and Bootcamp is just the beginning.

Ongoing and on-demand training focuses on four key competencies: selling, product, industry, and technology. We use the online learning and enablement platform, MindTickle, to provide our team with shared best practices, and access to the latest materials and on-demand courses to help develop specific skill sets. It is essential for employees to understand how their career path at Procore will progress, so we’ve created a learning program aligned with the mastery that can help an employee get to where they want to go.

How do you lead and encourage your team to grow?

I have a core set of principles that define the type of leader I aspire to be; the most important principle for me is to lead by example. As our Sales Enablement team has grown, I’ve been through the trenches of each of our enablement roles and would never ask someone to do something I wouldn’t do myself.

It is my goal to provide growth opportunities for every member on our enablement team. I think that is a balance between receiving context and guidance vs. stretching to step out of our comfort zones and try something new and challenging. Working individually on a strategic project is taking away an opportunity from someone on my team to learn, especially if I’ve already developed the involved skills and thinking process. My approach is to include my team on projects early on so we can create strategies, execute them together, and develop as a team.

How did you get started in Sales Enablement?

I joined Procore on the Sales Development team, and was eager to help wherever I could to advance the efficiency of our team. That’s when Dennis Lyandres, our EVP of Sales, and Dan Miller-Smith, my manager at the time, tasked me with building out our first sales playbook. I was excited to work on this project, and over time expanded scope with other sales enablement initiatives.

Following the launch of the playbook, Dennis and Dan pitched me on the alternative career path at Procore doing sales enablement. We were going to address the challenges of the sales team through enablement and make sure everyone was set up to succeed, and I was eager to get started. We started with benchmarking, research, software for sales productivity, and have been continuously growing the Sales Enablement team since. Sales Enablement has turned into a passionate, long-term career path for me, and I am excited to see where it goes.

Procore is hiring a Senior Sales Training Specialist to join our Sales Enablement team. Find your dream job and get the chance to work with outstanding people. Check out the open opportunites we have here.