LU 378: How Sales Enablement Has Evolved with Elay Cohen, CEO of SalesHood (podcast)

Elay Cohen, CEO, and co-founder of SalesHood joins us on the show today to talk sales enablement platforms, dominating a category, and boosting sales through collaboration! SalesHood is a sales enablement platform that has been at the forefront of its niche as it evolved from its early adoption phase to a broad base market offering! We hear about the platform’s genesis where Elay realized the benefit of doing sales enablement to help companies grow while he was Senior VP of Productivity at SalesForce. From there, we learn what sales enablement actually means before Elay talks about the many companies who have experienced hyper-growth since adopting their platform. Elay weighs in on how SalesHood makes their money as well as shares metrics about their growth rates, ARR, and more! We also get into the effects of COVID on the success of SalesHood and their clients, and how the platform is perfectly suited to thrive at this time of increased migration to virtual. Elay does a great job of explaining the story behind how they arrived at a product to market fit, which leads into the topic of creating and dominating a category, and the role Elay’s book, Enablement Mastery, as well as his initiatives to create communities around sales enablement have played in this. Wrapping up, we hear Elay’s thoughts on his favorite book, tools, and CEOs so make sure to listen in and hear it all!

TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES:

• [00:41] Before we jump into today’s interview, please rate, review, and subscribe to the Leveling Up Podcast!
• [00:15] Introducing Elay Cohen and SalesHood, a sales enablement platform.
• [00:38] What led up to SalesHood; the need to build a system that helped with scaling.
• [01:40] What sales enablement is and how it helps teams boost sales through collaboration.
• [02:35] Examples of companies using SalesHood that have experienced hyper-growth.
• [04:12] How SalesHood makes money using a price per seat model.
• [05:09] Metrics for revenue, growth, employee count, ARR, users, customers, and more.
• [07:49] How COVID has helped SalesHood by enabling their clients to go virtual.
• [08:36] The two-plus year journey taking SalesHood to product to market fit.
• [13:17] Creating/dominating a category and why Elay wrote Enablement Mastery.
• [17:18] The value of creating a community around a category to dominate it.
• [19:43] Elay’s book recommendation and what he’s learning from That Will Never Work.
• [20:47] Essential software tools Elay uses.
• [21:43] Why Elay is such a fan of Gordon Ritter, Jason Lemkin, and Carmel Jud.
• [23:39] The best way for people to find Elay online and connect with him.

Resources From The Interview:

• Elay Cohen
• Elay Cohen Email
• Enablement Mastery
• Arthur Do
• SalesForce
• DocuSign
• RingCentral
• Sage
• Verizon
• Ron Baden
• Domo
• Adobe Sign (EchoSign)
• Fortify
• Parker Harris
• Marc Benioff
• Telogis
• Arjun Gupta
• John Hopkins University
• Northern Illinois University
• University of Texas at Austin
• Stanford University
• Dreamforce
• Jira
• Google Drive
• Google Docs
• Google Slides
• Google Spreadsheets
• Gordon Ritter
• Emergence Capital
• Jason Lemkin
• Carmel Jud
• Rising International
• Must read book: That Will Never Work

Leave Some Feedback:

• What should I talk about next? Who should I interview? Please let me know on Twitter or in the comments below.
• Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review here
• Subscribe to Leveling Up on iTunes
• Get the non-iTunes RSS Feed

Connect with Eric Siu: 

• Growth Everywhere
• Single Grain
• Eric Siu on Twitter