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As Vice President, Mike Wright's core initiative is to share Acumen Learning's story with purpose and passion to truly enable, rally, and champion the world's best employees to make their work more meaningful. He remains convinced that every employee, no matter their role or their experience, can benefit from customized strategy, finance, and business acumen training.

Mike Wright

As a learning and development leader, you’re uniquely positioned to build business acumen across your organization.

The Case for Business Acumen and Our Best Idea for Building It

Now is the time to put a right skilling strategy in place to show your organization that L&D can make an impact.

Enable Right-Skilling to Add Business Value

December 2015 - TD Magazine

Hard Stuff Done Right

(Alexandria, VA) September 14, 2021—In The Building Blocks of Sales Enablement (ATD Press, September 2021), leading sales enablement expert Mike Kunkle introduces a comprehensive framework to help anyone who wants to build or evolve a sales enablement function that truly drives results. Delivering a holistic and strategic approach, Kunkle focuses on a formal maturity model, with 12 core sales enablement building blocks supported by systems thinking and cross-functional collaboration. Kunkle aligns four key systems to get results—sales hiring, sales readiness, sales training, and sales management (including coaching). Kunkle’s framework is timely given the complexities of today’s fast-paced world. Implementing the Building Blocks framework requires critical thinking, creative thinking, and systems thinking, thus ensuring a thorough, multidimensional, and cross-functional approach that is both seller- and buyer-centric.Kunkle advises two main audiences on how best to use the framework and book. According to Kunkle, “First consider a problem you are trying to solve—from implementing a new sales methodology and struggling to get adoption, or buyers not responding well to the content reps are sharing, to reps pitching products rather than using a buyer-centric, problem-based prospecting approach. Then using the results of the assessments, you can start implementing or refining the appropriate building blocks that best help you close the gaps identified. Similarly, if you’d prefer to do the work on your own, you can use the building blocks or the four systems in this book as a diagnostic, assessing your organization against the best practices to create an action plan.”For sales enablement leaders, he advises, “Use the building blocks as a diagnostic tool and a road map. Assess your function against the full building blocks framework to determine what you are currently doing very well, and where you can improve. For example, if you don’t have a charter, start there and create one. Are you implementing the correct sales methodology? Getting the methodology right is critical. Are you launching a new product? Prioritizing is key.”“No matter your role, no one can implement all building blocks or systems at once. It’s like the old joke about how you eat an elephant—one bite at a time. Using a diagnostic approach and the logic outlined here, work to get the building blocks and systems in place—one (or two) at a time—based on your resources, time, and budget and always with an eye toward impact and supporting strategic objectives.”Kunkle’s framework is not meant just for people who hold the title of sales leader or sales enablement leader; it is also for cross-functional stakeholders (in marketing, sales operations, legal, and finance, and in the C-suite, as examples). Kunkle explains, “Even if you don’t have personal responsibility for hiring or product messaging or sales process or sales compensation, you want to be working cross-functionally with those other leaders to ensure the sales force has what they need and is operating at the highest-possible level. You’ll want to read this with your team to see how you can best support enablement.”About the AuthorMike Kunkle is a respected sales transformation architect and internationally recognized sales training and sales enablement expert. He is an experienced corporate leader and consultant who helps companies drive dramatic revenue growth. He also is the vice president of sales enablement services for SPARXiQ, where he advises clients, writes, speaks at conferences, develops and leads webinars, designs sales training courses, delivers workshops, and designs sales enablement systems that get results.About ATD and ATD PressThe Association for Talent Development (ATD) is the world’s largest association dedicated to those who develop talent in organizations. ATD’s members come from more than 120 countries and work in public and private organizations in every industry sector. ATD Press publications are written by industry thought leaders and offer anyone who works with adult learners the best practices, academic theory, and guidance necessary to move the profession forward. For more information, visit td.org/books.The Building Blocks of Sales EnablementISBN: 9781952157622 | 200 Pages | Paperbackhttps://www.td.org/product/book--the-building-blocks-of-sales-enablement/112104To order books from ATD Press, call 800.628.2783.To schedule an interview with Mike Kunkle, please contact Kay Hechler, ATD Press senior marketing manager, at khechler@td.org or 703.683.8178.

Use the Building Blocks Framework to Drive Sales Results

As enablement professionals, if we want to earn the mythical “seat at the table” and deliver real organizational impact, we need to move beyond random acts of enablement and reactive approaches and only providing baseline services. Whatever name we go by, I believe the enablement leaders of the future will operate as performance consultants.The data is on our side. Multiple research studies show the impressive effect of sales enablement done at the formal maturity level with a charter. Win rates and quota attainment improve. Yet, still many enablement leaders struggle to reach that maturity level and make such an impact.Why?Because it’s not always easy. Whether they work as an executive, a senior sales leader, a frontline sales manager, a collaborating function, or another sales support role, the goal is to improve sales performance. However, they don’t usually agree on how to do it or the priority of the initiatives.In this two-part series, I will share advice about how to select and prioritize sales enablement initiatives to deliver the maximum impact.Start With Gap and Impact Analyses“Begin with the end in mind” has always been great advice for sales performance work.Needs analysis is a concept from instructional systems design. The ADDIE model is an acronym for analyze, design, develop, implement, and evaluate, and the A is a needs or gap analysis (sometimes called a front-end analysis). The concept of considering what is, what should be, and what will be comes straight from the related discipline of performance consulting. These practices serve us well in sales enablement.Performance ConsultingPerformance consulting is a systematic and holistic approach to improve workplace performance and achieve business goals. This approach:Is grounded in analytics, diagnostics, and root cause analysisConsiders a broad array of organizational and individual factors that influence human performanceIncludes selection, design, and development of the most appropriate solution to solve the identified performance problemImplements those solutions using proven-effective practicesIncorporates change practices, including communication, follow-through, measurement, analysis, evaluation, and adjustment to ensure resultsATD’s human performance improvement model is a great one for performance consulting.Figure 1: The ATD Human Performance Improvement Model (click here for a larger version)The Situation Assessment FrameworkTo conduct gap and needs analyses for sales performance work, I start with a situation assessment. This is a framework we teach in Modern Sales Foundations for discovery, but it has roots in performance consulting and works well for this purpose.Start by detailing the current state, with challenges, opportunities, and impacts. Then detail the desired future state with outcomes and priorities, as shown in Figure 2. That allows you to diagnose what’s needed to close the gap between the states and determine the effect of resolving the current state impacts and achieving the desired state outcomes.Figure 2: The Situation Assessment (click here for a larger version)Avoid the temptation to jump into problem solving in this stage. The closest you should get is detailing the needs, and even those should be factual statements and solution agnostic.Solution DesignNow it’s time to resolve the challenge or capitalize on the opportunity. In the ATD model above, refer to the stages titled Influence Analysis, Solution Selection, and Solution Planning and Implementation.This topic could be a book, so for this post, I’ll offer two resources I’ve found useful.Figure 3: Performance Analysis and Solutions (click here for a larger version)I adapted the Solution Type chart from Ferdinand F. Fournies’ work on coaching. In addition to training and coaching, it offers insight into other reasons for nonperformance and the appropriate solutions. This Solution Content chart is limited to sources of training and coaching content. It doesn’t address all sources of solutions for other performance issues but should be helpful.Another resource I’ve used frequently is Mager and Pipe’s Performance Analysis Flow Chart from their book Analyzing Performance Problems, which is also part of The New Mager Six-Pack. You can see a version of the chart here and purchase the latest version and job aids from the Mager Consortium. These resources should get you started down the right path.The most important thing to take away from these resources is the importance of selecting solutions that will directly resolve the challenge at the root cause level. As one example, nothing is more frustrating or less effective than applying training as the solution to a problem that training will not solve.Next time, I’ll continue with part 2, which will focus on prioritizing the solutions discussed here.In the interim:Watch for the upcoming part 2 in this series.Join me at the ATD SELL 2021 conference on October 12–13 in Las Vegas. I’ll be speaking on this topic on Tuesday, October 12.Check out my new book from ATD Press, The Building Blocks of Sales Enablement, on Amazon and ATD (with a member discount). It launches in September but is available for preorder now.Explore ATD’s certificates or programs related to this topic: Sales Enablement, Improving Human Performance, Master Performance Consultant, Needs Assessment, Consulting Skills, and Change Management.

Selecting and Prioritizing Sales Enablement Initiatives for Impact: Part 1

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With the accessibility of artificial intelligence (AI) changing the way we work, the value of human soft skills is becoming clearer. As AI takes on time-consuming tasks‌ like ‌streamlining processes or automating tedious work, it’s ‌human skills like communication, empathy, creativity, and critical thinking that create organizations people want to work at and where innovation thrives. These soft skills help us build genuine connections, collaborate effectively, and guide AI’s use toward outcomes that serve an organization’s goals, employees, and customers. Below are five insights on the importance of soft skills as AI usage grows.AI Tools Need Guidance From Our Soft SkillsSkills like empathy and communication allow us to understand nuances that algorithms miss, making them essential in the AI age.Here’s why soft skills will remain at the center of future workplaces: Empathy builds trust: AI can predict and analyze, but it can’t genuinely understand. Empathy enables us to see the world from another’s perspective, fostering trust and understanding that no AI system can fake.Critical thinking for better decisions: While AI can crunch data to provide insights, it’s up to humans to critically evaluate outputs, question assumptions, and ensure decisions align with ethical and human standards.Creativity that breaks the mold: AI can generate ideas and even mimic artistic styles, but true creativity goes deeper. It’s about interpreting emotions, telling authentic stories, and sparking innovation. Pairing AI with human creativity ensures outcomes resonate as intended rather than creating a manufactured feel.Emotional Intelligence Is a Game-Changer in the AI AgeEmotional intelligence (EI, or often called EQ)—our ability to understand, manage, and use emotions effectively‌— is at the core of many soft skills. Take empathy, for example. It’s how we understand others’ feelings without imposing our own biases. While AI can translate languages or summarize feedback, it lacks the emotional nuance to detect sarcasm, cultural quirks, or the full weight of someone’s experience. Humans, equipped with EI, can bridge these gaps, ensuring interactions with colleagues, customers, or an AI agent remain meaningful.Human Oversight Matters to Prevent AI BiasAI isn’t perfect‌—it’s only as good as its programming. Embedded biases can lead to outputs rife with inaccuracies and cultural insensitivity. This is why human oversight is a critical component of AI usage. Professionals equipped with cultural awareness and emotional intelligence help fine-tune how AI serves different audiences, ensuring outputs align with inclusivity, ethics, and relevance.Additionally, the way we design prompts for generative AI tools can make or break their effectiveness. This process, called prompt engineering, is becoming a key skill. It requires a mix of technical accuracy and emotional intelligence.Soft Skills Build Better AI IntegrationsOrganizations that prioritize soft skills in conjunction with AI can find greater value in their AI use—not just in increased productivity, but also in employee engagement and brand authenticity. Here’s how:Blend AI with human creativity: Use AI as an ideation partner, but let human judgment and authenticity take the lead. Whether using AI for designing marketing campaigns or brainstorming new organizational strategies, the always-nearby human touch ensures authenticity for your organization’s values and customer needs.Adapt to global audiences: Organizations that use AI successfully know to localize AI outputs. They pay close attention to cultural differences to build trust in diverse markets. 

Why Soft Skills Matter More Than Ever in the AI Era

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