Meet Whitney
Challenge the "lacking indicators" to up-level your organization.
Whitney Sieck, CPTD
Strategist, speaker, trainer, enthusiast
While my title places me as a Revenue Enablement Leader at a hyper-growth SaaS company, I am a collaborator, trainer, strategist, mentor and lifelong lover of learning (and alliterations). My personal mission is to not just leave my mark on the world, but to have my work create a ripple effect amplifying excellence in others. I view the enablement function to be an investment to maximize human potential for customer-facing organizations. With a focus on scaling a one-to-many approach, there is nothing more gratifying than seeing tangible revenue results impacted by investing in people.
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The foundation
As the industry is still seeking a cohesive definition, a career in enablement is yet to be top-of-mind when children dream of their future jobs. (Heck, as a child, I wanted to be a pilot so I could fly my parents to Neverland - the mythical land where you stay young forever, not Michael Jackson's infamous ranch.) Looking back, I may have laid the groundwork long before I recognized this was my path. In middle school, I became an award-winning documentarian focused on educating the world on topics including Vietnamese immigration and the invention of amorphous silicon. In high school, I stepped down from my role as captain of the volleyball team and stepped up to be captain of the speech and debate team. I also led our school's orientation program (read high school "onboarding"). In college, I started a campus leadership development program that is now an accredited course listed in the curriculum catalog.
The realization
My parents had always quoted Confucius: "choose a job you love and you'll never work a day in your life." I started my career as a regional sales leader who was recognized for making sales training and the dreaded role-plays fun. After multiple long nights at the office, quarters of crushing quota and a slew of promotions, I was having strong hamster wheel vibes. I ran a reflective exercise and realized that training my team was the part of my job that didn't feel like work. It was so rewarding to watch the team implement something they learned in training and find success using the new tactic or strategy. The next day after my realization, I gave 90 days notice to my boss and offered to hire and train my replacement as I started my entrepreneurial debut conducting sales and customer service training for local small to mid-sized businesses.
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The evolution
Being a business owner is hard - I learned that quickly. I recognized my own inefficiencies and knew I needed to be educated on best practices. I landed a job at a Big Four energy company that has a Center of Excellence for learning, development and process improvement. I facilitated training for their sales academy, rolled out enterprise selling methodologies globally for over 7,000 sellers, became Lean Six Sigma certified and was introduced to the Association of Talent Development to master adult learning theory. Since then, I've achieved the highest certification in my field, started several enablement functions from scratch, spoken at a multitude of industry events and support the community as a local chapter leader of the Sales Enablement Society. I've learned so much on this journey that has only increased my passion for the industry. I'm excited to see what's next and share what I learn along the way.