Uber for Business: What It Is and How It Works

Alex Kracov: Okay, so you joined Uber for Business back in 2021. And I'd love to start today's episode talking a little bit about like what exactly is Uber for Business? Because, you know, we all use Uber, right, to get in the car and take it places. But I never really thought about there's like a business side of it. So can you explain that at the top?

Corine Varga: Yeah, absolutely. So Uber for Business is the enterprise layer that sits on top of the consumer app that you, myself, everybody pretty much knows and loves. But basically, it's there for the purpose of helping organizations manage and optimize their mobility and their meal spend. So again, all of the ways that their employees are probably already using Uber right now, just using their personal accounts and charging to their corporate cards — now with Uber for Business, they can use that all on a centralized platform, making it an easier experience for them from an expense perspective, and then also giving the visibility and controls back to the organization to see how their employees are spending on our app.

Alex Kracov: And so what's an example of it? Like, I guess I dropped my car off recently to get fixed and instead of giving me like a rental car or whatever, they just gave me like some Uber credits to go home with. Is that kind of like an Uber for Business use case? Are there other ones that are really popular?

Corine Varga: Yeah, that's a really great use case that we have with the companies that we work with on the automotive side. So, yeah, that experience of going to a dealership, getting your car serviced — where previously either they called a car for you or gave you a loaner car — now another way that they can service their clients is by giving an Uber voucher and getting you back home and then bringing you back to the dealership to go pick up your car. So that's an excellent use case. Another really common one is like airlines. Again, when any of us have experienced those disruptions on flights and you're like, well how am I going to get to the hotel? Everyone's really familiar with a taxi voucher, but now airlines can also give you an Uber voucher to take an Uber to the hotel, maybe if you have to stay the night, and then come back for your flight the next day.

Corine's Career Progression at Uber

Alex Kracov: So what did the enablement function and the sales team look like when you joined the team, I guess, five years ago?

Corine Varga: Yeah, much smaller. We were a mighty team of five when I joined, but have definitely grown our team in conjunction with the size of our go-to-market team. As our sales team has grown and doubled over time, so have we on the enablement side.

Alex Kracov: And can you share like roughly how big the sales team was? Do you remember like how big it was when you joined and where it went to?

Corine Varga: Yeah, so I'm going to just go because I know we've at least doubled. We're around 700 or so go-to-market heads right now. So at least three to four hundred when I first joined across all different roles from AEs to AMs at the time, some of our implementation roles, BDRs, for example. So all of those roles have exponentially grown across our go-to-market team.

Alex Kracov: Man, one enablement person per like a hundred sales folks. That's a lot to manage. And so you personally moved up — like you've had a fantastic career at Uber for Business. I think you started as individual contributor and now you're leading global enablement in about four years, a really short amount of time. Can you kind of walk us through that progression? Like what was it like moving from an IC to a manager and then director to kind of global head? What's enablement look like in all those different stages?

Corine Varga: Yeah, different but also very much the same. I've been really fortunate in my career here at U4B — I'll use U4B as the acronym for it, saying Uber for Business just flows a little bit easier. But I've been really lucky. I think it's been a combination of really focusing on the work that matters over my time as an IC. When I first started, I was very much focused on product and systems and tools enablement. Over time, again, seeing where the work matters and where to kind of solve the biggest business problems, I moved into what we called our go-to-market programming pillar to solve things like playbooks and getting more consistency in the way that our roles are functioning. So it's afforded the opportunity to move there. And then ultimately moving into our global lead — a bit of timing, and also kind of proving that the work that I've done over the last few years has been impactful. Now being able to lead our team in driving the enablement strategy.

I think the biggest change for me in moving from IC to manager and then now from global lead has been the very conscious practice of stepping away from the tactical work. It's very easy for me to go into task-oriented mode — let's solve this problem, let's just produce and build something — to now taking that extra step back to say, is this the work that we should be doing? How does this align back to the business priorities? Helping my team realize how their work relates back to business priorities. So taking that more strategic and leadership lens has been the biggest change from IC to now leading our global enablement team.

Alex Kracov: And do you have an example of that of like a business priority and you've kind of built an enablement program around that, not you actually doing it yourself and maybe having your team do it?

Corine Varga: Yes, so I think the best example that's top of mind right now is the building of resources for our new role that we've built out for our growth AEs. So previously we only had the role of account executive, but over the last year and a half or so, two years, we've carved that team out into two teams — one team of account executives that are new business focused and another team that are focused on growth. And this was to solve the business priority of we're seeing that some white space was starting to move away on the new business side. And so how are we continuing to extract the most potential out of our existing clients and making sure that they're using us to the best of their potential, right? So this team is solely focused on expanding and increasing the incremental growth of these accounts. So with the new role comes new resources, new programming, new training, new onboarding. So that's been where we've had to focus on what are the foundational skills and programs and resources that we have to build for this new team and then continue to iterate on that as we've learned how this team has grown over the last two years. It was an experiment at the beginning, now we have a lot more data behind us and a little more understanding of what it actually takes for this role to be successful, and so our programming on the enablement side has had to evolve to respond to the changes that this role has seen.

How the Enablement Team Is Structured

Alex Kracov: Makes a ton of sense. And then on the enablement team side, I'd like to talk about that as well. Because you said the team has grown a ton over the past five years. Like maybe let's flash forward to today. Like how is the enablement team kind of structured? How many people are on the team? How do you think about dividing responsibilities? I think that'd be really helpful to just kind of hear for other enablement leaders who are listening and thinking about their own kind of team.

Corine Varga: For sure. When I first joined, I said, we were a team of five, a very small team that just kind of had certain programs that looked at enablement and how are we supporting our team holistically. But over time, as our team has grown and gotten a lot more nuanced, whether that's within specific role evolution or the growth in certain regions, we had to change the way our enablement team was structured. Over these last five years, we implemented the structure of central enablement and regional enablement. We have regional enablement leads that sit in market with the teams to really be on the ground with sellers, with their sales leadership, really being able to respond to those market nuances and specific needs and priorities that they're seeing at the market level. But then we also have our central enablement that's focused on the programs that we can optimize and scalably grow across all regions — the type of playbooks that we can have be the consistent way that we want our sellers to be working globally. So that's been the biggest change over the last few years: moving from just kind of a bunch of us doing a lot of things, some of it a little market specific, some of it global, to really having that structured central versus regional organization for how we're responding to the business needs.

Alex Kracov: Super interesting. And on the regional side, how much autonomy do they have versus the central team? Like if you mentioned the growth AE or account management kind of role — is it like, hey, we're doing this globally, but maybe you don't need to do it in your region? Or is it like you have to do it in your region but obviously mold it to your kind of practices? How much autonomy do the regional enablement folks have?

Corine Varga: They have quite a bit of autonomy. We always want to start from a global approach first, if it's possible and if it makes sense where a business problem is coming. And we think that this is a global problem, this is a global initiative that we can scale across all regions. We always want to start with our global framework, but our regional teams definitely have the autonomy and the ability to move quickly within their markets and respond to the priorities there. And I'd say where our biggest skill set comes in with our team is how often we're communicating from the central to the regional side on what we're all working on and being able to share those best practices — share, for example, if one regional enablement lead is doing something in one region, sharing that with others so that we can either identify, you know, this is probably a good scalable moment, or maybe in a particular region they're having the same problem too and they can share how they're responding to it. So they have a lot of autonomy to respond to their region, but we also want to be communicating to our larger team to see where we can scale and or expand specific best practices to different regions.

Alex Kracov: Like tactically, how does that feedback cycle work? Do you get on a call with all the regional folks and everyone kind of goes around the table and shares, or is it more one-on-one? Like how does it actually work in practice?

Corine Varga: Yeah, we have a weekly team meeting where we bring together everybody across all of our regions. We're all over the world, so sometimes it's late for others and early for some. But we have our weekly team meeting where we go around the horn and share the work that we're doing and the kind of big priorities that we're focused on. So that's one opportunity where we just all as a team, between central and regional, can come together and share the work. And then our regional leads also have their own weekly meeting as well where they huddle together and kind of share, mostly around onboarding best practices and coaching best practices, things like that. But they have that other moment where together they can share what's going on in their regions and see what can be pulled for other regions as well.

Alex Kracov: Yeah, it's a super interesting dynamic. Because I imagine in the US, like everyone knows about Uber. So the pitch is really different when it comes to selling Uber for Business. Internationally, I was in Mexico City and I took an Uber and it was awesome. But I assume there's some markets where it's like people are still learning like, what is Uber? And so the sales pitch is probably more education on Uber the brand, and then Uber for Business has to come second. Like it must look really different depending on what market you're going after.

Corine Varga: Definitely, it can either be very market specific — like this is a very specific issue that's happening in Latam, for example. Like invoicing is a hot topic in our Latin American market, getting that right. And so it's a very nuanced problem that our enablement lead and product teams have to figure out there. But then there's, I mean, across all sales teams, objection handling is a global issue. The actual practice of what the objection is might differ by market, but structurally, can we have a framework for how we handle and enable on objection handling? And then the regional leads can insert the market-nuanced objection that the team needs to handle. It's probably a lot of the same type of objections like cost control or duty of care or transparency and policies and things like that. We can kind of handle those type of topics globally, but then the very market-nuanced objections, the enablement leads in the region can then customize the content further.

Alex Kracov: Yeah, super interesting dynamic. And who would have thought invoicing would be a problem in Latin America? Yeah.

Corine Varga: You know, whatever, yeah, a lot of different issues usually come up somehow, so yeah.

Alex Kracov: Yeah, you only learn by starting to sell and figuring it out, you know?

Corine Varga: Exactly. Yeah, you just find out what matters to your customers at that point, and yeah, we just have very different problems to solve in every region, which is both exciting and obviously challenging.

Onboarding New AEs

Alex Kracov: Every enablement person is thinking about onboarding for their internal team. I'd love to talk about what the onboarding program looks like at Uber for Business. How do you think about training new AEs to go and sell Uber for Business?

Corine Varga: Yeah, so our onboarding program is structured right now as a mix of on-demand learning. We do a live bootcamp, but that's a virtual live bootcamp. So everybody's doing those sessions through Zoom, and that's a week-long process. And then follow it up with some manager coaching and some other activities that they need to complete as part of their whole collective onboarding experience. But our biggest focus with onboarding is always to how are we creating or helping our new hires be as productive as possible from day one, week one. They have huge expectations even from their first week to be calling on clients, and knowing that that can be uncomfortable — like I'm coming into a new company, I've never sold this before and you're telling me I have to go call a client. How can we set them up for success beforehand and then really give them all of the learning and tools to be able to make them more confident and successful as they start to stretch those activities across their ramping period.

Alex Kracov: And so you get them on the phone like right away calling their book of business. Like, is it literally week one? Yeah, that's cool.

Corine Varga: That's the expectation. Yeah, exactly. And so we've actually started a new process where the BDRs are — for those AEs that are starting — already starting to prospect before that AE's start date. So by the time that AE starts on their first day, they should already have a couple warmed up leads based on the activities from the BDR to accelerate their time to be able to create their first opportunity, get on the phone or send the email, get on the Zoom call, create their first opportunity and start to see that deal through.

Alex Kracov: You touched on a little bit, but what's the relationship between your team — enablement, who I assume is generally running onboarding — and then the new AE's manager? How do you think about your relationship with the manager in that first couple weeks of an AE's life at Uber for Business?

Corine Varga: Absolutely, it has to be a partnership. That's the only way that we can be successful. A lot of our enablement programs with onboarding and outside of onboarding, it's very critical that we have a strong partnership and clear responsibilities with our managers. We know that they have a ton of things on their plate and then adding some enablement-like functions on top of that is probably not what they signed up for. But where we try to set expectations from the beginning, we have manager protocols and their own onboarding guidelines of kind of the expectations that we set for them of what their role is during the onboarding process. They know when the new hire bootcamps are, they are filled in on the communications for all of the onboarding activities. So they are in lockstep with us there.

But I think one of the advancements or successes that we've had so far is sharing performance data with our managers from their cohort. So we do these what we call our new hire flash every month and give them visibility into how their new reps are performing 30, 60, 90 days in, how they're tracking towards the minimum performance expectations that we have, and being able to then work really closely with the manager — say, hey, so-and-so rep, they haven't done these activities, they haven't completed their onboarding curriculum yet. Or the positive — this new rep is killing it, they've listened to so many more calls than they're supposed to and they've already opened their first opportunity. So being able to give those insights back to managers, I think has really helped to strengthen the partnership and the enablement to manager expectations for new hires.

Alex Kracov: Yeah, makes a lot of sense. And as you said, it's got to be a complete partnership between your team and the managers. Because I imagine it's like, you can set up the programs and stuff, but at some point, like they got to grow up and go be an AE and then it's on the manager to kind of reinforce.

Corine Varga: 100%. Yeah, we have to have a good partnership with them.

Continuous Enablement and Always Boarding

Alex Kracov: And then beyond the initial new training, how does your team think about continuous education? I don't know if it's new product rollouts that are the priority and you're recertifying, but just generally how do you keep your sellers sharp post-training? How do you think about that part of your enablement?

Corine Varga: Yeah, I mean, we've always had kind of a continuous enablement program in that we have our monthly product update meetings and then we have things like ask the expert sessions where we bring in SMEs to run very topical trainings on something that's happening or like maybe a knowledge gap that's happening at the moment. So we've always done some type of continuous enablement in training, but it's never been programmatically formulated, I guess, is a way of saying it. We haven't looked at it as its own standalone function or priority within enablement. We just kind of have always just done it.

So we are moving towards this model of an always boarding type of framework that we can be more conscientious of how we are enabling tenured and ramped reps, and starting to really think through how are we going to be able to get the insights that we need to identify the skill gaps, identify the areas that they need additional enablement, more purposeful enablement, and then create that in a way that they can expect. Is it every quarter, everyone's going to do eight particular skills training and or certification? Every half are we going to recertify on a particular process because we have to from a compliance perspective? We're starting to evolve towards that mindset more so from an always boarding perspective in addition to just the keeping-the-lights-on type of training that always has to happen in the moment.

Manager Enablement and Bootcamp

Alex Kracov: And then how do you think about like the manager training side of things? Because I think one interesting dynamic is, you know, AEs are probably good AEs, they become managers, but they've never been managers before. And it's a completely different job. Like, do you do manager bootcamps? How do you think about coaching sales managers to be good managers so that they can get performance out of their team?

Corine Varga: Definitely. We are about to start the planning on our third annual manager bootcamp. So we started this event two years ago as a way where we've started to see some of the global inconsistencies of how our managers are managing — whether that is because they came from outside of Uber and bringing in different experiences, or to your point, the IC that was a killer AE and now they've been promoted to a manager but have never managed before. Like this is a whole new world and it's a whole new set of expectations for them. So that was a lot of the initiation of this bootcamp.

And we've been lucky enough to be able to do it. We did it again last year — hugely successful, people love to come together. So what we do is we bring in all of our global go-to-market managers to one location in person. We don't do a lot of in-person events, so it's already a win to be able to bring everybody together in person. Everybody wants and strives for that connection. But we take two and a half, three days of really focused, intensive workshops to cover those fundamentals of what it is to be a manager at U4B, address some of those inconsistencies in behaviors and expectations that we have across the board, share best practices, share what's working in some regions and what's working in others. And then like I said, for fostering those connections across the team — so people can start to learn from more tenured managers — again, that IC to manager who doesn't know who to go to from a manager mentor perspective, they now have made a connection with someone that's been a manager for the last five years and they can start to have that buddy system, if you will, to ask the questions that they need when they have some gaps in their management style.

Alex Kracov: Yeah, I mean those in-person events are so important for kind of like those magical moments in between the halls — like actually making friends and getting a sense of who can I go to when I actually need help with something? And you just don't get that over virtual. It's just kind of awkward and you know, it's all business and transactional virtual, I find.

Corine Varga: Exactly. Yeah. It's totally true and I always say that that's 75% of the success of this event is just by being able to get people in the room all in person, and then the content that we build, the experience that we build on top is just kind of the cherry on top — actually 25%. But we also — so that's our manager bootcamp moment. We are also looking to see how we need to expand the manager enablement program to be like, what's the lead up to bootcamp? What is that experience the nine months before bootcamp? And then what's the experience the three months at the end of the year after bootcamp? What's the follow-up enablement? And that's the area that has been a gap so far that we're really looking forward to building upon moving forward this year.

President's Club: Recognition as Enablement

Alex Kracov: And then speaking of like in-person events, I believe you also kind of take on the planning for President's Club and other sort of events like that. Can you talk a little bit about like, why do you even do a President's Club event? What's important about that? And then maybe take us a little behind the scenes of like what goes into setting something like that up.

Corine Varga: Yes, the why — so our inheritance, I will say, of President's Club. We're also really new with our President's Club program. I think this was our third or fourth year doing it, this past March where we had all of our winners go to Barcelona. So I would say we're still pretty nascent in this space, but it's been a hugely rewarding process being able to own it from an enablement side. You might question like why is enablement working on a President's Club versus maybe another team? I actually see seller recognition as part of an enablement function inherently. And it's kind of a unique experience from an enablement perspective where we get to see these folks from onboarding. We get to see them through their challenges and through their successes as an AE or whatever role that they're in. We ultimately get to celebrate them when they hit the biggest success that they have in their career at U4B and be recognized as one of our P-Club winners. It's really that cool moment to see from an enablement perspective the progression. So I've loved working on P-Club the last few years that I've been doing it.

The behind the scenes is tricky. There's a lot that goes into it. So not only just the fun planning logistics of like choosing the location and picking the hotel, picking the type of activities — what's that overall experience? Because again, we want it to be that sought-after event that motivates the sellers. This is how U4B is going to be recognizing you for all the hard work that you did. So there's all of that, but there's also a lot of behind the scenes planning of, do we have the right quota allocation for the size of our team? That's something that we're finalizing right now. Our team has grown a lot over the last few years, so we need to make sure that the amount of people that are going is representative of our entire team. So that's a whole evaluation process.

The criteria that we choose for how someone gets selected — we're a consumption-based business. We have very specialized roles that are measured in very different ways. So it's not just top GBT attainment that's going to get you there. It's a component of it. You obviously have to be a top performer, but we were looking at like, what are the other types of criteria, the type of behaviors that we want these sellers to be modeling that shows like, these are the best in class sellers at U4B. So not only did you hit your number, but did you do the right type of activities? We're considering how we incorporate Gong metrics into manager coaching expectations to be able to be selected for managers. So there's a lot of components that go into even getting to the point of being able to go on the trip and planning the P-Club experience.

Alex Kracov: Cool. Barcelona is a cool place to do it. I feel like usually it's Cancun or somewhere in Mexico or something like that. Barcelona is a good spot. Yeah.

Corine Varga: Yeah, we've definitely evolved. Our first one was in San Francisco, which was like, okay. And then our second one was in New York. And it's like, again, okay. We did Miami last year, which was a little more exciting. But this last year was our first time going international for the US folks, our first time kind of getting a little more exotic in our location. Yeah, so we're looking forward to seeing what we do for next year.

Tech Stack: Highspot, Gong, and AI Tools

Alex Kracov: Okay, switching gears a little bit, I'd love to talk about kind of like your tech stack and how you use software on the enablement team. Can you talk us through a little bit like what are the core tools you use for learning or content or conversational intelligence? Like what are those go-to tools that the enablement team's using to help the sellers at Uber for Business?

Corine Varga: Yep. On the enablement side, our two key tools that we're using are Highspot from a learning management and our content management perspective. So all of our training modules and sales assets, one-sheeters, pitch decks, and everything lives in Highspot. And then we use Gong for our conversational intelligence and coaching. So those are our two key tools. And then we also use Synthesia from a content creation perspective. It's another AI tool that helps to up-level some of our learning modules that can then be put into Highspot. And then we're really tapped into the different AI tools on the Google side — we're a Google company, so we're using Gemini, we're using Notebook LM, we're using Gems within Gemini, just to expand the utilization on AI as well.

Alex Kracov: You knew exactly where I was going. I want to talk more about AI. Can you talk a little bit about how do you use Notebook LM and Gems? Are there specific examples you can share of how that's helped productivity? How does the team use it day to day?

Corine Varga: Yeah, so for Notebook LM, the best use case that we've had for resources we've built for our go-to-market team is — we have our big team, like we talked about, we're a global team and folks are incredibly resourceful of creating their own documents, and managers might have their own one sheet or resource, or product has created a bunch of different things. So I think the best utilization for Notebook LM so far has been consolidating a lot of these one-piece resources into one Notebook LM and then giving that to the team to be able to answer their questions and get answers much faster. So we've done that from a product side where each product will have their own Notebook LM. So if I needed to learn more about our voucher product, I can go to voucher Notebook LM and ask those questions knowing that all the information in there is coming from all these centralized sources that exist.

Another big use case has been our rules of engagement documents. So it's a very large document with lots of text that basically tells our sellers what they can and cannot do from a crediting perspective, how to work with different roles, et cetera. So being able to put that large resource and maybe some supporting documentation into a Notebook LM and give that to, say, a new seller that's still figuring out what they can and cannot do — they can go in there and ask their question and based on that source content, they can get the answer. So really being able to get our sellers answers to their questions faster versus having to go to Slack or find their manager and ask the questions there, helping our sellers being a little more self-sufficient in getting the knowledge that they need.

Alex Kracov: Very cool, really cool. And then you mentioned Synthesia. Like how are you using that? Is that the one where it's like someone's like an avatar is talking? Yeah.

Corine Varga: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, Synthesia is where you basically can create video-like training content. And it is an avatar that's talking back. You can choose a different avatar. You can create your own avatar. So I've made an avatar version of myself within Synthesia, which is very weird, but kind of cool too. So yeah, we've used it for, like I said, up-leveling some of our training content, trying to make some of what previously lived as just static black and white text training into something a little more interactive, something a little more engaging. And the other big use case that's been successful for us has been the ability to use it to translate training — so being able to create something in English and have the ability for someone in Brazil to switch the language to Portuguese and be able to understand the training in their native language. Though we're largely an English-speaking company, of course, if someone's native in another language, there's going to be a little bit of a gap and we don't want that to be an issue for their overall understanding of the content. So the language conversion and the dubbing of language in some of our content has been a huge plus for us as a global organization.

Alex Kracov: Yeah, that's amazing for a global team. And you just kind of feed it the learning materials and then it can, you know, obviously the AI does its talking thing on top of it. Yeah.

Corine Varga: Yeah, it's kind of cool. You just kind of prompt it, you give it the materials, you prompt it, and then it'll take a best shot at creating a starting point. From a content creation or training creation perspective, being able to accelerate that work has been great. Or if we already have something that exists and we just need to give it a new, refreshed look, we can take existing content and throw it in there, and then it'll start talking using the avatar.

AI Role Play and the Future of Sales Training

Alex Kracov: Yeah. Have you played around with any of the AI role play stuff, or do any of your sellers use that type of technology?

Corine Varga: Yeah, it's — we've used it, yes, in different ways. So what we immediately started was, last year we integrated Gems into our onboarding program. So we set up some role play Gems for our sellers, for our new hires. And so basically they're given a prompt that they put into the Gem, and based on that it'll simulate like a client conversation. So it's not completely role play where they're talking to an avatar or talking to someone, but at least they're able to write out and handle, or kind of get a first glance view of, what are some of the objections or what are kind of the type of questions that a client could potentially be asking them. And they just kind of type out their responses to the Gem as a response. So that's like a simulated role play that we implemented last year.

But we are definitely looking at implementing a proper AI role play tool right now — we're in that process of making the decision on where we're going to go. And that is where I think is going to be the most exciting tool that we can bring to our team. Not only from an onboarding perspective — like I said, our new hires are supposed to be getting on calls in week one. How cool would it be if they could already do a practice pitch before they get on their first call? So there's definitely the new hire use case and onboarding to help them ramp faster. But thinking through that always boarding concept that we talked about earlier — how are we keeping our tenured and ramped reps' skills sharp? Is there a new messaging narrative that we need to make sure they're all certified against? Is there objection handling that we need to make sure they all know how to do? Or just giving them a tool that they can use — even tenured reps might need a prep for a call too. They have a really high stakes conversation. Maybe their last conversations with the head of procurement has been really, really difficult and they're going into their next negotiation call and they're like, you know, I just want to test out this angle really quickly. I'm going to create a quick role play, simulate it really fast and that can help me be a little more confident going into this actual conversation. Those are the opportunities that I'm really excited to move forward with an AI role play tool.

Alex Kracov: Yeah, I mean, it's a whole new world that we're all heading towards, which is fun and exciting and terrifying in a lot of ways.

Corine Varga: Oh my gosh, no, I was thinking and kind of reflecting on AI role play and the advantages of AI. I was putting myself back when I was a seller at my last company at Business Wire where one of our key personas is head of investor relations. I was a twenty-something person that never had even thought about talking to a head of investor relations before. I didn't know what a 10K was. I didn't know what this world was, but now I'm being told this is my key person I need to talk to. So I had to start reading 10Ks, I had to start reading certain pieces of information in this world. How cool would it have been if I could have saved all that time using an AI tool to understand the world of investor relations, and then go in and simulate a conversation with a head of investor relations using that information to sound more confident? I could have been such a better seller and just feeling better going into those conversations had I had those tools back then.

Alex Kracov: It's crazy. And yeah, it's going to get even crazier too, which is awesome.

Measuring the ROI of Enablement

Alex Kracov: I'm curious how you think about measuring the success of maybe the enablement more broadly, or these AI initiatives you're kind of rolling out. What metrics are you looking for? Is it qualitative? Is it quantitative? How do you sort of think about — and even maybe present to your boss or evaluate the program yourself — measuring the success of enablement?

Corine Varga: Yeah, so from an AI perspective, I think first right now is adoption. That's been our biggest area that we are seeing if our folks on our team — and this is probably consistent with many of our tools — if we're adding any new tool, we want to see how the sellers are adopting and utilizing the tool. So that's definitely a huge success metric, seeing that those numbers go up. We want to see how efficient it makes and how productive it makes our sellers. So are we seeing any time savings for them by utilizing the AI or the tool? And then performance — are we seeing an uptick in anything from conversion rates or ramp time, anything that gives us an indication that this is helping us move the needle towards better performance? So really, I would say this is for AI or any tools, but anything on enablement: if it's not moving the needle and it's not changing seller behavior or impacting results of the business, then it's probably not worth spending the time on it, or we need to rethink if this is the right approach versus doing something else.

Career Advice for Enablement Professionals

Alex Kracov: Maybe a great place to end today's conversation is like advice for other enablement folks. Like you've had an amazing career, right? You started as an IC and you've moved up to global head of a big company. Like how did you think about kind of your progression and what advice would you give to other folks who want a career like yours?

Corine Varga: It's a great question. Again, kind of reflecting on this, it's been an interesting journey so far. And again, I kind of fell into enablement from the beginning. I was a seller and then I learned about this enablement function from our CMO and then ultimately ended up building the function at my last company. And then now I've kind of built this career at Uber for Business in enablement. So anyone that's thinking about getting into enablement or thinking about their transition for going into leadership and enablement — I'd say first, do a reflective exercise of like, are you working on the things that you should be working on that are driving the most impact for the business? Easier said than done. I know especially in enablement it's really easy for us to be task takers and order takers and just really focus on, okay, I'm gonna build this one thing because it was asked for and then I'm gonna get it out — and that's it, right? And we just take orders and we try to be as helpful as possible. But being able to take a moment to say like, is this driving the right type of behaviors like I mentioned earlier? Is this going to be helping us move the needle forward? All of those kinds of questions helps to justify, is it worth your time to be focusing on it?

And especially if you want to be moving up and going to leadership, really focusing your time on the most strategic work that you do in those high-impact initiatives. There's always keeping-the-lights-on type of work that we have to do. We have to be responsive and good partners to the business. But as you're thinking about the goals that you're setting for the year or the OKRs that you're setting for the year, what are the two or three things that you can hang your hat on that you're going to be super proud of at the end — that is ultimately getting you that resume bullet that you need or building a skill set in some way?

I would say that whole exercise of kind of being reflective of the work that you're actually spending your time on is going to be super important. And then the second thing I think is always come to the table with a point of view. If you're in the conversations, have a perspective on how to solve the problem. If you're going to your leadership with a problem, always have the recommendation or some kind of idea ready in your back pocket, or express it and kind of ideate on that. But you always want to come with a perspective. Being able to show that you have a point of view, I think, is going to be a huge way of proving that you're ready to just kind of step into a leadership position.

Alex Kracov: That's great advice. Thank you so much for the time today. This was an awesome conversation.

Corine Varga: Thank you so much. It was fun.