Field Enablement Spotlight: Continuous Education at GitLab
Continuous education webcast series for all GitLab field sales & customer successs team members
Field Enablement Spotlight Sessions
The Field Enablement Spotlight is a weekly continuous education series for all GitLab Sales, Sales Development, Customer Success, Solution Architects, Partner Ecosystem, Renewals, Professional Services & Operations team members.
The Field Enablement Spotlight takes place each week on Thursday, with two session options to accomidate GitLab’s global field sales & customer success audience.
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(Option 1) 11:00 AM (US Eastern Time)(UTC -5) = (8 AM Pacific Time) = (5 PM Central European Time)(UTC +1)
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(Option 2) 12:00 PM (Australian Eastern Time)(UTC +11) = (5 PM US Pacific Time)(UTC -8)
Attending the weekly Field Enablement Spotlight session is mandatory, with two options provided to accommodate our global audience. If team members are on paid time off or have a scheduling conflict with a customer, they may watch the session recording in a timely manner.
Upcoming Training
To see what training is coming soon, view the Field Enablement Spotlight issue list.
Winter 2024 Lineup
| DATE | TOPIC | SPEAKERS |
|---|---|---|
| Dec 17 | New Agile Role “Planner” AMA | Product Marketing |
| Dec 19 | Analyst Relations Update | Analyst Relations Team |
| Dec 26 | No Session | |
| Jan 2 | TBD | TBD |
| Jan 9 | Business Value Services | RSOE Team |
| Jan 16 | GitLab Dedicated for PubSec | Product Marketing |
| Jan 23 | Customer Success - Success Plans | CS Team |
| Jan 30 | No session during the last week of the quarter |
Past Sessions
Click here to see links to past sessions on Google Drive
Note: To watch private videos on GitLab Unfiltered, please look at the Handbook page on watching private videos. which includes a link to this 2-minute video.
To request new Field Enablement Spotlight sessions
- Complete and submit this Field Enablement Spotlight Request issue template
- For urgent requests, please send a Slack message to #field-enablement-team and mention @John Blevins
- An example of the template is shown below with guidance on how to fill out each section.
Overview
Please provide a brief overview for the session that articulates why the field audience (sales & customer success) will want to attend, this will be used to create communications for the session. Please take care to write an inclusive description that articulates why the entire field sales and customer success audience will want to attend the session.
Date & Time
Please list the desired date for the session. The Field Enablement Spotlight takes place each week on Thursday, with two session options to accomidate GitLab’s global field sales audience.
Presenter(s) & Moderator(s)
Make sure the presenter(s) are able to cover both session options, or find alternative presenter(s) that can cover both session options. Whenever possible, please invite a member of the field sales team to speak about their experiences to support your topic. The Moderator(s) are assigned from the Enablement team to facilitate the session and act as the primary point of contact for collboaration. In most cases more than one moderator will be assigned to cover both session options
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(Option 1) 11:00 AM (US Eastern Time)(UTC -5) = (8 AM Pacific Time) = (5 PM Central European Time)(UTC +1)
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(Option 2) 12:00 PM (Australian Eastern Time)(UTC +11) = (5 PM US Pacific Time)(UTC -8)
Learning Objectives
Please write 2-3 key takeaways you would like for the audience to be informed about as a result of the session.
Resources
Please list all session resources within the planning issue, including presentations and other related content. All session content must be ready for review by Field Enablement and departmental leadership one week prior to the session air date.
Session Format
Consider the desired session format and style including but not limited to Interview, Ask Me Anything, Presentation with Q&A, and Panel Discussion.
Session Length
The Field Enablement Spotlight takes place every week on Thursday. Please choose a session length appropriate for the topic, length of presentation, and expected volume of questions from the audience. 30 minutes is the standard session length, with 15 minutes for presentation and 15 minutes for questions from our audience. When needed sessions can be extended to 45 or 50 minutes.
Call to Action
What action(s) do you want field team members to take after this session?
Polling
If you would like to add a poll to your session, please write the poll question and answer choices that should be presented to the audience.
Get an invite to the weekly session
To get a calendar invite to the weekly Field Enablement Spotlight, make sure you are added to the one of the following email groups.
- Sales & Customer Success Teams
sales-all@ - SDR BDR Team
sdrbdr@ - Marketing Team
marketing-team@
You can fill out an access request to request access to the email group. These groups are invited to the meeting so that each individual person does not need an invite.
Training Playlist
The latest, most relevant sessions are highlighted within the Field Enablement Spotlight: Continuous Education at GitLab page in Highspot.
There are a few places to see historical Field Enablement Spotlight sessions.
- Sales enablement Youtube playlist on GitLab Unfiltered YouTube
- Sales enablement Youtube playlist on GitLab YouTube
- Historical sessions that were recorded in Google drive can be accessed via this deprecated spreadsheet
Scheduling trainings
4-6 weeks before the start of a new quarter
- Solicit input from sales leaders, Product Marketing, Partner Ecosystem, Competitive Intelligence, Analyst Relations, and others (e.g. Sales Ops) on sales enablement topics for the next quarter
2-4 weeks before the start of a new quarter
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Alignment call to finalize topics & tentative schedule with:
- Sr. Program Manager, Onboarding & Continuous Education (John Blevins)
- Director, Sales & Customer Enablement
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After alignment call, John Blevins to open issues for each enablement session with
- Documentation of preliminary learning objectives, title, expected outcomes, etc.
- Tentative dates listed as “TENTATIVE - ZZZ”
- Intended SME/speaker(s) assigned to the issue
- Ping the SME in the issue to ask if they can commit to it, get their commitment before you schedule.
1-2 weeks before the start of a new quarter
- John Blevins to schedule meeting with all SMEs/speakers
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Goal: Ensure SMEs/speakers are aware of the upcoming sessions and can own the sessions
- Review schedule, outcomes, objectives
- Answer questions
- Adjust as needed
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Manage ongoing collaboration via issue, Google Docs, and public Slack channels (e.g. #product-marketing or #field-enablement-team)
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The Sales and Customer Enablement team discusses upcoming trainings in regular meetings with sales leadership and the GitLab Product Marketing Management (PMM) team.
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- Sessions picked to execute on should be chosen from the backlog, or a new issue created, and moved to the
status:plancolumn. - Assign the issue to the speaker and add
Moderator: <name>to the issue description.- The speaker will then research and generate the conent for the training.
- Once the speaker is ready, a moderator and date should be chosen for the training.
- Assign the moderator (in addition to the speaker) to the issue and add
Moderator: <name>to the issue description. - Add a due date to the issue.
- Add the date in ISO format to the issue title.
- Move the issue to the
status:scheduledcolumn. - Manually drag the issue to order issues in the column by date.
- Assign the moderator (in addition to the speaker) to the issue and add
2 weeks before the start of a session
- Confirm speaker avaliability & session learning objectives
1 week before the start of a session
- Confirm speaker content readiness, calls to action, and communications plans.
- Send a report via Slack on the current week’s session attendance and a preview of the following week’s session to regional leaders via the #field-enablement-team channel.
Week of the start of a session
- Communications will be sent out on Slack via #sales, #customer-success & the current #sales-quick-start cohort.
- Change the recurring meeting title from the placeholder “Field Enablement Spotlight” to show the topic of the week.
- For example, to drive attendance a calendar email update is sent to the entire field sales organization each week indicating the new topic, i.e “Field Enablement: Competitive Intelligence Update.”
- Update the Spotlight Notes & Agenda document with details for the weekly topic including presenter(s), learning objectives, resources, calls to action & notes.
Field Enablement Calendar
Field Enablement Spotlight sessions are scheduled on the Sales Enablement calendar so that everyone on the Sales and Customer Enablement and PMM team has the ability to edit the calendar event.
The Field Enablement Spotlight takes place each week on Thursday, with two session options to accomidate GitLab’s global field sales audience.
-
(Option 1) 11:00 AM (US Eastern Time)(UTC -5) = (8 AM Pacific Time) = (5 PM Central European Time)
-
(Option 2) 12:00 PM (Australian Eastern Time)(UTC +11) = (5 PM US Pacific Time)
How to conduct a Field Enablement Spotlight Session
- Each training session has a speaker and a moderator
- Sessions are typically 30 minutes long
- The presentation portion should be 15 minutes, leaving 15 minutes for Q&A
Recording
Public vs Private
- Some enablement sessions, typically those that focus on industry or technical product knowledge, are made public, including the Q&A
- Other sessions that focus on topics like competitive analysis or openly discussing customers are kept private
- At the start of every session, and before moving into Q&A, the facilitator will announce to the audience if the call is public or private
- Here is a how-to video on accessing private videos on GitLab Unfiltered.
Speaker
- Create your content as a handbook page (don’t use a slide deck)
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Create a new directory under
/handbook/sales/training/sales-enablement-sessions/enablement/with the title of your talk- For example:
/handbook/sales/training/sales-enablement-sessions/enablement/cloud-native-ecosystem/.
- For example:
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Add an
index.html.mdfile to that directory.-
Use this template:
--- title: "Title goes here" --- ## Title goes here
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Add your content to this page.
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Add links to any other pages you need to reference on this page so you can present from training page.
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Moderator
The moderator should serve as the host of the call and overall wingperson for the presenter. The moderator monitors chat to raise questions to the presenter and searches for links that are mentioned on the call to make sure they get linked in the handbook page for the training.
Moderator tasks prior to the session
- Confirm presenter availability & learning objectives.
- Solicit input from #field-enablement-chatter on any important announcements that should be made at the beginning or end of the session.
- Update the session agenda document embedded in calendar invite.
- Change the title of the calendar invite to match the weekly topic and session length.
- Promote the upcoming session in the #sales & #customer-success slack channels.
Moderator tasks during the session
- Log in to zoom 5 minutes ahead of time
- The video should not be recording, but pause if this is the case
- At 11 AM ET / 8 AM PT welcome everyone to the call and remind them that the presentation will be public/private. Specifically mention how to talk about sensitive info on every intro.
Hello and welcome to today’s sales enablement session. As a reminder we’ll be posting this session to YouTube. Please remember to not share any private info such as the names of non-referenceable customers.
- Record the call to your local computer.
For today’s GitLab sales enablement training we are pleased to have
<speaker name>talk to us about<topic>. With that, I’d like to pass it over to<speaker name>
- Monitor the time. If the presentation goes longer than 15 minutes, interrupt to remind the speaker that we are at 15 minutes and we want to leave time for Q&A.
- Stop the recording.
Moderator tasks after the session
- Upload recorded session to the Continuing Education Google Drive folder.
- Upload recorded session to the Field Strategy & Enablement spot on Highspot. Make sure the video properties are set to “internal” and to “prevent downloading or remixing.”
- Update future & past sessions list with the Google Drive recording link in the Sales Enablement Sessions Handbook.
- Add session recording to the Field Enablement Spotlight: Continuous Education at GitLab Highspot page.
- Promote the recorded session availability on #sales & #customer-success Slack channels.
- Check the zoom meeting report & record the number of total attendees as a comment in the issue.
- Update the quarterly Spotlight attendace report with .csv attendance report from zoom to show attendance by region, department, and leader.
Spotlight Reporting
Attendance Reporting
The Spotlight Attendance Report is available as of FY25-Q3 and is the single source of truth for attendance which includes live session attendance and async recording views via Highspot. The report is updated weekly and shows attendance for all Spotlight sessions sorted by geo, team, and leader.
Satisfaction & Usefulness Reporting
At the end of each Spotlight session, a zoom survey launches automatically and asks attendees 3 questions. Each week, ratings for satisfaction and usefulness are averaged, then divided by 5 to calculate a percentage, the ratings scale is outlined below.
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On a scale of 1 - 5 please rate your satisfaction with the information presented.
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On a scale of 1 - 5 please rate if this was a good use of your time.
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Optional (free response): Do you have any feedback you’d like to share on this topic?
Ratings Scale:
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Highly Effective (90%+): Indicates excellent engagement and alignment with audience needs.
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Effective (85%-89%): Shows strong value and relevance with minor areas for improvement.
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Moderately Effective (70%-84%): Acceptable value, though adjustments are recommended.
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Needs Improvement (50%-70%): Limited impact; significant changes to content or delivery may be needed.
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Ineffective (below 50%): Low relevance or engagement, requiring major content overhaul or redirection.
A report is provided each week to the presenter(s) and regional leaders containing the post meeting survey results on slack via #field-enablement-team. Scores are analyzed to identify areas for improvement. Insights are used to refine session content, pacing, and relevance, ensuring ongoing alignment with field needs and optimizing engagement.
At the end of each quarter, a quarterly program results readout for Onboarding & Continuous education is created. In this report all Spotlight sessions are listed along with all survey, attendance, and recording view data.
Additional Enablement Pages
- GitLab CI/CD for GitHub FAQ
- Cloud Native Ecosystem
- Enterprise IT Roles
- GitLab.com Subscriptions
- Services to Accelerate Customer Adoption
- Collaborating with Community Programs
Last modified December 13, 2024: Remove trailing spaces (
a4c83fb3)
