Nick Lawrence

Sales Academy, Global Sales Enablement

I build "Enablement Environments" that enable reps to produce the outputs that determine performance.

As a certified Master Instructional Designer, Change Management and Sales Effectiveness Professional, my experience in Human Performance Management and sales best practices enable me to design highly relevant sales programs made up of accessible information, support assistance, communication, reinforcement, scenario-based eLearning courses, performance training, and OTJ coaching that accelerate and maintain sales productivity. 

I spent five years on the Purdue wrestling team, where I received All Big Ten honors, qualified for the NCAA tournament, and won the 2015 Most Dedicated Wrestler award at Purdue University. The sport of wrestling has instilled exceptionally high levels of accountability, ownership and dedication in me. The most influential lesson I took away from the sport was to "get comfortable while being uncomfortable." I'm able to maintain a high-degree of energy and enthusiasm when adversity strikes.

Most importantly, I'm a husband and father of two young daughters. Sharing my love of exploring nature, hiking through the woods, and reading books with my family has been the most enjoyable and rewarding experiences of my life. In fact, I'm so passionate about learning and development that my wife and I are homeschooling our daughters.

Sales Enablement Professional

Shopify

Make commerce better for everyone! Imagine being asked to create a next generation sales onboarding experience in an environment where entrepreneurship is glorified. I'm focused on improving ramp time and productivity at the world's best commerce organization. Yes! I'm honored and glad to be here.

Head of Global Sales Onboarding & Process Enablement

Digital Command

As an Advisor at Digital Command, I am working with teams to help them optimize workforce productivity. This role is my passion project. It provides me the opportunity to work with anyone who wants to advance society’s digital literacy (AI and other) as well as build and coach teams to have an open, innovative, and creative mindset.

Key Focus Areas:

Strategic Influence: There is no one right way! You’re both right. How might we encourage letting go of bias so that we create a bridging energy that aligns teams across the enterprise?

Thinking Effect: Success goes to those who know how to learn. What do we need to do to have a society that focuses on “how to learn” not “what to learn?” This is crucial with the coming of AI.

Productivity Optimization: Is it leadership or the team? It’s both! How do we help leaders and the team have a purpose, be productive, and do so in a world we never realized was coming?

Advisor

Elastic

Leadership: Grew and built a global team of 15 (from 2) for sales and customer success enablement. 87% employee engagement.

Sales Methodologies: Rolled out MEDDPICC methodology, integrated with Salesforce for forecasting accuracy and pipeline health.

Enablement Technologies: Launched Elastic’s first AI for enablement, SalesGPT, for use as a performance assistant, skills advancement, and sales coach.

Key Achievements:
𝐘𝐞𝐚𝐫 𝟏: Operating model, rhythm of enablement for sellers, playbooks, onboarding (all roles)
Reduced ramp time: SDR/Commercial by 15%, Enterprise by 23%, CSM by 66%.
𝐘𝐞𝐚𝐫 𝟐: Enablement standards, new hire redesign, certifications, partner enablement
Increased seller engagement by 27%, new hire productivity by 15.6%.
𝐘𝐞𝐚𝐫 𝟑: Sales coaching, labs, SalesGPT, Outreach
Achieved a 3x larger deal size, 72% win rate, and $493.9M pipeline impact.

Cybersecurity, Business Intelligence, Artificial Intelligence (A.I.), GenAI, Machine Learning and Reverse Engineering

Global Head of Revenue Enablement

Avalara

Responsible for learning design, development, delivery, and performance support for all Customer Account Mangers, support staff, and Go-Live consultants.  I have achieved the following:

Established standard operating model, business process, and frameworks for internal training & enablement.  This led to more efficient (+18% team productivity), effective, and higher quality (+56 Net Promoter Score) learning materials.  It also provided clarity of what’s expected from the team leading to high performance.

Transformed support new hire and new product training from lecture to scenario-based.  This included the creation of  a standard framework for support training to include relevant foundation, interactivity, scenarios, and supporting help articles.
-11% reduction in case resolution time
-17% improvement of  customer's perception of agents
-78% reduction of cases escalated to Tier 3

Transformed learning for account managers to align to standard sales enablement frameworks and sales messaging.

Delivered customer service skills training aligned to concepts from The Effortless Experience, by Mathew Dixon
-20% reduction in negative CSAT

Director, Customer Experience Training & Enablement

Charter Communications

Drive strategy and set standards for the the end-to-end learning experience supporting 30,000 call center agents. Implementing innovative learning approaches, defining the learning standards for all learning, and translating business requirements into human-centered learning designs. The vision is to Do More in service of the learner resulting in a customer aligned and outcomes focused Learning & Development service. 

Outcomes we Achieve:
         We build examples of what good looks like so that vendors, internal designers, or architects can 
         replicate it.
         We lead key initiatives so that the materials created are what our stakeholders expect.
         We build materials so that the team we are leading has an example to work from. 
         We design metrics dashboards so that we can see and communicate business impact.
         We provide a definition / clarity of what's expected of an agent so that we build materials to 
           support learning the right thing and HR can hire to a standard role definition.
         We lead a new hire redesign so that key performance indicators are achieved sooner than the 
          past.
        

In this role, I led the team in the creation of new services such as:
-Customer Service Learning Standards expected of internal and external design teams
-Spectrum Mobile new hire, new products, and new services for Sales, Retention, Customer Service, Fraud, and Technical Support.
-Sales & Retention new hire
-Internet & Voice Repair new hire
-Billing new hire training
-Business Customer Service and Tech Support new hire
-Learning Architecture, determination of experience for all learning

Reduced time to competency for new call center agents across all lines of business (Example: In Small-Medium Business operations, increased first call resolution by 10% and truck roll prevention by 6% leading to 90,000 more calls handled and an annual impact of $630,000)

Director, Learning Experience for Sales & Services

Cisco

Led the design of learning experiences for Cisco's leaders and the teams they lead. Built learning that accelerated Cisco's understanding of what's special about the best teams at Cisco. Used agile techniques, multiple learning technologies, and a design thinking approach to create the best learning experience with the end user always at the center of the design. Focused on:

1.	Helping leaders understand their role in creating great teams.
2.	Helping teams work better together.
3.	Embedding learning within technology where teams work together.

Launched a collaborative and social learning experience for leaders aligned to Cisco's Leadership Outcomes that includes micro learning, simulations, podcasts, and curated content. 

In partnership with the Stanford design school, transformed the design process from traditional instructional design to the use of IDEO's design thinking methodology.

Designed Cisco’s first system dynamic simulation in partnership with Regis Corporation

Led the operation of Cisco’s new manager experience and new director experience.

Led a global team of 8 learning architects, 90% have advanced degrees, across the U.S., Europe, and India

Sr. Manager, Leader & Team Development 

Led a team of learning architects in the creation of Cisco’s first mobile learning app for leader development.

Led Cisco’s learner experience experts in the creation of the end-to-end experience for new employee orientation.

Transformed leader development from instructor-led and e-learning only to a learning experience that included TEDx like broadcasts and recordings, cohort-based collaboration and social learning, competency and role-based learning plans, 360 assessments, and regional leader events.

Led the web development team in the creation of the online learner experience for leaders.

Sr. Manager, Leader Development

Reported directly to Cisco's Chief Learning Officer as part of the Sr. Leadership team for Cisco's central learning organization.

Led Cisco’s learner experience experts in the  creation of the enterprise portal for Career & Learning, portal for Cisco's new employees, and the Cisco Innovation Academy. These sites transformed
the Cisco employee's experience by reducing the time to accessing content and
creating an experience leading to loyalty and increased usage.

Led a team of Learning Architects to define the common framework (Learning Portfolio / Learning Services), business process, and the roadmap for the Learning & Development technical infrastructure.

Built Cisco's business architecture strategy for the Learning & Development Solutions Group. This included managing strategic initiatives, partnering with IT to define system architecture capabilities and gaps, and creating a multi-year strategy for the organization.

Transformed Cisco’s Learning & Development infrastructure in the areas of video on-demand, learning asset access, and social network/learning.

Led a cross-functional team to set the enterprise strategy and technology solution for career planning. This work resulted in a strategic plan used by Sr. Leaders to decide both the investment and organizational design necessary to use Career Development as a key pillar of the Cisco workforce plan. The expected impact is an increase in talent movement across Cisco, reduction in early in career turnover, and improved skills for the Cisco workforce. Presented this strategy and the first release at mLearnCon 2014.

Head of Business Architecture for Learning & Development

Managed the transformation of Cisco’s technical sales training from a state of social add on model to an integrated model where collaboration is embedded and a fundamental component of the learning program.  The impact was an 80% increase in learner participation through the use of Cisco's enterprise social platform.

Managed Cisco’s strategic direction for Knowledge Management for Sales teams leading to a Cisco-on-Cisco approach and $400,000 savings per fiscal year.  This platform provides just-in-time learning for sales associates, supports more than 20 product launches per year, and has a business impact of $700 M annually.

Managed Content Management processes, including LMS and knowledge platform taxonomy standards leading to improved user experience and reporting, and learning asset inventories that enable curriculum teams to build curricula in less time.  

Managed Tier 1 and Tier 2 technical support and all operations of Cisco's knowledge management platform for sales.

Led a curriculum development team focused on identifying existing materials available across the enterprise, prioritizing skill gaps, and defining a standard role-based learning experience for Cisco's sales professionals.  This effort led to a transformation in sales training from an unstructured to a structured approach and an expected impact of over $200 million in increased sales.

Managed projects to advance the use of emerging learning technologies including Cisco’s first immersive 3D learning program.

Managed a team responsible for performing ongoing needs analysis that captures the wants, needs, and requirements of Cisco's sales force.  

Built e-Learning programs for new product launches.

Manager, Learning & Development

TIAA-CREF

Led a team of instructional designers in the design and development of scenario-based learning solutions for TIAA-CREF’s enterprise migration to a new record keeping system.

Wrote  training environment requirements documentation and managed resources from other departments to build the needed environment.

Led the design and development of course development standards for the Learning & Development team.

Lead Instructional Designer

AT&T

Managed the design and development of an eight-week onboarding learning experience for Cingular’s Customer Care organization.  Leveraging an internal knowledge management platform, this blended curriculum integrates soft-skills, software systems, wireless technology, process and policy, and basic technical troubleshooting through authentic, call-type driven scenarios and simulations.  This redesign of the call center new hire training program resulted in over 3.5M savings annually because of shortened time to competency and reduced call handling times.  

Managed the design and development of the Tier 1 and Tier 2 technical support merger curriculum for Cingular’s merger efforts; Cingular Wireless and AT&T Wireless during 2004.

Managed design and development of technology-based learning solutions including Web-based software training with simulations, live and recorded web lectures, and reusable learning interactions for Cingular’s products, technical support systems, and Tier 2 technical support.  

Managed design and development of blended learning curricula for Cingular's Knowledge Management & Customer Relationship Management solutions enterprise wide.

Built the first Help System for call centers leading to a centralized aggregation of information and the baseline for technical certification.  This system became the original source of content for the implementation of an enterprise knowledge management portal.

Curriculum Manager

Designed, developed, and maintained technical web-based training for Customer Engineers, Professional Service Consultants, and other technical associates in the Retail Solutions Business Unit.

Managed web-based training programs.  This included managing the production of the programs, validating the accuracy and usability of each course, and maintaining the programs.

Served as a business unit representative on NCR’s e-Learning Strategy Team.

Assisted in the creation of NCR's Learning Realization Process.

NCR Corporation awarded #2 corporate training organization in the U.S. by Training Magazine while I was in the group.

Information Products Designer

I excel in building high-performing teams through strategic talent selection, aligning individuals with their strengths, and fostering a culture of safety and trust. This approach consistently delivers enhanced team productivity, stakeholder alignment, and profound business impact.

My background spans telecommunications and technology sectors, with expertise in:

Sales enablement
Leadership development
Learning and development
Knowledge management
Performance management
Coaching
Career development

I have a proven track record in addressing critical business challenges such as:

Driving employee engagement through simulations, coaching, and research
Accelerating time to productivity for sales teams
Optimizing learning investments with effective operating models
Streamlining onboarding in call center environments

I thrive in leading design teams that conceptualize comprehensive learning experiences aimed at boosting productivity and transforming mindsets. I leverage design thinking to foster radical collaboration, prioritize learner-centric design, and innovate in both technology and learning methodologies.

Specialties: Learning, design thinking, leadership development, generative AI, enablement
Coaching
Career development

taplio

The Battle

Nick Lawrence

Barry Shields

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?