This article originally appeared on Federico Presicci’s Website and can be found here.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the individual contributors and do not reflect the official policy or position of their current or previous employers. This content is for informational purposes only.
Introduction
My initial idea was to take a “traditional” approach to this article on sales enablement best practices – recall what I read in books, draw from my own enablement experiences, and review a few dozen articles already covering the topic.
After a while, I realised that this approach would result in nothing more than my idea of what works. As we all know, sales enablement is such a vibrant and young field that this selection would be inherently limited and biased.
The solution turned out to be obvious and simple (at least in theory): reach out to sales enablement leaders and ask them for their top three best practices, much like I did with my piece on sales enablement challenges.
Once again, I was fortunate enough to receive insights from some of the most successful sales enablement leaders in the world, many of whom work at household-name companies that are industry leaders.
More precisely, the following people were kind enough to share their sales enablement best practices:
Paz Petraglia – Sales Enablement & Ops Lead
Lisa Giusto – Director of Sales Enablement
Vanessa Metcalf – VP of Global Revenue Enablement
Jonathan Kvarfordt – Head of GTM Revenue Enablement & Founder
Nate Vogel – Vice President, Global Sales & Partner Enablement
George Campbell – VP of Global Sales Training & Enablement
Rosi Young – Enablement Head
Sarah Gross (Fricke) – VP Global Enablement
Edurne Rodriguez – Head of Sales Training & Enablement
Ben Purton – Senior Director, International Enablement & Global Everboarding
Jeff Scannella – Global Director, Sales Coaching Enablement
Woody Walker – Senior Director, Global Sales Practice
Ashton Williams – Director, Strategic Enablement Programs
Andrew Flores – Head of GTM Enablement
Ross McLean – VP Revenue Enablement
Chris MacDonald – Director, Sales Optimization
Jocelle Sarenpa – Director of Sales Enablement
Samantha Thompson – Head of Revenue Enablement
Zach Golan – Director of Global Sales Enablement
Danica (Christiansen) Bangert – Senior Director, Revenue Enablement
As one would expect from such an accomplished group of leaders, the advice they shared was absolutely fascinating, and I myself have been re-reading it for weeks, noticing new details with each reading.
For this article, I analysed the best practices provided, identifying common themes and organising them accordingly. In the following sections, I will share the responses categorised into four main themes, accompanied by some basic context.
Investigating the sales enablement best practices
I asked each of our contributors to share the three best practices they have found most impactful in their work. A few shared four, bringing the total number to 66.
I have done my best to organise their insights into major themes that kept cropping up in their responses, and those four emerged:
Now, it’s time to dive in.
Continuous improvement & development
Continuous improvement & development was one of the most common overarching themes mentioned by the sales enablement leaders who participated. The theme arose in a number of different contexts: from onboarding, general training, and coaching to the way sales enablement teams operate, and more.
Honestly, I wasn’t surprised by this, as continuous improvement and development is an inherent aspect of enablement as a discipline. In today’s fast-paced business environment, you must innovate, drive progressive improvement, and adapt rapidly if you want to stay competitive and thrive.
It was Ben Purton, the Senior Director of International Enablement & Global Onboarding (Everboarding) at a leading provider of enterprise cloud communications, video meetings, collaboration, and contact centres, who provided the perfect quote to introduce this theme:
“Continuous learning and project understanding: Focus on learning from peers and understanding the depth of Enablement projects. Recognize that the majority of the work lies beneath the surface, encompassing design, structure, data analysis, feedback integration, stakeholder alignment, and business alignment.”
Onboarding
The first context to consider is the onboarding of new sales reps, which is often regarded as a one-off event, the first box to be checked by the sales enablement team when a new sales rep joins the company. However, in the eyes of our respondents, it becomes only the starting point for continuous improvement.
Paz Petraglia, the Sales Enablement & Ops Lead at one of the world’s biggest food delivery companies, shared this:
“Start with a comprehensive onboarding program that thoroughly familiarizes new hires with the company’s culture, products, and sales process and procedures.
This program should not only cover detailed training on the sales enablement tools and content that will be used but also be interactive and extend past the initial training phase. Incorporating mentorship programs and regular check-ins during the first 90 days helps ensure that new sales representatives are fully integrated into the sales team and ready to contribute effectively right away.”
Ashton Williams, the Director of Strategic Enablement Programs at a company whose online communication tool you probably have used today, introduced a term I have to admit I never encountered before: enablement debt. She said, “Onboarding is a program that often gets neglected once built but having a solid onboarding ensures you are not running enablement debt every time you launch initiatives because you know your reps are ramped and at the same level of learning on most things. So many of the reactive programs enablement gets asked for are a symptom of missing skill, operational excellence, or product mastery in the first 90 days.”
In other words, good onboarding makes all of the following enablement efforts easier.
Sarah Gross, the VP of Global Enablement at a leading provider of enterprise cloud communications, video meetings, collaboration, and contact centres, took a concept most commonly associated with onboarding and explained how it can be applied to all enablement initiatives: cohorts. Her exact words were:
“Enablement Cohorts – Enablement should be programmatic and targeted and does not always have to be assigned to a full segment or group.
Thinking about hitting certain cohorts of team members at a time of needed improvement (like lead to opportunity conversion) is the most effective way to create business impact. Cohorts have typically been used in onboarding but are even more effective in upskilling.”
George Campbell, the VP of Global Sales Training & Enablement at a US-based cybersecurity company, advocated establishing a programmatic approach to skills improvement as early as possible (starting with onboarding):
“Ensure essential skills are provided via best-practice learning provision, regardless of who delivers it. Sales Methodology, Product & Updates, and Employee Onboarding & Everboarding, all managed globally, followed by tactical execution.”
Training & coaching
Vanessa Metcalf, the VP of Revenue Enablement at a company behind a popular sales enablement platform, added measuring and improving competencies as a crucial factor in establishing a culture of continuous improvement:
“I truly believe that strong enablement fundamentally rests on competencies. This is because competencies are what will build a comprehensive coaching program, and it’s such a program that’s going to influence behaviours. And we know that behaviours are what ultimately drive performance.
Therefore, having a framework in place that enables you to measure and pinpoint skill gaps within your go-to-market team is, quite frankly, indispensable.
It’s about doing more with that information – not just working on discovery this week and moving on to negotiation the next.
You need to develop a real, actionable development plan. Involve your sellers in this process, getting their input on their strengths and areas for growth. Then, look at the differences between the leaders’ assessments and the sellers’ self-assessments. It’s about how you can make a skills and competencies framework a living, breathing part of your organisation, which supports and drives go-to-market performance.”
In terms of training, Woody Walker, the Senior Director of Global Sales Practice at one of the world’s biggest IT consulting and services providers, shared that their sales methodology of choice is Challenger Sale (you can learn more about it in our guide to sales methodologies). She emphasised the importance of ongoing, regular training:
“One of the things I focus most on is ensuring our sales community is a community of true sales professionals with a focus on the challenger sales approach. This approach reminded sellers to be strategic with our customers and to have business focus conversations about their pain points and not immediately respond with a technology solution, but more of a holistic view of how to solve this business problem and that may include organizational change management, advisory services, and multiple technology solutions. We do this through regular training, with the Challenger sales approach including skills like objection handling, managing multiple stakeholders, negotiation, buyer empathy, reframing and insights, and much more.”
Lisa Giusto, the Director of Sales Enablement at a leading corporate data exchange service provider, pointed out that the importance of training does not mean that enablement should be reduced to just this one type of discipline:
“Redefine the notion that enablement merely equals training. Training is the input to strategic outputs. It’s vital that your stakeholders recognize the change you are driving aligns with their goals. This approach will position you as a key contributor to enhancing sales performance.”
This focus on the strategic positioning of sales enablement, as advocated by Lisa, was a big talking point for our respondents.
Jeff Scannella, the Global Director of Sales Coaching Enablement at a global leader in corporate digital learning, also shared this long-term strategic view when he talked about coaching:
“Coaching means everything and nothing at times in sales organization. Managers who give feedback or advice often feel they are coaching their sales teams. This is often detrimental to the development of their people and creates reliance on the manager to be constantly solving the problem/challenge at hand for an AE.
Investing in coaching starts with learning the questions to ask, intense active listening, and helping their people come to their own conclusions while guiding them along the way. This is the number 1 high impact activity to enable.”
Rosi Young, Enablement Head at a company behind a digital platform for managing funding applications and monitoring transactions, pointed out something that I find is often mistakenly not mentioned within the sales training and coaching context – the principles of adult learning:
“Learning principles and understanding how sellers retain information. I have a fairly unique background in that I have a postgraduate teaching qualification specialising in adult learning, and taught in the UK before I went into sales and found success as an IC seller. Both of these skillsets have been incredibly useful in how I approach and run a sales enablement program.
Whereas it’s not essential to have been a teacher before entering the world of enablement, I do believe it’s crucial to understand adult learning principles and how adults retain and use the information they are taught. Bringing this knowledge into programs will make your enablement fun, engaging and relevant, but crucially, it will also help your sellers action the crucial insight and best practices you deliver.”
Ongoing feedback
Establishing and nurturing a culture where salespeople are encouraged to provide feedback on the work of the sales enablement team – which should help drive continuous improvement – was also identified as one of the best practices by our contributors.
Paz Petraglia pointed this out very directly:
“Encourage an environment where salespeople are expected and encouraged to provide feedback on the materials and support they receive. This approach helps in pinpointing any gaps in training and resources while ensuring that your sales force makes optimal use of the provided resources daily.”
Woody Walker expanded on this, mentioning not only the importance of regular feedback but also the need to make sellers feel heard and appreciated:
“I’ve been focusing on ensuring our sellers feel appreciated and heard, and that includes building a strong community, making sure our sales reps have a voice, celebrating the little wins, as well as the big ones, ensuring we are reducing process complexity and simplifying their ability to serve our customers, and finally listening to their feedback on what makes serving our customers more difficult and removing those obstacles.
Reducing seller drag is so important if we want our sellers to thrive, our customers to be served at the level they expect and our company to grow. If you take care of your people, they will take care of your customers, and that will take care of your organization’s future.”
Jonathan Kvarfordt, Former Head of GTM Revenue Enablement & current Founder at a GTM AI advisory company, suggested another best practice – which may require some elements of feedback from direct observations – to drive continuous improvement across the GTM organisation:
“Workflow audits. I cannot say this enough, but a key to any success I have had, is being willing to watch and strictly observe someone’s workflow to see how they actually use the sales enablement tools, go through the sales enablement processes, or interact with a system brings so many things to help you make it better or to clarify how something could be done.
In this step, it is crucial that whoever you shadow knows that you are not there to attack their way of working, but you are literally there to observe and see how we can improve it for their experience. This process will enlighten you on how things are actually operating and if your coaching, training, or content is having the influence you want it to have or not. This is also the goldmine that you can rely on in order to find WGLL for processes, workflows, etc.”
Andrew Flores, the Head of GTM Enablement at a company behind a platform for real-time device intelligence also emphasised the importance of feedback but in relation to experimenting with new sales enablement strategies:
“Be calculated with experimentation. If you are trying something new in your enablement approach, give it a timeline to prove value, and then make time to measure how effective it is. Ask for opinions from the included teams as to how they felt about the experiment and if it should be adopted as part of the sales enablement process.”
Jonathan Kvarfordt shared the following about experimentation and the need to re-evaluate one’s established practices in order to improve:
“One of the best practices I’d mention is a mindset question I am asking a lot, which is, “Is this the best way to do this or is this the way I have always done it?”
There is wisdom in using principles, practices, strategies, or tactics from before, but now more than ever, especially with AI and the speed of technology, I find that asking this question helps me to find new best practices that I would not have had before. Being willing to experiment and think outside the box can create better ways of accomplishing things.”
He also mentioned the idea of defining what good looks like as an invaluable outcome of running some analysis and gathering feedback from top performers for confirmation:
”Define WGLL. What does good look like? Too many times, new methodologies, new tools, new workflows get introduced, but usually only in theory. What I like to do is not only show the application of all of these, but to take it to the next level and show what good looks like. This is one of the most crucial and also most used step in any team I have been on. Even if you do not know WGLL is, take your best shot at it and then iterate as you go, confirming everything with the top performers.”
I’d like to add that the sales enablement teams also have a responsibility to provide timely feedback to the organisation. For example, we can help our company align incentives and consequences with desired behaviours.
I would argue that incentives and consequences for not doing something are equally important. Examining whether incentives and consequences align with the behaviours needed for the organisation to meet its goals and achieve sales success is fundamental. If these incentives and consequences are misaligned with desired behaviours, no enablement programme will be effective at driving lasting behavioural change.
Strategically engineering these incentives and consequences, such as financial rewards, recognition, and other rewards, to encourage the right behaviours can make a significant difference.
Sustainable enablement
According to some of our contributors, one of the most important considerations is not to overwhelm the sales personnel with sales enablement efforts. In other words, sales enablement must remain sustainable and easily digestible as the sales team works to improve.
Edurne Rodriguez, Head of Sales Training & Enablement for EMEA & LATAM at one of the largest music streaming services, talked about managing cognitive load:
“In a world filled with information overload – from social media to corporate communications – it’s crucial to ensure frontline teams understand key priorities and their escalation paths. Achieving this requires a clear communications plan that involves multiple teams (not just Enablement!).
Use straightforward content formats and streamlined communication to improve readability. To minimise distractions, consolidate updates into a single channel where key stakeholders can contribute. This approach helps maintain focus and reduces cognitive overload.
Tip: simplify and centralise. Replace complex documentation with concise summaries and bullet points. If more context is needed, provide links to additional resources.”
Nate Vogel, the Vice President of Global Sales & Partner Enablement at a leading data and AI company, actually shared what he had discovered to be the optimal time for sales reps to be engaged in enablement activities:
“As a general rule, sales teams should be engaged in an average of ~20-25 hours of enablement activities per quarter (about 5% of reps’ time); you also want to reserve enablement focus for three topics per quarter whenever possible.”
Stakeholder management & cross-functional collaboration
Sales enablement is unique due to the necessity of engaging a diverse array of stakeholders. Unlike many other teams, sales enablement must collaborate across various departments, including sales, customer success, marketing, product, and operations, ensuring alignment and cooperation.
Additionally, they need to secure the engagement and support of managers, directors, VPs, and CxOs to make sure their strategies and interventions meet the needs and expectations of senior leadership and have the highest chances of succeeding.
Perhaps most dauntingly, especially for someone new to the discipline, a good sales enablement professional, particularly a sales enablement manager or higher up, must be adept at engaging stakeholders at all levels and across different departments.
Chris MacDonald, the Director of Sales Optimisation at a company that creates platforms for industries and specialist markets to trade, innovate, and grow, highlighted a crucial aspect of stakeholder engagement and management that I think deserves much needed attention – trust:
“This is obvious, but gaining trust is critical to getting anything accomplished in the enablement space.
My process for building trust is simple, I build relationships beyond the professional space and learn who the people are that make an organization what it is.
What motivates them? What goals are they working towards professionally and personally? And most importantly, what challenges are preventing them from reaching those goals? However small, I never brush these off or diminish them… instead I take what I can and help solve them.
These tasks add up to keep you quite busy and can often distract you from the overall objective, but they are important to those who will help you achieve your objective down the road. Invest your time wisely, if you do, the feedback, openness, and buy-in reciprocated will make everything easier long term.”
Chris also perfectly illustrated our point about enablement professionals having to be present and engaged both horizontally (across different teams) and vertically (across different seniorities) within a company:
“I believe enablement can be a company’s untapped superpower. I’ve found the best place to be is in the middle as a conduit between sales and leadership. As I’ve progressed in my career this has turned into a conduit between leadership and executives. When the superpower is at its strongest is when you start thinking of your organization as a wheel, where each spoke represents a function (sales, marketing, product, leadership, etc…) and enablement is in the middle.
It’s important to be seen as someone who belongs on all teams. This gives you a unique advantage where you can provide value to every side by communicating important updates while filtering whatever details may be harmful to the culture and trust you are helping to build/keep. It also puts you in a position to connect similar challenges with a solution that everyone benefits from. Once you get to this point you can start to build strategies that can transform an organization’s sales and marketing teams, operations, product, go-to-market, etc…”
Cross-hierarchical engagement
Based on their individual experiences, some of our contributors focused on the varying seniorities of stakeholders to engage with that they have found critical for their success.
Ashton Williams, for instance, focused on executive buy-in and sponsors for all major initiatives:
“Align your executives and have a sponsor. Ensuring your execs are on the bus and in support of an initiative is key to keeping momentum in a project. Have a sponsor for every big initiative and run QBRs to share impact while keeping execs in the loop, engaged and accountable throughout the project.”
Sarah Gross pinpoints revenue leaders as the key personas to build a relationship with:
“It is key for enablement to be in the business – at QBR’s for their segments, involved in planning for the business and attached to the same goals and outcomes. The partnership between the revenue leader and the enabler is the key to success and you know you’ve made it when the business is putting enablement as a line item of rollouts and key goals.”
Ross McLean, the VP of GTM enablement at one of the most popular open-source data platforms, pointed out that anyone can be an enablement champion and that people’s peers are often the most effective in this role:
”Build a group of enablement champions who play the role of keeping you close to how things really are and can help to be a soundboard for content. However, the most critical role they play is leading peer-driven enablement. This is by far the most impactful method. People want to learn from peers who are successful. Pulling them in makes everything you do more relevant and having them feel part of it means they want to front it up and drive it.”
George Campbell framed it as mobilisation of many:
“Think Economy To Scale, with Train The Trainer for SMEs, and helping to uplevel the quality and provide a framework for prioritising the curation & delivery of sales enablement assets. Enablement should create a governance model, and ultimately own the roadmap, but a simple TTT Lite will expedite the output of just-in-time learning, and improved-quality sales content without the need to wait for a dedicated team (that is often small) to create. Enable the enablers to use Adult Learning Methods, become skilled facilitators, and design & develop sales-centric content.”
Sales managers’ enablement
In my experience, one of the most telling signs that a person really “gets” sales enablement is that they understand the crucial role that sales managers play in supporting enablement initiatives. That is why it didn’t come as a surprise when more than a few of our respondents listed sales leadership enablement as one of their top three sales enablement practices.
Ross McLean couldn’t have been more direct if he tried:
“Sales Managers/Leaders are the true enablers. If they are not fronting enablement with you and owning the reinforcement required to drive behaviour change, then don’t waste your time building it.”
Jeff Scannella recognised the paradox where those who are crucial for enablement efforts are typically the least enabled themselves:
“So much time is often spent with front-line sales or customer success teams, but the glue to the success of the program and long-term adoption is the sales manager. However, the managers are typically the audience that is least enabled.
Whether that is building structure for first-time managers to become true sales leaders, developing their skills as delegators rather than doers, or building operating rhythms to help them focus on the most critical activities and interactions with their people, manager alignment and development is critical.”
Sarah Gross focused on the importance of managers/leadership being more “Follow me!” than “Forward!” when she shared:
“Manager-Led Enablement. Revenue frontline leadership should always be taking enablement materials before frontline and helping kick off a live session or provide voice-over for e-learning. Managers should be part of planning for each enablement huddle proactively being part of sharing team needs and how they would measure success.”
Nate Vogel highlighted their role post-rollout:
“Managers are the critical change agents for all post-rollout activities, informing and enabling first-line and second-line leaders prior to other audiences is critical for ensuring:
- Sufficient comprehension
- Sustained adoption/reinforcement across the field.”
Cross-functional collaboration
It goes without saying that many of our contributors included cross-functional (horizontal) collaboration among their top things to focus on, myself included.
Namely, as I progressed in my career, it became clear how much inefficiency and misalignment can occur at the GTM level in organisations, primarily because most departments operate in silos.
The reality is that many organisations lack someone who takes ownership of orchestrating better interdepartmental collaboration to create value. This is a critical “environmental factor” for success. Enablement is uniquely positioned to assume this role, and I can assure you that by doing so, you will significantly enhance your value to your organisation.
George Campbell called it getting plugged into the business:
“From the offset, set the expectation that you are a core part of the engine. Attend meetings already being held by your stakeholders. These are (and not limited to): Leadership meetings, Deal reviews, Customer rehearsals, Pipeline reviews, Weekly sales meetings, sales operations meetings, QBRs, and especially reaching out to new people in the business whereby measuring from the point of RAMP can often be a means of expediting net-new ROI.
Essentially, this is the way to achieve rapid & early alignment with the overall GTM team, and ensure rapid & ongoing feedback.”
Edurne Rodriguez also listed cross-business prioritisation as one of her top practices:
“Enablement thrives when teams align on a unified set of priorities across the business. Instead of team-based approaches, focus on a broader, global cross-business framework. Use data-driven insights to identify key business needs, and ensure all teams are prioritising in the same way.”
She also insisted on the importance of having a collaborative, partner roadmap to help keep everyone on the same page:
“Establish a consolidated partner roadmap that aligns different teams with shared objectives, fostering effective collaboration and eliminating silos. This approach ensures everyone is working toward common goals, leading to increased operational efficiencies and improved market execution. Tip: start small, test, and calibrate.”
Andrew Flores also emphasised the role of enablement in establishing a culture of cross-collaboration:
“Be a culture ambassador. Revenue team members weave through the business cross-functionally to bring about solutions. We should always operate in alignment with company values. It helps to build a great brand internally and also to keep culture alive in the company!”
Early inclusion and co-creation
Two other aspects somewhat linked to cross-functional collaboration also came up as sales enablement best practices for some of our contributors: including additional stakeholders as early as possible and inviting them to co-create initiatives, programmes, and materials.
Rosi Young stated that doing the above enables sales enablement leaders to learn from others, especially if they are new to the organisation:
“Bring stakeholders and business partners into the process as early as possible. I’ve been in my current org for two months now, and as the founding enablement hire building the function from scratch, one of the lessons I’ve learnt very quickly is to bring your stakeholders and business partners along with you in the journey as soon as possible.
Come to them with situations, data points, and proposed solutions to get their thoughts. Ask for their opinions and insight. Gain feedback when and where you can.
Ensuring you use their knowledge and expertise to help shape enablement efforts will not only help others feel part of the process but also ensure you continuously learn from others about the organisation you’re working for.”
Chris MacDonald stressed that this early inclusion is also another way to build trust, something he mentioned earlier:
“With anything in enablement, I look to include others as partners in building the program/strategy/solution. This gets buy-in from the beginning, shortening the time it takes for someone to go through the stages of change. With a stake in the game, the impacted teams have someone to rely on as an ‘SME’ so to speak. It is a great way to get input from the field, build teams of champions that can support you, and gain trust!”
I myself have also found that one of the best sales enablement practices is co-creating your programmes.
As you begin the phase of needs analysis and the design of programmes and other enablement interventions, it’s paramount to co-create these initiatives by incorporating perspectives from sales leadership, managers, reps, and even other go-to-market units.
Gather as many ideas, information, and assets from them as you can and integrate these into your programmes (whenever possible). During the development of these programmes, regularly check in with stakeholders to collect additional feedback; in other words, engage in a continuous process of co-creation. Implementing sales enablement is a collaborative effort anyway.
This approach will be more time-consuming and require harder work, but it will ultimately pay off. Managers, in particular, will be more likely to commit to reinforcing and coaching the reps in alignment with the goals of the enablement interventions.
Strategic sales enablement
Given the high-level positions our contributors hold, it’s no surprise that many of the sales enablement best practices they shared focus on the sales enablement strategy.
These strategic considerations include needs analysis, creating a sales enablement charter, prioritising based on impact, aligning with overall business goals, and integrating enablement processes within the larger scope of go-to-market units.
Needs analysis
As a discipline centred on facilitating change, it is essential for sales enablement leaders to understand what needs to change. That’s why some of our contributors included needs analysis as a key strategic best practice.
Zach Golan, the Director of Global Sales Enablement at the world’s leading cloud-managed broadcast and targeted advertising company, emphasised rigorous needs analysis as the place to start:
“First and foremost, conduct a thorough needs analysis. We have a tendency in enablement to believe that what used to apply once will apply again in the future…perhaps, but most likely – no.
Each new company we work for presents its own unique challenges. Different industries and different sales orgs often require different strategies. Our job is to balance what the data is telling us versus what sellers and sales leaders want. If we rush this one we risk serving dishes nobody ordered.”
Samantha Thompson, the Head of Revenue Enablement at a company behind an open-source infrastructure-as-code tool, framed the initial analysis as a state-of-the-field report:
“When joining a new role conduct a “state of the field report” to understand the delta between where the team is and where they want to go. This should be a mix of qualitative and quantitative data to get the full story before diving into creating a charter, diving into projects, and especially before trying to ask for a headcount. If you don’t understand the history of the field team you’re joining you’re setting the enablement function up for failure.”
Lisa Giusto emphasised the importance of digging deep to identify the root causes of problems before making any major moves:
“Define the problem accurately. Being data-driven goes beyond examining isolated data points to make decisions. It involves delving deep to uncover the root cause by identifying how different data points interrelate. By tracing back to the problem’s origin, solving it on a larger scale becomes more feasible.”
Sales enablement charter
Once the needs analysis is conducted thoroughly, sales enablement leadership can use the insights, along with other inputs, to establish a sales enablement charter. Danica Bangert, the Senior Director of Revenue Enablement at an AgTech company focused on reducing fresh produce waste, described this process beautifully:
“An enablement charter serves as a guiding document that outlines the mission, vision, goals, and strategies of your enablement team. It provides clarity on the team’s purpose and direction, ensuring alignment with the broader organizational objectives.
Drawing from my experience, I’ve found that an enablement charter is essential for establishing a shared understanding of the enablement function’s role and responsibilities among team members and stakeholders. It helps set expectations and provides a framework for decision-making and prioritization.”
Personally, I am also a big fan of the sales enablement charter, as I wrote extensively in my article on sales enablement strategy.
Vanessa Metcalf suggested taking the charter to another level by upgrading it to a business plan:
“It’s pretty straightforward, but to put it succinctly: opt for a business plan over a charter.
Essentially, you need a strategic business plan, much like the ones crafted in marketing or operations, not just a charter.
The issue with charters is they tend to be one-off documents, quite static. Now, if your charter is more strategic, updated regularly, includes success metrics, and the like, then that’s excellent.
But what’s crucial is having a document that you can present to senior leaders and executives to communicate your enablement strategy.
You need to define your objectives, how you’re gauging success, and identify the mainstays of your enablement efforts. That includes onboarding, methodologies, skill enhancement, and leadership enablement, and let’s not forget the foundational elements such as content, change management, and communication strategies, which support these pillars.
You also need to be clear about who your audience is. It’s sort of like condensing your sales enablement strategy onto a single slide, but your strategic business plan should encompass more, like outlining your operational tempo, data utilisation, and a maturity plan. This entails knowing where you stand on the enablement maturity curve and planning the move to the next phase.
So, maintaining and regularly updating a strategic business plan, which also includes your roadmap, is imperative. This is a bit different from a charter, or at least the charters I’ve encountered in my experience. That’s why I’d advise any enablement leader to adopt this approach.”
Jocelle Sarenpa, the Director of Sales Enablement at one of the most popular labour marketplace for IT field service in the U.S. and Canada, also mentioned the enablement charter, while also providing us with a perfect segue to the subject of prioritisation:
“There are two tools every enablement department should have. These tools will help you prioritize projects, communicate with business partners, and protect and defend your precious enablement effort and energy: An enablement charter and an enablement request process.
An enablement charter defines the mission, duties, objectives, and priorities of your enablement team, (including quarterly initiatives and goals). Your charter is both an accountability tool and a mechanism to convey critical information. Creating a charter is not enough, it’s important to vocalize your charter with business partners and consistently bringing it to every conversation ensures stakeholders have clarity on the enablement function…”
Impact-based prioritisation
I usually don’t split one of our respondents’ quotes in half. However, the two enablement tools Jocelle mentioned perfectly illustrate the need for a strategic approach to sales enablement and the interconnectedness of various practices.
Conveniently, this also gave us the perfect opportunity to transition to prioritisation as an essential part of the sales enablement strategy.
So, without further ado, here is the second half of Jocelle’s quote:
”…The enablement request process typically includes an in-take form, which helps with in-bound requests for training needs or ideas.
You can offer fields like what the need is, the timeline, the audience, the impact, and you can even have a drop-down for the requester to attach this request to a strategic initiative or OKR goal.
By simply having a process, it offers a gut-check moment for the stakeholder or the requester to ask themselves “Is this training even necessary?”.
Oftentimes, they’ll find that the answer is not another training, the answer may be an email to communicate a change, or a one-on-one development opportunity, or a lesson that already exists.”
Lisa Giusto provided a succinct yet complete point on how to prioritise sales enablement efforts, highlighting it as one of the best practices:
“Maintain a strategic overview and allocate your time to areas where you can have a substantial impact. Avoid letting routine onboarding and operational updates monopolize your time without strategically choosing what is crucial for sales. Sync your objectives with those of the sales team and work backwards.”
Ashton Williams also pinpointed the importance of knowing the metrics you are trying to impact when prioritising sales enablement efforts:
“If you can’t measure the impact of a program on the business, revisit why you are doing it. Every enablement initiative should be targeting a behaviour that when done well, has impact on the business. Have a product launch? Awesome, what is the TAM and is there a pipeline activation target or expansion target for the field? Is it a differentiator you’re hoping pushes the competitive win rate? Enablement initiatives should target outcomes – even if the outcome is enablement maturity you should have the impact you’re striving for and how you’ll measure success decided before you commit and start building.”
Ben Purton went even further, calling for cutting projects that do not show impact:
“Advocate for quantifying the value of projects and cutting loose those that do not contribute significantly. Explain the principle of cutting loose projects that fail to make a measurable impact, despite the difficulty of letting go of time-consuming initiatives. The importance of being humble and empowering team members who contribute significantly to project success.”
Danica Bangert proposed implementing a defined behavioural change tiering to help with the prioritisation of sales enablement activities and resource allocation:
“A defined behavioral change tiering framework categorizes enablement requests based on their impact and urgency, allowing the team to prioritize effectively and allocate resources efficiently. It ensures that high-impact initiatives receive the attention and resources they require while minimizing distractions from lower-priority tasks.
In my experience, implementing a behavioral change tiering system has been instrumental in streamlining enablement operations and maximizing productivity. By categorizing requests into tiers based on factors such as strategic importance, scalability, and alignment with business objectives, you can optimize resource allocation and focus efforts where they will have the greatest impact.”
Edurne Rodriguez, suggested a similar tiered approach to sales and revenue enablement:
“Once cross-business priorities are clear, design efficient processes to address them and allocate resources where they’ll have the most impact. Use a tiered approach to Sales & Revenue Enablement, aligned with key business priorities, to manage different levels of urgency. Define clear Enablement Goals to guide your enablement process design. Establish clear escalation paths to respond quickly to changing needs. Simplify the framework to reduce complexity and improve productivity. Ensure the resource allocation reflects the business’s evolving priorities for effective outcomes. A quick tip: design simple processes that are easy to manage and calibrate.”
Ross McLean highlighted that having a regular, structured sales enablement process is something that he has seen to be particularly effective:
“Have a quarterly enablement planning process. This gives you a structured way to intake requests and consult against them effectively. It also helps to get ahead of content build & delivering mechanism to ensure that you are always driving impact with the field. Having a process helps you connect and consolidate to drive cohesive themes that move the needle and drive better focus (less is more).”
Data, metrics, and OKRs aligned with business goals
A question that is hopefully on your lips at this very moment probably has something to do with how to measure the business impact so thoroughly discussed in the previous section.
The good news is that our respondents provided enough ideas among themselves that you will be spoilt for choice after finishing this section.
Vanessa Metcalf provided a perfect bird’s-eye view of how the quality of data available to your enablement team is the ultimate gauge of enablement maturity:
“The key point to grasp is this: data maturity equals enablement maturity.
What do I mean by that?
Well, when we discuss the pinnacle of enablement maturity, the conversation invariably turns to demonstrating impact. It’s crucial for your executives to grasp the return on investment of enablement initiatives. However, this is impossible without reliable data access. You also need the ability to link enablement efforts to success metrics and to examine those metrics collectively to assess the overall effectiveness of the enablement function.
So, my advice is to collaborate closely with your operations team. Deliberate over how enablement can access the necessary data to achieve the desired levels of maturity. This step is absolutely vital.”
Samantha Thompson shared a similar sentiment:
“Metrics separate good enablement from great. If you’re not systematically measuring your programs (not how many downloads your new collateral got), it’s to the detriment of enablement, the field team, and ultimately the business.
Measuring the impact of programs is difficult and takes time to mature but it is table stakes for the relevancy and survival of enablement. Every other function, from marketing to sales to product has metrics and it’s overdue for enablement to do the same if we want to have long-term viability as a profession.”
She also put it very explicitly that enablement efforts must be tied to business OKRs:
“Every enablement project needs to be tied to a company/department OKR. Period. If the project doesn’t help move the needle on the business, it shouldn’t be prioritized.
I ask these three questions to vet every request that comes my way:
1. What’s the business challenge or opportunity we are trying to address?
2. What the intended impact/change in behavior is – what are folks not doing that they need to be doing?
3. How will the enablement outputs/plan help address the business challenge and performance improvement?”
Danica Bangert also featured alignment enablement goals with company OKRs as one of the three best practices she would recommend to every sales enablement professional:
“Aligning enablement team goals with company objectives and key results (OKRs) ensures that enablement efforts are directly contributing to the organization’s overall success.
It fosters synergy between different departments and reinforces a culture of collaboration and accountability.
Based on my experience, I recommend setting clear and measurable goals for the enablement team that align with specific OKRs. By establishing key performance indicators (KPIs) and tracking progress regularly, you can ensure that enablement initiatives are driving tangible outcomes and delivering value to the organization.”
Much like Samantha Thompson, Rosi Young got straight to the point, explaining very well what business cares (and doesn’t care) about:
“We often hear about the importance of using metrics and data to show enablement influence, but we tend to focus on the wrong type of metrics as enablers.
Course completion, training attendance, and onboarding satisfaction are all nice metrics for us as enablers, as they show our sellers are engaging with what we’re building, but – as harsh as it is to say – the business doesn’t care about these.
Aligning our enablement programs and initiatives with metrics the business cares about, and showing that we’re able to help move the needle on tangible revenue outcomes (average deal size, sales cycle length, and ramp time/time to productivity are three metrics I typically look at) will help enablement move from being viewed as a cost centre, to an essential strategic department for an organisation.”
Nate Vogel added a few more OKRs that you could/should measure:
“Measure beyond customer satisfaction and sentiment – Track Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) including, but not limited to:
- Content engagement metrics (content produced and consumed);
- Confidence indexes;
- Impact on strategic initiative development;
- Velocity of project completions;
- Conversational intelligence trackers pertaining to company-wide and BU-specific initiatives.”
Jocelle Sarenpa offered a refreshing perspective by showcasing how you can measure the effects of sales enablement in a more holistic way. She noted that many sales enablement teams focus so much on quantitative metrics that they sometimes “forget” the fact that the names in the sales groups represent real people:
”As most of us know, enabling the salesperson is not just about measuring their sales performance. When developing your programs, consider how you can incorporate holistic topics.
This includes psychological safety, team-building and belonging, openness to alternative perspectives, and coaching the whole person (not just the act of selling) – and measure accordingly.
This could be time management, cultivating positive habits, encouraging growth mindset, personality assessments (know thyself) or peer support.
With so many tools that track the quantitative, it can be easy to adopt an over-reliance on these types of metrics, and since the qualitative metrics can be more difficult to define and measure, they fall by the wayside.
If you are new to this, start with your company’s core values and understand your expectations for reps’ adherence to them and create a system for measuring this. Some ideas can include: developing an IEP (ideal employee profile), 360 reviews focused on core values from key stakeholders, and personal reflection.”
I would simply feel remiss not to include the quote that Jocelle added as part of this response:
Jeff Scannella and Andrew Flores kept it short and to the point when they talked about metrics and using them to strengthen the role of sales enablement.
Jeff recommended speaking the same language of revenue leaders:
“Speaking the language of your CRO is as important as the AEs you enable learning the language of their key stakeholders in key accounts. Understanding the pipeline health and coverage metrics, deal velocity, time in stage, conversion rate by stage as well as ARR and MRR can rapidly shift the ability to earn a seat at the table. Building programs in alignment with these metrics is critical to showcase value.”
Andrew pulled a nugget from his trusty bag of sales practices:
“Never stop selling. As an enablement leader, you now sell internally the solution to your stakeholder’s (decision maker’s) problems. The best way to find the challenges that keep your stakeholders up at night is to do regular pain discovery of the revenue org. Meet with stakeholders and ask them pain questions every quarter to align with their goals for the business. Don’t forget to get metrics to measure success!”
To wrap up this section, we have Zach Golan, who suggested that indiscriminately bowing down to data is not always the best approach and that sometimes things simply don’t work out for reasons outside anyone’s control:
“Humans are more complex than our most sophisticated BI. Your top seller might be hitting a slump and it sometimes has nothing to do with competence – they can do all the right things, follow a repeatable sales motion that just doesn’t work this quarter. The stars sometimes just won’t align.”
One of the most stunning aspects of the responses shared in this section is how the respondents managed to keep the big picture in mind while also diving deep into the intricacies when needed to illustrate their points.
On a side note, in case this absolute treasure of insights has inspired you to rethink your strategy, feel free to download my sales enablement strategy template.
Miscellaneous
As could be expected from such a wealth of responses, a few were bound to fall outside of the themes and the more narrowed-down topics we painstakingly categorised. That being said, I have to say that this miscellaneous collection of best practices actually contains some of my favourite ones.
For instance, the following one from Jonathan Kvarfordt came across as one of the most genuine, humble and healthy pieces of advice I have ever read:
“Another best practice I have is a principle that governs any enablement function I am involved in. That is this one concept that I learned from failing at it many times, which is: “I am not the EXPERT. What I am is a facilitator of expertise.”
Once I got through my noggin that I do not need or have to be the expert in all things, but rather find, deliver, and facilitate the experts or expertise, it totally changed my focus and how I worked.
Now I focus more on celebrating others, putting them into the spotlight with training, coaching, content, etc. It helps showcase others’ strengths and makes the speed of enablement faster because I am no longer the bottleneck of the expertise. Too many times we put so much pressure on ourselves to be the expert, but the more I let go, the more I am able to do a better job with enablement.”
While we are on the subject of healthier sales enablement, Jocelle Sarenpa also shared a best practice that is often neglected, especially by sales enablement professionals who find it difficult to release control:
“Control the Controllables.
Understand what is within your control, learn to accept that which isn’t. Release emotional attachment to what lies outside your realm of control.
You may not have control (or even a voice) in the changes of your organization’s strategic initiatives, but you do have control over your own participation in supporting the new strategic initiatives. If your company makes a change that no longer aligns with your interests, your life vision/mission, or your skillset, you have a choice: stay and adapt, or leave.”
Woody Walker, Zach Golan, and Ben Purton were the only three respondents who mentioned the role of technology in sales enablement.
Woody shared the following:
“At my company, the best practice that I am focusing on most is enabling the sellers with artificial intelligence tools to reduce their administrative burden and help them focus on clients. That ranges from ChatGPT usage for research to sales copilot which allows us to summarize the opportunity and plan for our meetings using gen AI and finally Microsoft 365 copilot chat that allows us to search seamlessly across the entire organization, including emails, chats and SharePoint sites for what we need to conduct an effective client presentation in seconds!
These three tools alone can reduce admin functions up to 10 hours a week, allowing sellers to take that time and dig deeper into our clients’ business problems and spend more time on the phone with them solving their problems through their industry expertise and technology knowledge.”
On the subject of sales enablement technology, Zach Golan recommended caution when using sales enablement platforms:
“Avoid platform overkill. The market is flooded with tools that like to rebrand cars as “human propellants”. Honey, it’s a car that I now have to pay x3 as much for. Ask yourself what are your bare necessities and start there (e.g., do we all need an LMS?). Read this one and re-read it, and thank me later.”
Ben focused on AI as a tool that amplifies and does not replace:
“Highlight the importance of delegation to both AI and human resources. Discuss the concept of ‘Amplify not replace’ in relation to AI within Enablement, emphasizing AI’s role in support rather than replacement. Stress the significance of having a skilled team, citing Steve Jobs’ advice to hire great people who can guide decision-making.”
Paz Petraglia touched upon the subject of hiring, albeit in a different context. She emphasised how sales organisations need to be mindful of the cultural fit when hiring:
“Emphasize strategic hiring. It is crucial to develop a hiring process that looks beyond just the necessary skills, aiming also to identify candidates who possess the right mindset for sales excellence. Utilize competency-based interviews and real-life role-plays to gauge skills more accurately. Seeking individuals who are adaptable, eager to learn, and align with your company’s culture can save time on training and sales management.”
As more and more companies leverage sales partnerships, Nate Vogel’s advice on partner enablement is very valuable:
“Scale with 80%+ Sales Enablement content leveraged for Partners so you can have global parity of Enablement initiatives (Whiteboard Messaging, Account Planning, Product Knowledge, etc.)”
As it turns out, one of my own personal pieces of advice ended up in the miscellaneous category. Namely, we can all agree that, as sales enablement professionals, our goal is to drive excellence. Many of us strive to deliver best-in-class training, coaching, and content services.
However, particularly in organisations where enablement maturity is still in the early stages, more comprehensive isn’t always better. In such cases, it may be necessary to simplify our approaches initially. This helps familiarise the organisation with enablement concepts and drives early adoption and buy-in from managers and reps. As people begin to recognise the impact, we can then enhance and expand our existing programmes and services to make them more comprehensive.
Conclusion
If you’re pressed for time and skipped to the conclusion to glean insights from true leaders in the field, bookmark this article and come back to read it carefully and thoroughly. Not for me, but for yourself and your future sales enablement efforts.
With a group of contributors of this calibre, I always knew I’d receive high-quality insights. Still, I had no idea the enablement best practices I’d uncover would be this valuable and multifaceted, spanning so many areas and helping you avoid all kinds of sales enablement mistakes.
This article has reinforced my belief that truly valuable, insightful, and applicable sales enablement content comes from collaborations such as this, as opposed to sterile, large-scale research often influenced by sponsors.
If I had to sum up the most important things I learned about how to make sales enablement work, it would include a few key factors:
- Accurate analysis and business evaluation are crucial for identifying and prioritising the most pressing areas and problems.
- Effective sales enablement also requires cross-functional collaboration and the ability to draw resources and inputs from various departments.
- Gaining buy-in from and enabling sales managers is fundamental, directly impacting the effectiveness of enablement efforts.
However, this is not even scratching the surface of the absolute abundance of sales enablement advice you will find in this article.
Finally, a huge thanks to Andrew, Ashton, Ben, Chris, Danica, Edurne, George, Jeff, Jocelle, Jonathan, Lisa, Nate, Paz, Rosi, Ross, Samantha, Sarah, Vanessa, Woody, and Zach!
Your generous participation made this article possible, and I am truly grateful.
