Stepping into a new sales enablement role is both exciting and overwhelming.
The first 90 days are critical – not just for learning the business but for establishing credibility, aligning with stakeholders, and driving the initial impact required to gain further buy-in.
Without a structured approach, it’s easy to get lost in the whirlwind of meetings and competing priorities.
This short guide breaks down the key actions sales enablement leaders should take in their first 90 days to set themselves up for long-term success.
Days 1–30: Build relationships, learn the business, and define success
Prioritise relationship-building with key stakeholders
Your success in sales enablement is directly tied to the strength of your relationships – especially with frontline sales managers.
These individuals are the gatekeepers to your sales team’s adoption of enablement initiatives.
Start by meeting with:
Frontline sales managers: Understand their challenges, how they view your role, and how you can work together.
Sales reps: Learn their day-to-day struggles, what they would value from enablement, and where they feel unsupported.
Marketing and product teams: Gain insights into how messaging, content, and product updates flow to the sales team.
Sales operations: Align on data, processes, how you can collaborate together effectively, and how enablement can support sales operations initiatives.
Customer success: Understand post-sale challenges and other insights that might be relevant for identifying and improving enablement interventions early in the sales cycle before closing deals.
Key deliverable: A stakeholder map outlining challenges different groups face, their priorities, areas of alignment, and the most critical relationships for the success of your future enablement interventions.
Become an expert in the business
You can’t enable sales if you don’t fully grasp what they’re selling and to whom. Deep-dive into:
The problems you solve: What pain points does your company address? How does this translate into buyer needs?
Your ideal customer profile (ICP): The types of companies that are the best fit for your solution, based on firmographics, technographics, and buying signals.
Your buyer personas: The key decision-makers and influencers within your ICP, their goals, pain points, objections, and what messaging resonates with them.
The sales process: How does a deal move from lead to closed-won? Where are the friction points?
Competitive landscape: Who are the main competitors? What differentiates your solution?
Key deliverable: A concise document outlining the main insights gained from exploring the above areas, including any missing or incomplete documentation that may require building in the future.
Establish clear KPIs and targets
Sales enablement encompasses a broad range of activities, so defining success early is crucial.
Work with leadership to establish clear, measurable objectives tied to revenue impact, such as:
Onboarding ramp time reduction
Increased win rates on key deal types or sales motions
Sales cycle time reduction on key deal types or sales motions
Increased average deal size on key deal types or sales motions
Increase in outbound opportunities generated
These high-level objectives ensure alignment with business priorities, but many of them are influenced by multiple factors beyond enablement’s direct control.
To make a tangible impact, sales enablement must track leading indicators that influence the broader revenue metrics above. Examples include:
Certification completion rates: How many reps successfully complete training programmes and assessments?
Sales methodology adoption: Are reps consistently applying the prescribed frameworks in their sales process?
Sales tool utilisation: Are sellers effectively using the CRM, sales engagement tools, conversational intelligence platforms, or other relevant sales tech?
Sales content engagement: Are reps leveraging key materials (e.g., battlecards, business cases) at critical deal stages?
Manager coaching participation: How frequently are frontline managers reinforcing enablement initiatives?
Win/Loss analysis impact: Are insights from win/loss analysis influencing sales strategy and enablement interventions?
Knowledge retention & application: Are reps demonstrating real-world application of what they’ve learned?
Call and meeting execution quality: Are reps improving in cold calls, discovery calls, demo execution, and negotiation tactics?
By tracking these enablement-driven metrics, you gain visibility into what’s working and where additional support is needed.
As you refine these objectives and metrics, consider documenting them in a sales enablement charter – a living document outlining enablement’s role, key priorities, and success measures (see my sales enablement strategy article for more).
It doesn’t need to be perfect right away, but by the end of the first 30 days, you should have a clear picture of what matters to the business and where enablement needs to plug in.
This charter will serve as a foundation for future strategy adjustments and ensure that enablement efforts remain focused on driving measurable impact.
Key deliverable: A success metrics framework aligned with revenue and sales performance goals, and, ideally, a sales enablement charter.
Days 31–60: Remove friction and start building enablement infrastructure
Formalise an executive advisory board
By now, you should have a strong grasp of challenges, opportunities, and priorities.
To ensure enablement becomes and remains a strategic function rather than a tactical support role, establish an executive advisory board – a strategic group of senior executives who provide guidance and facilitate alignment with overarching business objectives.
Unlike frontline sales managers or individual contributors, this board is not focused on day-to-day enablement execution but on governance, strategic alignment, and impact. Their role is to:
Provide executive sponsorship to elevate enablement from a tactical function to a business-critical initiative.
Ensure enablement initiatives align with broader company objectives and revenue goals.
Help remove organisational barriers and secure necessary resources for enablement success.
Maintain transparency and accountability through structured progress reporting.
Engaging these senior stakeholders early – ideally starting with your sales enablement charter – sets the foundation for a governance model that maximises the chances of long-term success.
Key deliverable: A structured executive advisory board with a defined cadence for strategic reviews and decision-making.
Identify and eliminate friction for buyers and sellers
Sales enablement should be as much about improving the buyer experience as it is about supporting reps.
To make a rapid impact and establish credibility, focus on identifying and eliminating the biggest obstacles that hinder deal progression, slow down sellers, or create friction in the buyer’s journey.
The faster you can remove these roadblocks, the sooner you’ll demonstrate enablement’s value as a strategic driver of efficiency and revenue growth.
For buyers: Are there unnecessary steps in the buying process? Does the handoff between marketing, sales, and customer success create confusion?
For sellers: What obstacles slow them down? Are they spending too much time searching for content, navigating tools, or handling administrative tasks?
Key deliverable: A list of top friction points and an action plan to remove them.
Build a scalable intake and prioritisation process
Enablement leaders often get flooded with ad-hoc requests from sales, product, marketing, and leadership.
Without a structured intake process, priorities can become reactive instead of strategic.
Create an intake form for enablement requests to capture the problem, urgency, and expected impact.
Establish a prioritisation framework (e.g., impact vs. effort matrix) to focus on the highest-value initiatives.
Key deliverable: A standardised intake process and prioritisation model.
Identify 2–3 high-impact projects
By now, you should have enough insights to determine which initiatives will drive the most value.
Focus on 2–3 discrete, high-impact projects that align with revenue goals. Examples include:
Redesigning the onboarding programme to shorten ramp time.
Implementing a deal coaching framework for managers.
Optimising the sales content repository for easier access.
Designing and rolling out a new business case template with associated training and coaching.
Intervening to remove a specific set of blockers for buyers and sellers.
Key deliverable: A roadmap outlining the 2–3 key projects with clear objectives and timelines.
Days 61–90: Execute, measure, and iterate
Drive execution and deliver early wins
Now, it’s time to execute the selected initiatives.
As we already mentioned, early wins will build credibility and buy-in for future enablement efforts.
Communicate progress regularly to leadership and sales teams.
Leverage the Executive Advisory Board to ensure alignment and sponsorship.
Gather quick feedback and iterate as needed.
Key deliverable: Completion of at least one high-impact project with reporting of initial results.
Evaluate success and plan the next phase
As you approach the 90-day mark, assess what’s working, what’s not, and what’s next.
Review progress: Are key leading indicator metrics showing improvement?
Gather stakeholder feedback: What’s resonating with sales teams and leadership?
Refine the roadmap: Based on the previously defined projects and the new learnings, identify the next set of enablement focuses.
Key deliverable: A report summarising successes, learnings, and the next 90-day action plan.
Final thoughts: set the foundation for long-term impact
The first 90 days in a sales enablement role are about laying a strong foundation.
By prioritising relationships, deeply understanding the business, and executing high-impact initiatives, you position yourself as a strategic leader who drives measurable sales performance improvements.
That said, how much you can accomplish in this timeframe will depend on your available resources.
If you’re stepping into an established team, you’ll have existing structures and support to accelerate execution.
If you’re building enablement from scratch, your initial focus may be more on gaining buy-in and establishing the fundamentals.
This guide serves as a compass, not a rigid checklist – your pace and priorities will depend on your specific context.
Biggest takeaways:
Build relationships early, especially with frontline managers.
Focus on understanding buyer challenges and the sales process.
Implement structured processes to remove friction and prioritise work.
Deliver quick wins while setting the stage for long-term impact.
Following this approach will allow you to make a lasting impact – not just in your first 90 days, but throughout your entire tenure as a sales enablement leader.
