16 Sales Enablement Tips You Can Try Out Today

Introduction

Sales enablement is an incredibly complex system, where every part is connected to the others – sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly. When you remove, add, or modify one part of the system, it’s likely to impact how other parts function.

This is why, generally, I’m not a fan of quick sales enablement tips. 

Short-term fixes rarely lead to genuine sales acceleration.

True progress requires a strategic, holistic approach that leverages systems thinking to understand how the various parts of the GTM unit interact and focuses on interventions that enhance the overall efficiency and effectiveness of the “machine.”

That being said, while major changes often require significant resources, I’ve seen certain aspects of enablement that are frequently overlooked yet don’t always demand a heavy lift – and can still make a real difference.

These are the kinds of insights that can slip through the cracks but have the potential to improve your enablement efforts without disrupting the entire system.

This is precisely why I decided to write this collection of tips – actionable, relatively quick-to-execute practices that can contribute meaningfully to your success.

While I’ve tried to focus on tips that avoid the challenges mentioned earlier, I want to be upfront in saying that some of these might require more resources than others. I chose to include them because they can be genuinely transformative and take your enablement strategy and approach to the next level.

#1 Review the alignment of incentives and consequences with desired behaviours

In most organisations, sales teams have been operating for a long time before the sales enablement function is introduced.

As a result, enablement often steps into an environment where a system of incentives already exists, designed to motivate salespeople to meet and exceed their targets.

However, it’s more common than you might think that these incentives and the consequences of not doing something aren’t fully aligned with the desired behaviours.

This is where sales enablement can and should play a crucial role in realigning them.

Enablement professionals can bring a lot of value to the highest level of the organisation by taking responsibility alongside sales operations to conduct a thorough, data-driven analysis of how the current incentivisation structure is influencing sales behaviours and, ultimately, business outcomes.

If a disconnect exists – for example, when rewards are based on metrics that don’t align with long-term goals  – the enablement team can provide valuable insights and recommendations to bridge that gap.

A real-life example of this could be a bonus scheme where sales reps are rewarded solely for bringing in new accounts, regardless of their size or likelihood of churn.

As a result, salespeople focus on the lowest-hanging fruit, and the organisation ends up paying out large bonuses without seeing meaningful revenue growth. The deals are too small, and many of them churn after the first year.

To truly influence your sales team’s behaviour, the starting point should be identifying the actual business goals of your go-to-market organisation.

From there, you can design a system where incentives – whether financial bonuses, recognition, or other rewards – are directly tied to the behaviours that align with those goals.

Equally important is establishing clear and reasonable consequences for failing to meet these standards.

This balanced approach can drive the right behaviours and improve performance, even without considering any process or training interventions.

If I had to start anywhere, this would be the place to begin.

#2 Revise how you involve and enable sales managers

Sales managers are not just participants in sales enablement efforts; they are the primary drivers of behavioural change and reinforcement within the sales team.

Despite the fact that the long-term success and adoption of any enablement programme largely depend on how well the sales managers are equipped to lead their teams, they are often the least supported group within an organisation. 

Take a moment to do a quick exercise – pull up your monthly or quarterly schedule and check what percentage of your department’s enablement efforts are focused on sales managers.

There are several reasons this number might be lower than you’d like:

• Too much emphasis on enabling frontline sellers which limits the amount of time and effort the sales enablement team can put into enabling managers. 

• Sales managers’ packed schedules that leave little room for enablement activities.

• Resistance or pushback from sales managers.

• Limited enablement maturity, which may cause enablement teams to hesitate in approaching managers directly.

If you read between the lines, you’ll notice that all of these reasons (and likely many more) boil down to one core issue – most sales managers are unaware of how enablement can help them.

This is why they don’t make time for enablement, why they push back, why sales enablement teams feel uneasy approaching them, and why the focus is often on enabling sellers rather than managers.

It’s the sales enablement function’s responsibility to demonstrate how enablement benefits sales managers. It’s your job to sell enablement to them.

There are several ways to approach this, and they work best when combined:

• Illustrate how sales enablement initiatives are aligned with the sales managers’ objectives, such as improving team performance, reducing ramp-up time, or increasing sales productivity. 

• Identify and communicate small, immediate improvements that enablement can bring to their daily operations. Whether it’s a new tool that simplifies reporting or a coaching tip that improves team morale, these quick wins can build trust and show that enablement is about making their jobs easier and more effective.

• Use data to show how enablement has positively impacted other managers or teams. Present metrics that highlight improvements in sales performance, employee engagement, or other key areas directly influenced by sales enablement.

• Develop and offer resources specifically designed to address the unique challenges that sales managers face. This could include leadership development, time management, and effective delegation. Show how these resources can help them become strategic leaders who can coach and guide their teams more effectively.

• Establish regular check-ins and feedback loops to ensure that enablement continues to meet the evolving needs of sales managers. 

• Involve sales managers in the planning and development of enablement programmes. By seeking their input and aligning the initiatives with their team’s needs, you not only tailor the support to their specific challenges but also foster a sense of ownership and collaboration. This approach helps managers see enablement as a partner in their success rather than an external imposition.

Recently, I wrote about building an entire system for enabling sales managers where I go deeper into this topic.

If you take forward some of these actions, I am confident you’ll stand to gain in the relationships and interactions you’ll have with sales management. 

#3 Tear down what doesn’t work

This is by no means limited to enablement as a function, but one of the most challenging and yet essential tasks is recognising when something isn’t working and having the courage to dismantle it. 

As sales enablement professionals, we pour copious amounts of time, effort, and passion into creating programmes, processes, and initiatives. 

However, we must never lose sight of one very simple truth – the real measure of success isn’t in the effort expended, but in the tangible value these projects bring to the organisation.

Road-test everything rigorously and measure the impact of every initiative.

If a project isn’t contributing significantly to the organisation’s goals, no matter how much time and energy have been invested, it’s time to let it go. 

This isn’t just about cutting losses; it’s about being humble and brave enough to admit when something isn’t working and to tear down something you’ve built. 

Continuous improvement is key to success in sales enablement and instead of clinging to what’s familiar, we must be willing to start fresh, even if it means starting from scratch.

#4 Learn and apply adult learning principles

There are two key aspects to developing training programmes for sales personnel: what they will be learning and how they will be learning it.

In most cases, the focus tends to be on the what – especially when enablement teams are composed of people with sales backgrounds. Salespeople know how to sell, they remember what helped them succeed, and they understand what other salespeople need to improve.

In such environments, the how is often reduced to simply deciding how the content will be delivered to the sales team – this is a very narrow interpretation of the how.

For sales training to be truly effective, the how should be grounded in adult learning principles – a concept that many without a background in learning and development or teaching might be unfamiliar with.

Adult learning, as the name suggests, is a discipline focused on helping adults learn in the most effective and efficient way. It’s a relatively recent field, emerging in the 20th century and pioneered by Malcolm Knowles.

The six core principles of adult learning that Knowles identified remain highly relevant today, even with the extensive research and contributions made by others since. These principles are:

These principles should always serve as the foundation for any sales training programmes you, as an enablement professional, develop and implement.

Of course, this only scratches the surface – adult learning has evolved significantly over the past 50 years.

We’re not suggesting you need a master’s degree in adult learning to succeed in enablement, but gaining a solid understanding of it can be incredibly beneficial for your career.

There are plenty of online courses, blogs, and other resources available to help you explore this field further.

Here are some books I’d recommend checking out:

• Knowles’ own The Adult Learner – still a classic that provides fantastic insights into the distinctive characteristics of adults in terms of education, learning, and experience;

• Julie Dirksen’s Design for How People Learn – offers practical insights into how people absorb and retain information, with strategies to create engaging learning experiences. 

• Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger III, and Mark A. McDaniel’s Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning – explores evidence-based learning strategies like retrieval and spaced repetition, focusing on long-term retention. 

• Harold D. Stolovitch and Erica J. Keeps’s Telling Ain’t Training – focuses on the difference between presenting information and creating interactive, effective training. 

They should provide you with both a theoretical introduction to the discipline and some practical ideas you can start applying immediately. 

#5 Have a sponsor for every big initiative

Securing a sponsor is non-negotiable for the success of any sales enablement initiative.

Your sponsor should be someone with the influence to push the initiative forward, typically a revenue leader or another key executive.

In larger organisations, it can be challenging to get executives on board with enablement initiatives. However, the higher up your sponsor is, the better.

This isn’t just about having someone to champion your cause – it’s about aligning the initiative with broader business goals and maintaining momentum throughout the project.

One of the most critical roles your sponsor will play is keeping the initiative alive once the initial enthusiasm wanes, by holding lower-level management accountable and ensuring follow-through on plans and communications.

Regularly scheduled Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs) are also an excellent tool for keeping your sponsor informed and invested in the project’s success. As an enablement professional, it’s your responsibility to enable your sponsor just as much as you enable the sales force.

To entice the right people to become sponsors, it’s essential to communicate the direct impact their involvement will have on the success of the initiative and, consequently, on the broader business outcomes. 

A good place to start is to frame the initiative in terms of its alignment with the company’s strategic goals and how it will directly contribute to achieving key objectives, such as revenue growth, market expansion, or customer retention.

It goes without saying that you will want to make sure they personally care about the objectives the initiative is aiming for. 

You should also paint a clear picture of the benefits of their sponsorship, including the opportunity to steer the initiative in a direction that best serves the company’s needs and their own departmental goals.

Explain that their active involvement can ensure the project is not only executed effectively but also that it delivers measurable results.

When sponsors see that their engagement will lead to tangible improvements – whether in sales performance, team efficiency, or overall business metrics – they are far more likely to commit their time and resources. 

#6 Establish an enablement request process

One challenge that many enablement teams face is the influx of requests for activities or initiatives from other stakeholders within the company. These requests typically come from sales leadership, but also from product, marketing, and sales operations teams.

This can be especially disruptive for younger enablement departments that haven’t yet established themselves as strategic functions within the organisation and are still largely reactive in nature.

A structured request process can be a powerful ally for enablement teams in this situation.

One effective way to implement this is by introducing an intake form, which serves as a valuable tool for managing and prioritising inbound requests from stakeholders.

The intake form should capture essential details, such as the specific need, timeline, target audience, and expected impact. Including a drop-down menu that allows the requester to align their request with a strategic initiative or OKR goal can also ensure that each request is tied to broader business objectives.

The real value of this process lies in its ability to prompt stakeholders to reconsider whether a formal training session is vital.

Often, by simply filling out the intake form, requesters realise that the solution might not require new training at all. Instead, the issue could be addressed through a simple email, a group meeting, or by leveraging existing resources.

This approach helps sales enablement professionals streamline requests, ensuring their focus is on initiatives that truly add value, while also encouraging stakeholders to think critically about the most effective solutions for their needs.

One of the greatest advantages of a structured enablement request process is that it serves as a politically neutral way to reinforce your team’s autonomy.

#7 Co-create your programmes

The idea of co-creating your enablement programmes has come up several times in my previous enablement tips.

That said, I personally view co-creation as one of the key parts of every winning sales enablement strategy, and I couldn’t skip dedicating one of these tips entirely to it.

By involving groups like sales leadership, sales management, marketing, product, and other departments from the very beginning, you ensure that the initiatives you design are not only aligned with broader organisational goals but also enriched by the insights and expertise of those closest to the action.

This collaborative approach allows you to tap into the deep knowledge and experience of others, resulting in higher-impact programs and interventions.

Co-creation is also a powerful way to build trust and secure buy-in.

When stakeholders are actively involved in shaping the programmes, they become more invested in the outcomes. They’re more likely to champion the initiatives within their teams, which leads to faster adoption and more effective implementation.

As co-creators, they shift from passive participants to active supporters – essential for driving behavioural change and achieving the desired results.

One thing to always keep in mind when co-creating your sales enablement programmes is the importance of regular feedback loops, both during the development process and throughout execution.

These feedback loops ensure that the programs stay dynamic and responsive to evolving needs, while also reinforcing the sense of ownership among all involved.

Such an approach may take more time and effort, but the payoff is substantial.

#8 Get plugged into the business

Sales enablement is most effective when it serves as a highway, connecting sales teams with the broader revenue unit, as well as departments like marketing, customer success, and company leadership. 

Unfortunately, this role isn’t guaranteed.

It falls on you to position enablement in a way that fosters cross-functional collaboration, facilitates the flow of information, and actively participates in strategic decisions that shape the GTM function.

A good place to start is to position yourself as a core part of the organisation’s engine. Attend key meetings such as leadership discussions, deal reviews, pipeline reviews, QBRs, and sales operations meetings.

By participating in these forums, you gain valuable insights, establish early alignment with stakeholders, and create a steady flow of feedback that can drive continuous improvement in your enablement initiatives.

Another highly effective tool for achieving this is a consolidated partner roadmap that aligns various teams around shared objectives, fostering collaboration and breaking down silos.

Such a roadmap should never be just a collection of nice-to-have ideas that get stuck after the initial interdepartmental meeting.

As the enablement team, it’s essential to formalise this collaborative effort:

• Build a network of stakeholders who will take ownership of these shared goals.

• Help define both the shared objectives and those specific to individual departments, with the support of stakeholders.

• Take the lead in establishing the metrics and KPIs to monitor collective progress.

• Set up clear, well-documented communication channels.

• Continuously gather feedback from all participants, keeping senior stakeholders and sponsors informed.

• Start small, test, iterate, and improve. 

Always remember, enablement is more than just training or producing sales content – it’s a strategic function. Often, you have to actively make it one.

#9 Conduct needs analyses

Engaging in sales enablement without conducting a thorough needs analysis, or starting any initiative (training, coaching, content releases, onboarding restructuring, etc.) without one, is like a doctor slicing open a patient’s ribcage without knowing who they are or what’s wrong with them.

Sometimes, it’s just a rash.

Getting back to sales enablement and needs analysis, it should involve gathering both qualitative and quantitative data to understand where the sales team currently stands and where they aspire to be. 

Simply looking at surface-level issues or isolated data points won’t cut it. Instead, you need to dig deep into the data to identify how various factors are interconnected.

You also need to understand that each company, industry, and sales organisation is unique. What worked in one context may not necessarily work in another.

A rigorous needs analysis will help you balance data-driven insights with the specific desires and expectations of your sales leaders and team members. 

Besides reducing the risks of working on initiatives that will produce no impactful results, conducting needs analyses also helps you and your team evaluate new initiative requests more thoroughly and propose the optimal ways of handling those requests. 

Far too often, stakeholders come in convinced that the sales team needs a comprehensive 6-month training programme and an entirely new set of sales content (and a month-long, resource-consuming sales and marketing team collab) when in reality, all they need are a few essential playbook items and some focused coaching on competitive selling.

You don’t want to find yourself performing a 12-hour surgery when all the patient really needs is a bit of aloe vera.

#10 Vocalise your sales enablement charter

A sales enablement charter is a formal document that outlines the purpose, goals, and strategic direction of the sales enablement function within an organisation. It serves as a guiding framework for all sales enablement activities, ensuring alignment with broader business objectives and providing clarity on roles, responsibilities, and expected outcomes.

While charters will differ from organisation to organisation and from one enablement department to another, most of them will include the following key components (as discussed in my sales enablement strategy article):

1. Mission and vision

2. Goals and objectives

3. Scope of responsibilities

4. Stakeholders and collaboration

5. Metrics and success criteria

6. Governance and accountability

7. Timeline and milestones

8. Resource allocation

However, my charter-related sales enablement tip this time has nothing to do with creating a charter. 

It has to do with vocalising your charter. 

Many times, sales enablement teams forget one of its core functions – providing clarity on the enablement function to different stakeholders within the organisation. 

In other words, your enablement charter is not just an internal tool that outlines the aforementioned aspects of your function; it is also an external tool that tells the other units’ stakeholders:

• What the enablement function does and does not;
• What your current resources allow you to do;
• Which initiatives are running at the moment;
• Which departments are currently counting on your efforts;
• What constitutes sales enablement success, and much more. 

By vocalising your enablement charter and making sure everyone is aware of its existence and everything it includes, you position enablement as a strategic function and not simply an order-fulfilling department that gets assigned initiative after initiative reactively.  

You protect both your team and the entire GTM unit by reminding everyone of the current situation and priorities. 

#11 Tie every initiative to a company/department OKR

While we are on the subject of solidifying enablement’s stature as a strategic function, it would be remiss not to mention the importance of tying every enablement initiative to one or more of the company’s or department’s Objectives and Key Results (OKRs).

To put it bluntly, if an initiative doesn’t contribute to critical goals, it simply shouldn’t be prioritised.

To ensure that every project is aligned with business objectives, start by asking these three crucial questions:

• What’s the business challenge or opportunity we are trying to address?

• What specific impact or change in behaviour are we aiming to achieve?

• How will the enablement outputs or plan help address this business challenge and drive performance improvement?

Aligning sales enablement initiatives with company OKRs ensures that your efforts are contributing directly to organisational success and promotes greater collaboration and accountability across departments. 

By setting clear, measurable goals that align with these OKRs and tracking progress regularly, you ensure that your enablement work is both strategic and impactful.

Remember, it’s essential to focus on metrics that matter to the business.

While metrics like course completion rates and training attendance can show engagement, the real value comes from moving the needle on tangible outcomes like average deal size, sales cycle length, and ramp time. 

This alignment of the sales enablement process with metrics that directly influence the bottom line will elevate enablement from being viewed as a cost centre to being recognised as a critical, strategic function within the organisation.

#12 Develop competency frameworks

For many sales enablement teams, especially less mature and resource-limited ones, identifying what good looks like is one of the biggest challenges. 

Unfortunately for them, without understanding what constitutes a good SDR or AE, it is difficult to understand what could and should be improved and where enablement should put its focus.

One of the ways to be sure that your definition of what good looks like is data-driven and not based on hunches is to develop competency frameworks for the different roles that make up the sales teams at your organisation. 

A competency framework serves as a comprehensive guide that delineates the critical knowledge, skills, behaviours, and attributes necessary for excelling in a sales role. These could be first hypothesised and then confirmed and modified based on data over time. 

To break it down:

• Skills: These are the abilities developed through learning and practice, enabling individuals to perform tasks efficiently. They can be categorised into:

  • Hard skills: Technical abilities, such as proficiency with CRM software or data analysis.

  • Soft skills: Interpersonal abilities, like communication, negotiation, and emotional intelligence.

• Knowledge: This refers to the understanding of key concepts, whether theoretical or practical, that are essential for the role. It encompasses areas such as product knowledge, industry insights, and sales methodologies, all of which can be acquired through training, mentoring, or hands-on experience.

• Behaviour: This involves the way an individual acts or responds in various situations. In a professional context, behaviour is often tied to the employee’s attitude, work ethic, and how they interact with colleagues, customers, and challenges in the workplace.

A well-structured competency framework helps clearly define what it takes to excel in the specific role, with expectations that are aligned with both personal growth and organisational success.

Competency frameworks are valuable for various stakeholders within a company:

By the way, I did an entire series of articles and resources on this topic:

• Sales competencies article
• SDR Sales Competency Framework
• Account Executive Sales Competency Framework.
• Account Manager Competency Framework
• Customer Success Competency Framework

#13 Learn the language of revenue leadership

This is a really quick one, mostly aimed at sales enablement professionals who don’t have a background in sales or business: learn the language of revenue leadership. 

Just as AEs need to understand the language of their key buying stakeholders, it’s crucial for the sales enablement team to grasp key metrics like pipeline health metrics, deal size, deal velocity, time in stage, and conversion rates. 

Mastering these metrics and building enablement interventions that align with those can quickly enhance your credibility and help you earn a seat at the table. 

#14 Avoid the single point of failure when implementing new software

Most sales enablement teams, at least to some extent, are responsible for managing sales enablement software and other sales tools. This includes overseeing the implementation of new solutions, which are often suggested by enablement in the first place.

Anyone who has led the implementation of new software for more than just themselves will tell you it’s a far more complicated and nerve-wracking process than it seems.

Here are just a few factors that determine how stressful it can be to lead the rollout of a new tool, even one that’s not particularly complex:

• The user-friendliness of the tool

• Its ability to integrate with your existing stack.

• Finance pestering you about the new invoices.

• Pushback from SDRs, AEs, sales managers, and executives who don’t see the tool’s benefit.

• IT, already putting out fires daily, now needing to help you with implementation.

• Developing a tool onboarding plan and training programme.

• Discovering the tool doesn’t do something it should.

In all this chaos, many enablement professionals try to “simplify” things by taking on all the work themselves.

Eventually, you might give in and just start doing everything solo.

Or maybe you manage to charm or recruit a single unlucky soul from IT to give you a hand, declaring them your new tool BFF/foxhole buddy. They’ll now handle all the tech stuff from here to eternity, become the admin for the tool, and have recurring nightmares involving the very tool you’re advocating for.

This is the textbook definition of a single point of failure.

You and your IT friend are that single point of failure.

Simply put, if something happens to either of you, the tool will likely go unused or become unusable – often both.

To avoid this, never take sole responsibility for implementing or maintaining any sales enablement tools.

Ensure you have more than one ally during the implementation phase, and create thorough documentation.

If possible, recruit another champion – ideally someone higher up in the revenue organisation – to help guarantee broader support and long-term success.

#15 Integrate the 70-20-10 model in sales training

The 70-20-10 model for learning and development was introduced in the 1980s and since then, it has become a staple in many L&D departments across the world. It suggests that 70% of learning comes from on-the-job experiences, 20% from social interactions, and only 10% from formal education.

Here’s a closer look at each component:

• 70% experiential learning: The bulk of knowledge is gained through real-world experiences. For sales teams, this means learning by actively selling, engaging with customers, and even through the occasional misstep that provides valuable lessons.

• 20% social learning: This portion comes from interactions with others, such as coaching, mentoring, or peer-to-peer advice. In a sales context, it might involve shadowing a top performer or receiving ongoing feedback from a manager.

• 10% formal learning: While the smallest portion, formal learning – through courses, workshops, and structured training – lays the foundation for both experiential and social learning. This could include product training or skills development sessions for your sales team.

So, what does this mean for your sales training?

• Move beyond the “classroom”: Recognise that the most effective training happens outside formal settings. Focus on creating real-world scenarios where sales representatives can put theory into practice.

• Embrace social learning: Encourage mentorship, peer-to-peer exchanges, and networking opportunities. These interactions can be just as impactful as traditional training sessions.

• Don’t neglect formal training: Although it’s a smaller piece of the pie, formal training is crucial for providing the structure and knowledge base that supports experiential and social learning.

• Foster agility and adaptability: In the fast-paced world of sales, the 70-20-10 approach helps teams quickly apply what they’ve learned in real-world situations, making them more responsive and effective.

Like always, sticking blindly to any model, including the 70-20-10 one, is a bad idea. Different people have different learning preferences, and your sales force’s needs are unique, demanding a specific ratio for the sales training to be optimal. 

The real goal of this model is to integrate learning and development more closely with day-to-day work and business objectives, transitioning sales enablement from a cost centre to a value creator.

#16 Never ignore the human factor

In my sales enablement best practices article, one of the contributors used the following words to explain the dangers of always bowing down to data and ignoring the human factor in enablement:

“Humans are more complex than our most sophisticated BI.”

His point was that sometimes things simply don’t go the way they should and it doesn’t necessarily mean there is something wrong with the salesperson’s competency or the sales process that your company employs. As he put it:

“The stars sometimes just won’t align.” 

In our modern world, obsessed with collecting copious amounts of data and trying to explain everything through numbers, we lose sight of a very simple truth: sales enablement is all about humans, and if there is one thing common to all people, it is the fact that everyone is utterly and often maddeningly unique.

Some people, for example, get really, really anxious when they’re doing any kind of test, and they may find it extremely difficult to pass the certification exams or practical tasks, even though they are spectacularly confident on actual sales calls with the customers.

If you fail to include the human factor when evaluating their onboarding, you might miss out on a fantastic sales rep because your data shows they struggled to get certified.

In some situations, you might find that some people are simply less receptive to guidance, coaching, or any changes to the status quo.

One of my enablement mentors, George Campbell, always says how we cannot discount the role that ego plays in how salespeople respond to enablement:

“To be clear, this rarely comes from a bad place. It’s a human symptom of self-preservation, quite often because of poor support from management to create a safe environment that includes permission to fail (caveat: whilst trying one’s best). 

It can significantly impede progress because sellers will hide behind what they are comfortable with, and saturate the enablement leader with a plethora of reasons – usually with confusing tech-talk – why they cannot learn or apply best practices.”

You can counter this by creating a culture where salespeople feel confident admitting when they need help.

Make it clear that while poor effort needs to be managed, a lack of knowledge or skill should and will be met only with support.

Encourage sellers to ask for help without fear, reinforcing that it’s okay not to have all the answers, even as a seasoned seller.

Another area where the human factor can play a big role is in managing cognitive load as the enablement function.

Sometimes there are so many enablement requirements coming in from sales and marketing teams (as well as other departments)and so many ideas coming from the enablement team itself that the sales personnel may feel overwhelmed by stuff that doesn’t help them do their jobs. 

Once again, this is perfectly understandable, especially if you approach your work without a sales enablement strategy of any kind. In such situations, it is quite possible that you really are encroaching on their valuable selling time with stuff that doesn’t help them do their jobs.

Even if you are 100% sure that every one of your enablement initiatives is beneficial for everyone involved and you have the numbers to back it up, you should still acknowledge the human factor – the people you are enabling have their own schedules (often not of their own making), their own goals, challenges, and opinions. 

This is why you should always make enablement a two-way street where you encourage them to share how they personally feel about the initiatives they are involved in. 

No amount of data will show you this.

Conclusion

While the length of this article and individual sales enablement tips may suggest otherwise, these are all things you can start doing or at least prepare for today.

Some of them may require more time to carry out or establish as standard practice, but you can make the first step today.

If nothing else, I hope at least some of these made you think again about some of the standard enablement practices at your company. It may sound strange, but they made me re-think some of the stuff I’ve been doing myself. 

And really, therein lies the beauty but also the challenge of enablement – no matter how long you’ve been doing it and how far along in your enablement career you are, there is always room for reflection and improvement. 

I’d also like to add that we will make this article a living repository where I will add new tips over time and build it as a living, active document that grows with time (you can also check out this article exploring some out-of-the-box sales enablement ideas).

It goes without saying that if you have some tips you’d like to share, don’t hesitate to reach out to me on LinkedIn or via email.