What Makes Enablement a Strategic Function?

By Viktorija Hartwell

When you read about Enablement as a function, you always hear that Enablement needs to be strategic. But what does it mean?

Of course, when we think of strategic enablement, the seat at the table with the executive leadership comes to mind, a dedicated budget, as well as having enablement included in GTM planning. That's fundamentals.

How does this translate into actually being strategic and how does this help with impacting the revenue?

5 KEY THINGS

Enablement is strategic when it has the reigns to complete the following, calling upon subject matter experts where required, with full leadership backing and commitment from people managers and customer-facing teams:

• Alignment within the organisation and across teams achieving shared understanding of goals and how to drive those forward in an efficient manner.
• Ensuring accountability and continuous improvement of hard metrics (win rate, time to productivity, average deal size, sales process adherence) as well as competency skills (prospecting, active listening, coachability, presentation skills).
• Feedback gathering from the teams it enables: Are we doing well supporting you? What works? What doesn't work?
• Alignment to the customer journey through mapping initiatives to the sales and post sales process, providing customer-facing teams with knowledge, tools and resources to help the buyer and customer wherever they are in their journey.
• Impact on sales numbers and customer satisfaction. The best sales and customer service are achieved through confidence in your knowledge and confidence in what you represent. Strategic enablement supports this confidence through role-specific development programmes.

Strategic enablement only begins with having the seat at the table. True strategic enablement is given an opportunity to deliver results. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Viktorija Hartwell is a teacher turned salesperson, turned enablement practitioner. She moved to the UK back in 2010, gained a teaching degree and transitioned into sales after a stint of teaching, finding passion in Enablement. She was nominated Top 50 Enablement Professionals in Sales Enablement Ones to Watch report 2023 and currently works as an Enablement Consultant to small, medium and enterprise businesses.