Building Blocks, Close Up! Spotlight on the Enablement Identity

Hel-lloooo Enablers! Welcome to this week's edition of the Building Blocks, Close Up! newsletter.?Today we're going to talk about the Enablement Identity (or perhaps, identity crisis) as it pertains to our role, what we call ourselves, and our focus.

It intrigues me that at a time when...

• There are over 15,000 people on LinkedIn with sales enablement in their title (according to Paul Krajewski, we reached this milestone in September 2022)
• 61.3 percent of survey respondents have a sales enablement function (CSO Insights)
• 28 percent of companies employ seven or more full-time sales enablement staff. This figure rises to 43 percent for top-performing organizations. (Forrester)...

...many in the profession are exploring new naming conventions.

Does this strike anyone else as odd?

What Exactly Are We Enabling?

Sales [Force] Enablement?

Look, I'll admit it. While I hope it's obvious that I have a passion for our profession, I've always felt that the term "sales enablement" was a misnomer. I prefer "sales force enablement." We don't enable sales, per se; we enable our sales forces to better serve buyers and therefore, get better sales results (such as improving win-rates, sales productivity, and sales velocity).

Like Zig Ziglar always said:

You get what you want by helping enough others get what they want.

This is the great paradox of selling, I think, this need to focus on others to achieve your results.

• As enablers, we need to focus on our sales forces (sellers, managers, and leaders) to help them do this, with their buyers and customers.
• To achieve their objectives, front-line sales managers need to focus on helping their reps.
• Same for sellers, who achieve their results with a focus on supporting and serving their buyers and customers, to solve challenges, enable opportunities, and get the outcomes they want.

I call this the "pass through effect."

I still don't think this is the time to (continue to) tinker with naming conventions, but at least "sales force enablement" is still recognizable, when compared to sales enablement. For some people, however, the limited focus on the sales force is a concern. I'll come back to this.

I'd place "commercial enablement" in this bucket, too. The word "commercial" is used by some organizations as interchangeable with the word "sales." At GE Capital, for example, I worked in the Commercial Development team and the Commercial Excellence function. GE had a centralized Commercial Excellence CoE (Center of Excellence) as well as localized Commercial Development staff inside their business units. "Commercial force enablement" doesn't quite work (who says that, right?), but "commercial enablement" would. While I understand it, I'm not sure how it helps the profession, though, or clarifies anything for those considering starting or evolving a sales enablement function.

Is it Revenue? Can You Really Enable That?

The name with the most momentum now seems to be "revenue enablement." This is being recommended by some analyst firms as well as some visible leaders in the space. Titles are proliferating. (Although, if you do an internet search for both terms, "sales enablement" still wins by a landslide.)

Revenue enablement follows the trendy theme of the Chief Revenue Officer title (I still don't see that many but it's trending up) and Rev Ops. When I see "revenue enablement," I always wonder, in those organizations, whether revenue without profit is acceptable? It reminds me of the old joke:

"How do we lose money on every deal and still stay in business? Volume, volume, volume!"

Proponents suggest that we need to enable client-facing staff across all functions and that revenue is a more applicable term than sales, for that purpose. Yes, I do completely support that all client-facing personnel should be "enabled," especially Customer Service/Success. So do that. (And here, I wonder, "Are your training departments or talent development teams asleep at the wheel, or what?") I'm not convinced that "revenue" is the right term to describe that.

I get myself in trouble with some folks when I say this, but to me, sales employees are like the Olympic athletes of the corporate world or the astronauts of business. While I respect and love our marketing and service counterparts, and accountants, HR pros, and others, I'm not sure they need to be as fully "enabled" as our sales personnel. Everyone deserves training, development, support, and coaching. Not everyone, though, is pushing massive boulders up hill in a tornado, while being taunted by a carrot and poked by a stick. There are other departments that can take a company down (think about an unscrupulous finance group) but none that can save a company, if the sales force fails to produce.

I also think that our training departments and talent development teams could be handling the other teams, while we piece all the building blocks together for sales enablement, which is already a rather large and unique performance improvement effort (which does require cross-functional collaboration with the other functions I mentioned and quite a few more).

?Scott Santucci, one of the founders of the Sales Enablement Society and today a growth consultant, posted other concerns about this revenue-focused terminology and its implications on LinkedIn about three years ago, which you can read here. (Hint: Revenue is an accounting term.)

Probably more troubling for me, I think this term is still inside-out and doesn't move us any closer to being buyer-centric, so I'm not sure what the point is.

Making a clear buyer-centric shift is the only reason I'd consider a radical name change. ~ Mike Kunkle

Buyer-Centric Names

I've seen the term "buyer enablement" tossed around, too. I very much like the intention here, but I don't think we truly enable buyers, either. We might work to reduce friction, create materials such as buyer engagement content or collateral, and implement processes and develop skills to help our buyers make good decisions, but we aren't working with them or training them. We work with our own sales forces. We do help our reps enable buying, but unless we start doing things directly for buyers, we're not enabling them. Buying Enablement, in that regard, makes more sense to me.

Why Not Enable Everything?

This may be the simplest recommendation I've heard. If we're going to enable market-facing, buyer- and client-centric employees across disciplines, perhaps just using "Enablement" makes more sense. We can enable the various marketing teams, pre-sales/sales development reps, sales engineers and solution consultants, sales hunters/account executives, sales farmers/account managers, channel sales reps, business development reps, and customer service or customer success staff.

As mentioned previously, though, what I find somewhat amusing about this, having been in a blend of the sales and training professions since dinosaurs roamed the Earth, is that the T&D / L&D professions have been edging toward Organization Development and Performance Consulting practices for years. What we do in enablement, with the cross-functional collaboration and focus on multiple performance levers (not just training), is not any different than what a great OD, performance, or training department should be doing. But okay... we can be "enablement."

• SIDEBAR: Or Frank. Frank is a good name. (My trusty work partner and Dachshund is named Frank. He sometimes makes typing difficult, though.)

The good news, in this case, would be that all those roles and various functions should all be aligned around your buyers and customers. It does have the potential to be very buyer- and customer-centric. Having an enablement team weaving a needle and thread consistently through all the roles and ensuring alignment could be a powerful thing for the business. This is already a known benefit of sales enablement charters and good cross-functional collaboration.

Depending on the size of your business, however, and given the differences between sales and service competencies, this might require various subgroups under an enablement leader. At some point, you might have to question the business case for this, and simply have the sales enablement function collaborate with T&D / L&D team to support the other functions, and ensure alignment and good communication across them (which can be done in a variety of other ways, rather than expanding an enablement team).

• SIDEBAR: Unnecessary "land grabs" or sprawling departments put you at future risk for downsizing, if you're not careful and can't show ROI.

What's That Glowing Over There in the Corner?

For me, while I see the allure of "evolving the profession," I believe what we're doing here is akin to what we accuse many organization leaders of doing that hampers our success with our sales forces: we're succumbing to bright shiny objects and using "flavor of the month" thinking.

If I were making this decision for the profession, here's what I'd consider:

• Selling and front line sales management are some of the most difficult jobs in companies today. (Hence my earlier reference to them being "the Olympic athletes of the corporate world" or "astronauts of business." )
• The cost, difficulty, risk, and importance of hiring and training/enabling effectively for most roles pale in comparison to doing it well for sales. This is why sales enablement started in the first place. The old "way we do things around here" simply wasn't good enough.
• Selling, as well as leading, managing, and enabling a sales force, require a very specialized skill set and the stakes are high.

Given all that, with respect to the importance of other functions, I'd keep the disciplined and specialized focus on sales (force) enablement, and collaborate closely with T&D / L&D / OD and/or Talent Development teams to ensure the continuity and alignment discussed earlier. Merging departments and calling the function by another name, is simply moving the deck chairs around on the same ship (hopefully not the Titanic).

Whatever you name your function, and whatever identity you hope to create, stay focused on helping your sellers produce results for your buyers, your managers developing (diagnosing, training, coaching, managing, leading) your sellers, and you and your team on delivering very real, measurable performance improvement.

In other words, Make An Impact With Enablement, and that will matter more than anything else. And then you can call your team something sensible for the work you actually do. You know, like sales force enablement. ;-)

Sales/Revenue/Buying/Buyer/Commercial Enablement Resources

In terms of resources this week, I'm going broad by recommending my seven favorite books on enablement. I'm just egotistical enough to believe you should read and use my book, and just humble and altruistic enough to recommend everyone else's (seriously, we're all friends and support each other's work). You'll find a lot of commonalities, for sure, but you'll also find some unique approaches and differentiating value in each. This is your chosen profession, right? Well, for less than $200, you can get the equivalent of a Master’s degree in Sales Enablement (or Revenue Enablement, or Buying Enablement, or...)

“For less than $200, you can get the equivalent of a Master’s degree in Sales Enablement. Make the investment!”

My book: The Building Blocks of Sales Enablement

And, by release date from past to most recent:

• The Sales Enablement Playbook – Cory Bray & Hilmon Sorey
• Sales Enablement – Tamara Schenk & Byron Matthews
• Effective Sales Enablement – Pam Didner
• Enablement Mastery – Elay Cohen
• Enabler? I Hardly Know Her! – T. Melissa Madian
• Sales Enablement 3.0 – Roderick Jefferson ?

Building Blocks Course Update

Speaking of investing in yourself, are you ready for Black Friday 2022? This year you'll have an extra reason to pay attention.

The Building Blocks of Sales Enablement course is scheduled to launch on

...[insert drumroll here]...

November 25, aka Black Friday!?

We'll have exclusive offers on day 1, for those of you ready to embark on your learning path to sales enablement mastery.?

Be sure to subscribe for updates on the course launch at https://www.GoFFWD.com/Blocks/

[For those in the US, sales enablement tastes great with leftover turkey sandwiches.]

Which leads us to this week's...

QUESTION OF THE WEEK!

As part of our marketing launch plan, we'll run a series of podcasts and webinars. We're still in the process of finalizing the topics, but we're keen to hear your thoughts.?

Which topic is most relevant to you right now??

1. How to kickstart a sales enablement function that delivers results (or evolve the one you have)
2. How to align and manage stakeholders
3. A close-up of individual building blocks (similar to this newsletter)
4. Others (please comment or InMail)

Please let us know in the comments below, or InMail?Felix Krueger?or me for confidential responses!

________________________

Did you learn something new reading this newsletter? If you did, or if it just made you think (and maybe chuckle from time to time), consider sharing it with your favorite enablement colleague, subscribing right here on LinkedIn, and checking out the upcoming?Building Blocks of Sales Enablement course.

Until next time, stay the course, and Make an Impact with Enablement!

Mike