Five Reasons Enablement Fails

Through my thousands of conversations with enablement practitioners and hundreds of CROs, I’ve seen five consistent reasons that enablement leaders (and with them their enablement function) have struggled or failed. Oftentimes, when revenue teams are struggling to hit their number, the finger pointing begins. Is it the CRO? Is it enablement? Is it Ops? Marketing? I wanted to distill down five non-negotiables when it comes to assessing your enablement leader. This can be a rubric when assessing an existing leader or a guide when hiring a new leader.

Fail to Invest in Relationships

First and foremost, enablement is a relationship business. Our success (or failure) will be defined by the breadth and depth of our relationships across the organization. Someone I was working with years ago commented that the only reason she’s been so successful was due to the capital she built up across the organization. Conversely, when people fail in senior enablement roles, it’s nearly always due to a lack of quality of relationships. As enablement professionals, our success is inextricably tied to the sellers, sales managers, sales leadership, sales engineering, marketing, operations, finance, HR, etc. This is true in large organizations and in small ones. It’s an immutable law of physics in the enablement universe. If an enablement leader is not in lock-step with the CRO and their directs, they will suffer from being seen as the “other” and not part of the selling team. When the enablement leader is not tight with the marketing leaders, we won’t be as plugged in for messaging, product, and competitive issues.  And when we need assets and content created, we don’t have partners. The best enablement leaders build these relationships naturally. If this is not in the DNA of your enablement leader, they’ll need to be coached on how to work around this to ensure their success.

Fail to Get Executive Sponsorship

An extension of relationship building is gaining executive sponsorship. A strong executive sponsor is the single biggest determinant of success in enablement. This can be true on macro and micro levels. For example, when the C-level executive who owns enablement (often a CRO) is deeply invested in the success of the function, its chances of success are high. The exec sponsor actively supports all enablement initiatives with the weight of their role. The invite their enablement leader to be part of their weekly meeting and give them a voice. On a more micro level, they give feedback on enablement initiatives and remove obstacles with the organization to ensure successful programs. But enablement leaders need to be able to coach their executive sponsor how to be an executive sponsor to get what they need. Not everyone does this well.

Fail to Run Enablement Like a Business

Historically, when we were called “training,” we were a cost of doing business. We were important but ultimately seen as a cost. In modern times when we have metrics and attribution, we can be so much more. And with that it’s incumbent on every enablement leader to view their function as a business within the larger business. It has investors; and those investors want to know if there’s an ROI on their time and money. If enablement attempts to justify those investments with survey scores, stats about butts in seats, or even NPS ratings, their investors will pull out. It will be a figurative bank run. Enablement must hold themselves accountable to the business with business KPIs. They might be leading or they might be lagging; but they must be metrics that a CRO or CEO will care about. Even if it’s not being asked of the enablement leader, they should be figuring it out and bringing it to their executive sponsor.

Fail to Say No

So many people take enablement roles because they want to selflessly help others succeed. That’s wonderful and admirable; but that also may be their achilles heel. In our world where there’s an endless number of organizational needs, it’s easy to be distracted by shiny objects (or strong-willed sales leaders). An old boss of mine used to say “if everything is important, then nothing is important.” Meaning, if you have a list of 25 top priorities for the quarter, you actually don’t have priorities– you have a to-do list. Enablement leaders must be able to prioritize and say no to many requests to protect the sanctity of their priorities. This can be difficult for some people. After all, it’s uncomfortable for everyone to say no to their boss. But sometimes its necessary. Enablement charters are an elegant tool to negotiate priorities and navigate removing priorities if a new one is important enough. Additionally, an organization of sellers and sales managers will never respect anyone who discounts the value of their time and is too eager to say yes.

Failure to Know How to Invest

This is a more subtle point but an enablement leader needs to have a discerning eye about when/where/how to invest in enablement. If you get one more headcount, how do you use it? Is it another program person? An industry specialist? An instructional designer? A manager coach? And what happens when the business evolves and your coverage model is outdated? Or is that money better spent in an LMS? People often talk in the military about “fighting the last war”-- a lack of imagination that leads to inevitable defeat. The less savvy people in enablement lack the creativity or flexibility in how they approach an investment which yields far less.

An enablement leader’s success will typically be driven by these intangibles more than the mechanics of the job itself.  It’s important to keep them in mind when hiring and when assessing your current team’s strengths.  In times of growth, these differences will make all the difference.