Building the roads to strategic sales enablement

Back then (2016)

It was 5:45PM on a Tuesday afternoon and I had just wrapped a long day of client meetings as the newly appointed post-sales rep for the expanding Las Vegas territory at the HCM tech company for which I was working.

Fully prepared for the traffic that stood between me and a much-needed glass of wine, I hopped on I-215 W out of Paradise Valley, heading back to my hotel for the week in Summerlin.

Photo of Cars on Street During Night Time — Image credit: Vlad Fonsark / Pexels

As I merged onto the highway, I quickly realized I was one of very few people on this six-lane, 80mph, beautifully paved road. Where in the world was everyone?

You see, I was a simple girl from Oklahoma City and if you’ve ever driven down I-35 or across I-40, you know that means I was very used to standstill traffic trying to get through the city due to construction on the highway – new onramp locations, expanded lanes, repaving that stretched for miles.

So what was going on?

How does a town that houses just over 2 million people (not counting the 42.3 million that visited that year) keep their roads so calm?

It’s pretty simple (in my independent opinion.) The suburbs of Las Vegas prioritized building their roads before they expanded their cities. They anticipated the continued boom of their suburbs and poured money into ensuring long-term efficiency and convenience for the residents.

Maybe the mayor of Las Vegas took a drive through Oklahoma’s most buzzing metropolis and decided that the disruption of innovation after unanticipated growth wasn’t the future he wanted for his city.

Today (2025)

Fast forward nine years and a few career transitions later, I’m finding myself faced with similar challenges leading a sales enablement function.

Instead of cities on the brink of continued population booms, it’s a company rapidly climbing the left side of the Adizes lifecycle.

Instead of laying roads, it’s making decisions to define and document critical processes for a sales organization that is held to lofty and growing revenue goals year-over-year.

“…but Amy, aren’t those types of decisions up to the C-suite?” I’ve heard from colleagues in the industry that “it’s better if my team stays in our lane,” or “quick fixes to problems are the things we get recognized (and paid) for, so why take the focus off that?”

Well, after 10 years in the tech industry, I’ve yet to meet a Chief of Sales Enablement. It’s up to us to take ownership and help our senior leaders and C-suite sees the things they can’t always see from the top.

Problems to Solve

Too often, sales enablement leaders are focused on rising to the challenge of delivering solutions (and at times, short-term fixes) that meet a company where they are today: more effective lead qualification that increases YoY conversion by 13%, better negotiating tactics that reduce the length of the sales cycle by 17%, impactful SKOs that decrease regrettable attrition by 9% in the 2 quarters that follow.

While those will forever be important problems to solve, I challenge those of us in the industry to put ourselves in the C-suite mentality and help our organizations plan roads before the city keeps getting any bigger.

Our function has the opportunity to not only be an aspirin that eases the pain of today, but a vitamin that provides health for a future business health at the same time.

💡

Optimize your sales enablement processes with a range of custom templates. Become an Insider member to gain access.

Where to Begin

Start by asking yourself a few introspective questions:

1. How much of the strategy I’m working to execute is based around asks from other people?

If 50%+ of your roadmap is intake-based, there’s a high likelihood that your impact is coming from putting out fires that others have created and/or recognized.

Will your CEO care more that you’re building training programs to solve attainment issues caused by bad hires, or that you’re partnering with your recruiting team to develop a competency framework that aids them in hiring top talent that produces results 25% faster, contributing to the bottom line?

Try to keep your intake line items closer to 25%.

After all, “helpful” shouldn’t be the brand your team carries, that’s simply a positive side-effect of being a trusted advisor and enacting real, lasting change.

2. If I had the opportunity to pause sales quotas for 90-days and have complete attention from sales reps and managers, what are the first 3 things I would implement?

Ever think to yourself, “if ONLY we had a consistent sales methodology that we could train to?” or “if ONLY we could get our 350 reps in one room with no distractions to run roleplay workshops around our top 5 objections in the closing phase?”

Guess what?

If you’re not thinking about this, it’s likely no one is.

Your sales managers are focused on what’s going to get the deals closed this week.
Your upper management is focused on the month.
Your C-suite is thinking about next year’s projections for the board of directors.

There’s often a gaping hole in the 6-12 month visionaries.

What if instead of asking for a 2-day SKO once a year to drive engagement, you showcase the ROI of a 3-day SKO three times a year with clear agendas to take a bite out of the roadblocks that you hear about on your company WBR?

Put it on your annual plan. Demand it and take the time to showcase the tradeoffs.

3. Who do I need on my team to make #2 a reality?

This includes 2 different ‘teams’; 1) your team of direct reports and 2) your internal network.

First, there is a high likelihood that you came into your team structure as it exists today. Sure, maybe you’ve made a few staffing changes, but have you thought about how you’d build your team to support your vision if you could build it from scratch knowing what you know now?

If you’re panicking because you think I’m suggesting getting rid of your current staff, take a breath. We tend to underestimate people’s ability to drive fresh impact, just like we often underestimate ourselves.

Start by defining the roles that you would want filled, then figure out who needs to fill that seat.

Second, I’d argue that expanding our internal network of cross-functional partners is more valuable than expanding our teams. “Enablement” is a broad scope and chances are, there are a lot more people who are focused on enabling your sales team than you know today.

Find them, build trust, align with their goals, add value to the work that they’re doing, and then invite them to add value to yours.

In summary

So, am I suggesting that sales enablement professionals at growing companies are like the mayors of booming cities? That we should own the plans to pause and build the roads before the cities continue to expand?

I’ll leave that for you to decide, but I’d argue if we all commit to dreaming big and starting small, there’s a world where sales enablement can craft the roadmap for future revenue growth.

Let’s all aim to bring a bit more “vitamin” to the “aspirin” game of sales enablement and not just earn a seat at the table, but position ourselves for other people wanting to sit at ours.