Forget the Magic Ratio: Here's How Enablement Teams Scale for Growth

The mandate for enablement teams has evolved dramatically. Once considered a catch-all team performing various misfit duties for sales, our research uncovered that modern enablement has grown to support essential functions across the commercial organization. Today's enablement professionals handle an array of responsibilities ranging from training sellers to leading cross-functional GTM initiatives.

Download the full report: How Modern Enablement Teams Scale for Growth

Indeed, the scope is remarkable: roughly half of enablement teams now support sales, customer success, and partner channel teams. But as the scope grows within an organization, so does the cost.

Consider this: a modest team of four with one director, two managers, and one associate has a median cost of $585,000 per year - and that doesn't include program costs.

The Jobs-to-be-Done Reality 

Our research reveals a striking insight: 87% of enablement teams are expected to serve seven or more critical roles for the commercial team. Yet only 39% reported enough full-time employees (FTE) to support dedicated headcount to each role.

The data tells us that some enablement professionals are expected to manage multiple roles, particularly on teams with fewer FTEs. Moreover, we found that some teams allocate resources unevenly, opting to devote two or three FTEs to some enablement roles while others remain unowned by a single person.

Scaling for Maximum Impact

Commercial leaders that want to build top performing, yet cost-effective enablement teams should abandon the concept of a magic ratio for enablement. Instead, they must focus on strategically staffing each distinct functional responsibility to maximize impact with the leanest team possible.

The research points to a clear scaling progression:

1. With limited resources, small and medium enablement teams typically first staff the fundamentals - content curation, onboarding, and sales training.
2. These core roles often require multiple FTEs before making anyone solely responsible for any other enablement activity, likely because these enablement tasks have more rigid capacity constraints.
3. Activities such as managing revenue technology or developing sales process, while important, may be seen as less timely and therefore better able to be managed by a single enablement leader.

What Top Performers Do Differently

The research identified an elite group - approximately 19% of studied teams - that consistently exceeded their peers across quota attainment, revenue growth, and functional proficiency. These top performers stand apart in three crucial ways:

First, they prioritize quota-carrying experience when hiring enablement professionals. Of the professionals surveyed from top-performing organizations, 95% had at least one year of quota-carrying experience in a prior sales role.

Second, they measure more - and measure differently. While 89% of enablement teams report responsibility for measurement and analytics, only 44% claimed proficiency with this task. Top performers track both activity-based metrics and crucial outcomes like time-to-productivity and pipeline coverage.

Finally, they excel at training both sellers and their frontline leaders. Top-performers trained a greater portion of their sales managers in the 12 months leading up to our study and it shows in their performance results. Nearly 70% of top-performing teams rated their managers as effective, versus a relatively slim 41% in lower-performing organizations.

The Message is Clear

Scaling enablement isn't about following fixed ratios - it's about strategic allocation of resources based on clear business outcomes. By focusing on critical tasks first, measuring comprehensively, and investing in experienced talent, organizations can build enablement teams that truly drive growth.

Download the full report, How Modern Enablement Teams Scale for Growth here.