How Modern Enablement Teams Scale for Growth

The mandate for enablement teams has evolved.

• Modern enablement has grown to support functions for client-facing roles across the commercial team
  
  
• Roughly half (48%) of enablement teams support sales, customer success and partner channel teams

But as the scope of enablement grows,
so does the cost.

• An enablement director or VP can command as much as an enterprise seller in on-target earnings (OTE)
  
  
• A modest enablement team with one director, two managers, and one associate has a median cost of $585,000 per year

Resource critical activities first, then scale.

• Optimally scaling headcount is not about finding an ideal ratio of enablement FTEs to sales FTEs, it's about satisfying jobs-to-be-done
  
  
• Enablement teams typically staff the fundamentals first, e.g., content curation, onboarding, sales training
  
  
• GTM leaders gain efficiencies by right-sizing capacity-constrained roles and grouping activities for other roles

Top-performing enablement teams have: 

Higher quota attainment.  They exceeded the mean attainment level in each of the last three fiscal years.

Higher growth. They operate in moderate to high revenue growth environments.

Higher proficiency. They reported a mean proficiency rating 17.1% higher than peers.

Top-performing enablement teams scale their impact through different-in-kind execution.

Three characteristics of the highest-performing enablement organizations:

1. Prioritizing quota-carrying experience when hiring enablement professionals

2.  Measuring the right indicators to gauge the efficacy of their programs 

3. Regularly training both sellers and sales managers on sales effectiveness