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.

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