3 mindset shifts that drive enablement success

How you act and portray yourself in the sales enablement role is how you will be treated in your job—how you will be treated at the company. The level of importance given to sales enablement is reflected in how you accept, deny, and prioritize your time and work.

If you take orders from day one, you'll forever be treated as just that. You will never be seen as a serious person, a strategic partner, or a valuable asset within an organization if you choose to be treated as such from the beginning.

Yes, you should enter a new job in sales enablement with the humility that it will take you time to learn the subtleties of the company, the industry, and even the verticals the company plays in.

Do not do that at the cost of your future success.

I see it all of the time.

"They just keep giving me more work." OR, "My boss thinks I can JUST consult on this initiative."

And you take it.

You lay there. Flaccid.

You're right to think that your boss or colleagues are piling work on your plate. They are.

Why?

They want it off their plate and handled, and the spine you have shown them is soft. Stiffen it up.

You worry about upsetting the apple cart or being seen as cocky. Don't. It's all in how you approach it. More on that later.

What they do not see when they offload these "small tasks" onto you is the monumental amount of administrative work, context switching, and cognitive load that follows after agreeing to "consult for an hour or two."

The random meetings. The slack messages. The emails. The conferencing calls. The "quick questions." All add up. All are worthless.

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Guess what? It is our fault.

Here are 3 strategies to help you fix that mess as you move forward, or better yet, as you start your new position in sales enablement.

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Create a standardized process for taking on new work.

Get out of the "I think hurricane" before the winds start picking up.

The first time you hear...

"I think we need training on..."

"We need to have a one-pager on..."

"Can we get a slide deck about..."

your response is simple...

The intake form is your first guardrail. It's the big rubber tube surrounding your bumper car.

This statement signals to the rest of the team that you are not a lap dog or order taker, and you have your shit "wired tight." The intake form also signals to the team that you are prepared and organized and your top priority is achieving the business's goals.

Be open, direct, & transparent with your leadership partner.

A VP of Sales once told me that I was the first Sales Enablement Manager he'd worked with who didn't need to be told what to do.

I took that as a great honor. Why?

It meant I was proactive, looked into the future, and was thinking about the entire enablement ecosystem and not what was only a few days ahead of me.

Here's what he saw.

I was direct, frank, and honest about the type of work that was important.

I shared with him what I was hearing in team and one-on-one meetings with the manager, which helped guide his decision-making about initiatives, team members, and closing gaps on the team.

I stuck my nose where it didn't belong. Sometimes.

Because of this, I asked questions that didn't seem natural for my role. One quick example is, "What is the project you are having candidates do during their interview process?" In most companies, enablement is rarely involved in the structure of the hiring process. What we quickly realized was that the projects that were prescribed didn't help the hiring team truly identify if the candidates had the skills we were looking for.​

Be Humble

I know, leading up to this point, the bravado in the words written is like that of a testosterone-filled teenager after a few cups of coffee.

And there is. In the written word.

But..

You can accomplish all of these with humility.

Humility is not about portraying yourself as meek or submissive.

I like Simon Sinek's description of humility: being open enough to hear others' ideas and opinions and adopt them when they are as good as or better than your own.

For my entire life, people have told me that I am an imposing figure, either in size, stature, or tone of voice. So I have had to practice the balance of confidence, humor, and not coming off as an asshole (humility).

Not easy.

Although, I can do it. Sometimes.

Love,

Enablement

PS: You can get the best guide to implementing an intake form and keep all of those random requests at bay. Download it here.