The Building Blocks of Sales Enablement

Introduction

How We Got Here, With This Thing Called “Sales Enablement”

In 2019, the sales enablement profession saw more than 10,000 people with “sales enablement” in their title. (We know this because of Paul Krajewski’s ongoing title searches on LinkedIn—his chart shows a hockey stick of explosive growth over the past few years.) So, sales enablement has finally become “a thing” (or at least it has in some vertical markets). It reminds me of the phenomenon where people work for years at their craft, but when their popularity hits a tipping point, they become an “overnight success.”

But what is sales enablement? In essence, it’s a function (or department), a title, and a growing body of knowledge about how to support sales forces effectively. ...