Let's Get Clear on Enablement's Role with Strategy!

Hey, Enablers, Happy Friday. Mike Kunkle here. Welcome to this week’s edition of Sales Enablement Straight Talk!

Today, I want to talk about Sales Enablement's role with organizational strategy.

I've read in three different sources over the past month or so about how enablement leaders want to get more involved with strategy.

I applaud the thought and intentions, but as I've shared before, "strategy" is one of the most overused and abused words in business. Since I've seen it come up a lot recently, though, I thought it might be helpful to talk about it here, this week.

So, without further delay, let's dig in.

[NOTE: Due to my schedule, there is no video this week. I'll do my best to return to including a video next week.]

NEWSLETTER

In a newsletter edition back in September 2023, I suggested that Sales Enablement Must Start with Strategy and Planning! That hasn't changed, but it's worth clarifying.

In that edition, I shared this Strategy/Tactical/Execution chart and wrote:

As sales enablement professionals, we don't do all of this work; much of it on the left and some in the middle are handed off to us. Our job is to align ourselves with organizational strategies and objectives to ensure that our enablement efforts deliver results that matter to senior executives and sales leaders.

THIS is our best involvement with strategy and how to "become more strategic."

As enablement leaders, while I maintain my contention that "enablement must start with strategy," we aren't normally involved in doing the strategic planning.

There could be some exceptions, though, or ways that you got exposure to strategic planning, such as:

1. You worked in a small, early-stage company where the founder was trained in strategic planning in his/her past and involved you.

2. Your company got funded and the VC or PE investors conducted or hired someone to do conduct real strategic planning and you got to be involved or observe it.

3. You were designated as a HIPO (high-potential employee), usually in a Fortune 500 firm or at least a firm with strong talent management foundations, and were selected to observe sessions with the executive team as part of your development plan

4. You worked for a company that did strategic planning with clients (whether or not you were a consultant) and became familiar with the process

5. You attended training on strategic planning, whether employer- or self-funded (or you researched it yourself and are self-taught)

Any of these are possibilities and great exposure opportunities.

I was fortunate to experience numbers 2-5 before eventually leading some clients through strategic planning, earlier in my career. And the understanding of strategic planning has certainly helped my enablement career. But as an enablement pro, other than the above-mentioned exceptions (which are not common), I did not typically participate in the strategic planning process. I was a recipient of the strategy, and often the accompanying GTM tactical plans, to which I was expected to align and support.

I suspect it is the same with most other enablers.

There are a few big insights that I hope to leave you with.

If You Align to Strategy, It's a Major Win

As far as I'm concerned, this is as important as being engaged with strategy development, which is unlikely. If you take the strategy and tactical plans and align your sales enablement work to support them, you have the best chance of delivering results that matter (and being seen as successful).

Conduct a Situation Assessment of your sales force, to document where they are, where they need to be, and the gaps, all relative to the strategy and outcomes you've been handed. Your leaders may have conducted a SWOT Analysis as part of their strategic planning. If so, get a copy of you, or a cascade of it from your manager. But in either case, you can still conduct your own Situation Assessment, and should.

• Can the sales force get to Point B without intervention, other than good daily, weekly, monthly management?

• Is good daily, weekly, monthly management in place today, to accomplish that?

• What else, if anything, will be needed to get from Point A to Point B?

Then, with the Needs (per COIN-OP) of the sales force known, conduct a similar assessment of the state of The Building Blocks of Sales Enablement, compared against the Needs of your sales force. This prioritizes the blocks that require action, to help your sales force move from Point A to Point B. Logical, right?

Your next step is to create an action plan for the work you need to perform, to improve the prioritized blocks, which support the gap closing for the sales force, to achieve the targeted strategic objectives.

There are other methods for this, but I recommend a Force Field Analysis, which allows you to identify what is driving your forward toward the Desired Future State (Point B) as well as what's holding your back. And you can do it for your Situation Assessment of your sales force as well as your targeted and prioritized building blocks.

Then, the answers to the two questions:

1. How can I reduce or eliminate Restraining Forces? and

2. How can I strengthen or add Driving Forces?...

...Become your step-by-step Action Plan for enablement.

And that's how you can tie your work to organizational strategy.

Beyond that, you generally won't need to worry about strategic planning for the larger organization. That doesn't mean it's not worth knowing about, but as the old joke goes, "that's not your job."

There Are Limits to What Sales Enablement Can Fix

This is a sister topic to doing enablement work to align to organizational strategy. And for our own protection, it's worth mentioning. There are limits to what sales enablement can fix or accomplish.

I often use examples of:

• Poor product market fit

• An unwinnable strategy or one that is too easy for competitors to replicate

• The inability of senior leaders to focus and execute well (aka change management)

• The unwillingness of other leaders to collaborate cross-functionally in support of the revenue team or sales force

• General GTM confusion or misalignment across customer-facing functions (marketing, demand gen, sales, customer success)

To be clear, these limitations or obstacles don't necessarily mean that you can't do enablement well despite these circumstances, or that you can't make an impact. Faced with a few of these situations across a 40-year career, I have delivered decent results in a few, and in two, I made no impact whatsoever, and left those companies in frustration. It happens.

But even when you can make the best of a bad situation, be clear in your mind that you will never make the maximum possible impact, and based on the severity of the issue(s), your risk of downsizing may be far higher. Choose wisely.

And, as the old saying goes, "A word to the wise is sufficient."

Closing Thoughts

Worry less about being involved in strategic planning for the company. Focus more on understanding the strategic plan and resulting GTM tactical plans (and how they connect). Then, do your work to ensure you can support the sales force and anyone else you enable, to achieve the plans. That's how you get recognized. That's how you'll be seen as "strategic." And that's how you make a business impact with enablement.

RESOURCES

• Post: There Are limits to What Enablement Can Fix

• Newsletter: Sales Enablement Must Start with Strategy and Planning!

• Article: Four Best Practices for Strategic Planning - Boston Consulting Group

• Article: What is a Strategic Plan? 6 Essential Steps - ClearPoint Strategy

• Article: 5 Steps of the Strategic Planning Process - Lucidchart

• Guide: The Complete OKR Guide (Objectives/Key Results) - Quantive (Gated)

Well, that's it for this week, Enablers! Did you learn something new reading/watching this newsletter? If you did, or if it just made you think (and maybe chuckle from time to time - bonus points if you snorted), share it with your favorite enablement colleague, subscribe right here on LinkedIn, and check out The Building Blocks of Sales Enablement Learning Experience. Felix Krueger and Mike Kunkle are both Building Blocks Mentors, and we hope to see you there! For other courses and content from Mike, see: https://linktr.ee/mikekunkle

Until next time, stay the course, Enablers, and #MakeAnImpact With #Enablement!