How do you see ownership of sales enablement between product marketing and marketing?

At every company I’ve been a part of, product marketing has always been the driver of any sales enablement done by the marketing team. I’m sure that’s not the case everywhere, but I believe it’s the norm. The main reason is PMMs are hired for a specific skill set that fits enablement – storytelling, positioning, and content production. On top of the raw skills, it’s part of the PMM team’s day job to be experts on the company’s product, market, and customers – all of which tie into the knowledge that the sales team needs.

The only exceptions I’ve seen are when the enablement is related to non-product-focused topics. For example, I’ve seen a demand gen team enable SDRs on how to follow up with leads from events and webinars. I’ve also seen content teams train on thought leadership assets that can be used in the sales cycle. For example, my current company releases a product benchmarks report and our content lead built the sales content and ran the training.

For product releases, I don’t have a “go-to-stack” but have a standard set of deliverables I’ve found useful in most situations (see below). Enablement software (LMS, Content Management System, etc.) can make it all easier, but isn’t necessary.

One big change I've made over the years is that I now swear by Google Slides and Google Docs, after being a PowerPoint and Word fan boy for quite some time. It's so much easier to keep people up-to-date with the latest materials and messaging when you can make updates at the same link. The minute people download a PPT deck to their desktop, they'll be copying that same version for the next 9 months and missing all the updates you make.

Here is a summary of product launch deliverables, related to the sales team, that I typically see:

• Launch checklist: for internal alignment, usually in a Google Sheet or project management software like Asana.
• Messaging & positioning doc: This is the foundation for all the launch materials. By documenting the product’s value prop, target audience, use cases, and differentiation, you can enable a team of people to execute independently in their roles.
• Slides: Good sales reps and CSMs always always want to share the latest releases in their meetings, even if they’re small. Plug-and-play slides make it easier for them, and also keep everyone across the company on-message. 
• Training: it helps to get in a room and discuss things. The most common question I get asked is, “how do I sell it?” which isn’t as easy to convey in writing (although it’s possible). If you work with someone on the sales team to be a presenter at the training, you’ll have a credible pitch delivered by one of their peers.
• Copy/paste email templates: to slot into Gmail or Outlook, or a mass-email tool like Outreach / Tout. Sales always appreciates when things are plug-and-play so they can focus on selling and not writing.
• Longer-form assets: data sheets, solution sheets, blog posts. These aren’t a fit for every release, but are useful for the big ones.

This question will depend on the size of your org. Generally, sales enablement shouldn't just fall on one person, even though PMMs are most involved and get most of the requests. There are two models: (1) PMM as a function become a centralized place to get requests and you filter requests down to the owners: case studies - customer marketing, any campaigns - demand gen and field marketing, and anything product related - PMM. The second model will entail the PMM providing request instructions, where depending on the requests, the reps will know where to ask. Both of these models will require PMM to be involved at least on the positioning and messaging portion. 
As for the go-to-stack for product releases, I don't fully get this question. Are you talking about tech stack or model for product training? If later, I do have a model to help with sales, CS, and SDR for product training and product releases for tracking and KPIs.

For the product question and template, email me at [email protected], and I will provide you details and my approach. In short, it will be based on Tiers and the product launch goals and your audience (Sales, CS, or SDR).

There is a bit to unpack in your question here so i'll focus on the product release element.
We ‘size’ each release and the associated size determines a list of activities for that release. 

We use tee-shirt sizing so as an example, if a release is defined as a Large (where we go from S to XL), then a product release has a big revenue opportunity and we will complete a number of major initiatives:
1) Standalone AE enablement. We don't typically do standalone enablement that is outside the regularly scheduled monthly enablement so it's a big deal when we do it. This launch needs to impact every rep so that they will pay attention and educate themselves about your new release.
2) Explainer video/demo. If you are getting primetime with your new launch, then you need to make sure you cover as many mediums as you can. Demo and Explainer videos are a key part of enabling your team. Some pay attention to presentations, or collateral, others to videos. You should cover all your bases.
3) Insert in our weekly sales newsletter. We have a standing weekly newsletter that the sales enablement team publishes that covers everything the sales team needs to know about in a week. It's ideal to aim for top billing in this newsletter :)

This is a subset of the things that we cover for product releases, happy to follow up separately if there are additional questions here. Feel free to reach out on LinkedIn.

I believe we should be working closely with marketing teams to amplify all the internal work to an external facing audience. This can be in the form of pitch decks, one pagers, workshopts etc that externalizes the content and message we are trying to launch to market.

For Go-to stack of sales enablement, we have a tiering system to prioritize how big the sales enablement will be 

• P0: Full training, commdocs, one pagers, pitch decks and dashboard trackers if necessary 
• P1: Happens in a smaller meeting (ie: product update meetings), commdocs 
• P2: Announced in groups (or other collaboration tools) but if there are any other questions, they can reach out to the individual product market experts or leave them on what we’ve termed as “topic boards” where sales can leave non-urgent questions and we’ll get back to them at a later time.

It really depends on the size of the marketing team and the level of specialization across the teams: Are there channel/audience owners? Is there a Solutions Marketing team? Product Marketing will always own the content and foundational assets that need product subject matter expertise. 

In terms of a go-to-stack, the usual suspects are: 

(*note: I use "comparison" and not "battle" cards because, thanks to our wonderful competitive intelligence lead, we moved to more inclusive, thoughtful language)

-comparison cards for internal teams (we currently use Crayon to help us scale)

-external comparison webpages (X vs X)

-pitch deck 

-how to sell one-sheeter with various resources aggregated 

-case studies

-product webpages

-demos