How do you align sales enablement efforts with the overall goals and objectives of the sales organization?

Big question, but I'm happy to share some small factors that can really help to align and at least surface areas that enablement professionals can miss:

1. Know when and by whom business reviews are created. Even if it's async, understanding the target numbers, target audiences, and key strategies can help you understand where there are areas of opportunity. If you don't have this (common for early business organizations), gather feedback, create a base document of your strategic focus areas, and then gather feedback from top leads.

2. Align yourself as an enablement individual to understand where in the sales selling journey these numbers/initiatives align. For example, maybe your organization wants to increase top-of-funnel conversion. You'll probably want to focus on outreach efforts like effective outbound emails, cold calling best practices, and effective value-selling content to use for outbound campaigns.

3. Be aware of any sales leads' initiatives that they may start without enablement knowledge. This is very common when in hyper-growth mode or when an enablement team is so strapped that they have to say "no" to projects. At least being aware will help you to consult and map out what they are doing.

4. Report on your findings and annual/quarterly strategies and key initiatives for feedback. You'll get comments on whether you're on the right track and can provide call-to-actions with your team on areas that they can support.

One word: outcomes.

Sales enablement should (and needs to be) tightly aligned to business objectives & desired outcomes of the business/sales organization. When you tie learning programs to tangible outcomes & KPIs, you get more accurate success measures. This translates to happy learners and happy business units: win-win.

Leverage Simon Sinek's "Golden Circle" to understand the WHY, then align your enablement to the HOW and the WHAT. To ensure your efforts are aligned to the overall goals and objectives, start with some informational interviews with sales leaders gain more insight on they WHY behind the goals.

Why = Understand the sales organization’s strategic objectives. Have a clear understanding as to why we are working toward these goals.
How = Collaborate with sales leadership to define clear goals for enablement. What are the actions sellers will need to take to accomplish these goals. This can include the specific steps in a process, sales tools or product information, etc. as well as skills needed to successfully reach the goal.
What = Ensure your enablement initiatives build the skills and simplify the processes in the HOW that will directly contribute to the company's WHY.

Keep in mind that sellers do best when understanding the reasoning behind the goal and will lean into the enablement if you're aligning the HOW and WHAT to the WHY.