How do you build and maintain a strong sales enablement culture within the sales organization?

I think the easy answer here is "buy-in" from your leadership. But what does this actually mean? They can say it, but that doesn't always mean that they'll prioritize or even fund it for growth. The approach of top-down is 100% the way to go in my experience but here are a few tactics I and my peers have used to reinforce this:

1. Get DRI's from leadership to support key initiatives and ask from top-leads who they would recommend to be assigned to them (frame it as "career growth opportunities"). Collaboration on top projects means that they have a vested interest in seeing it succeed as they're also putting hours into them. I wouldn't depend on them for building the initiative content per se, but they can certainly give good feedback and support on comms and accountability.
2. Communication! Do you have the right, centralized channels where all enablement content is available? But, do you have these paired with something they need daily such as product launches or process updates?
3. Speaking of communication, share your results with leads and cross-functional partners. Proving effectiveness (both objective and subjective) creates the belief that it's worthwhile to invest in, even if it's just giving attention. This could include weekly updates of quarterly business reviews.
4. Make it fun! I know that budgets are somewhat strapped, but prizes for participation work well. I often hear competitions are also good, but unless it's tied to making them something that helps them close deals faster or get some kind of reward (like a spot in annual President's Club-type incentives), I usually find it ends in just fun.

I enjoy companies that operate from a set of core values & principles. Step one is to call out learning as core to the business's success. 

Next, you should consider:

• Praising knowledge sharing
• Driving a learning culture from the top-down
• Offering easy ways for people to share their learnings
• Embedding learning where sellers & leaders need it most

To build a strong enablement culture within the sales organization, it's important that we:

1. Understand the impact of the enablement. How will this help them do their job better/faster? Will they see the results in more time available, more opportunity to pursue, more money?

2. Allocate the time and resources to complete the enablement. Ensure you're delivering the training in the best mode possible for the highest outcome. Does this need to be delivered in person or will virtual sessions provide the same impact? Is the learning something that can be done through a job aid or process document, or will it require hands-on experience?

3. Offer the opportunity to practice and gain an understanding of the learning in a real-world application. Watching recordings of a skill can help in theory, but practical application will make all the difference in an individual's absorption of the material.

4. Demonstrate the success of the enablement. Create buy-in from leadership as well as the individual sellers by providing proof of the impact and what it means to the individual seller, their leadership and teams.

Thank you for asking - for me it is 2 key philosophies that help build a successful culture within sales: Distraction Free Selling & Golden Selling Time. When it comes to 'Distraction Free Selling' that means we centralize all cross functional communications for sales into a bi-weekly, repeatable webinar program (we call this 'The Scoop'). It builds confidence with the sellers that they don't need to waste time searching for information, updates or launches that are key to their role, but that we will serve those up when they need to know it.

As for true 'sales skills' development, we front load all of our enablement in the first 45 days of the quarter, so the back half of the quarter is 'Golden Selling Time' and dedicated to sellers working with their customers. These enablement sessions are meant to highlight the gold standard selling happening in the field. Sellers want to be like their most successful colleagues...so give them the platform to share!