Charles Gryor Derupe

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, an ...Read More

I'll be honest, I've been in the Sales Enablement industry for a while and this is something that takes so much time to master and has so much nuance depending on your organization's structure. Here are some tactics I use that have helped me get 80+ people in my last annual strategy review. It boils down to these three things: 1. What you did: I LOVE quarterly business reviews. Now let's be honest, I HATE writing them, but they are very effective in getting engagement. The two questions you want ...Read More

This answer is purely based on opinion, so please keep this in mind. I believe that any new tactics and strategies need to be relevant to the sales methodology set by the enablement team. Why? Reps, especially those that are "green" to the field, need a repeatable, consistent skill development structure. Additionally, this methodology should be where onboarding, ongoing reinforcement training, and content should map to. Adding new sales tactics and strategies are most effective for experienced r ...Read More

Great question! There are three specific ways I do this:  1. There are some annual reports done for Sales Enablement that come from third-party sources like Forrester and Gartner. These may be gated, but sometimes they are sent by tools vendors. 2. Use your tool vendor resources! I always ask my CSMs for all the tools we own if they've created an annual trends report or a "best practice' doc for their specific tools whether it's outbound tools, content engagement, knowledge, etc. They have these ...Read More

I very much understand how this is difficult, especially if you have a distributed workforce and if budget constraints don't give you the ability to get folks into one place. I'll share a common approach that my peers from across the industry use (since I focus mostly on content) that can help set this up for success: When: Try trying these real-world experience workshops during times when you do have some sort of gathering. Perhaps that's SKO or a bi-annual regional meetup. Work with leads to e ...Read More

Thanks for the question! There are three ways that we go about this: Focus Groups, Open Requests, and Analytics. First, I'll mention that all content should point back to your team's goals and objectives. What are you trying to achieve as an organization and business? Who are your target audiences? Will you be focusing on your ICPs or perhaps reinforcing the weakest sales opportunity? Are there any spots in the buying journey that have gaps and need to be addressed? These will ensure the content ...Read More

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: 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"). C ...Read More

This requires a good amount of cross-functional work, especially with your sales leaders. If you have a forum where there are weekly, monthly, or quarterly business reviews, I would request adding sections with a clear format that guides front-line leads to give you can get key insights gathered from the leads on common trends. What were the pain points/key needs/objections/drive to the next steps? This is the most scalable way of finding these out. These will help you to understand the key skil ...Read More

It's essential to first understand the expectations of your sales leadership, common denominators between successful reps who achieve those expectations, and availability of data to your enablement program. Here are a couple of questions to ask before you get started in creating a measurement plan: What types of habits do they need to be able to do their everyday work by Day 30-60-90 days? What are the expectations of your leads? Compare this to enablement insights on what can reasonably be achi ...Read More