champchamp

Certified Savage

Acclaimed Answer

Sales Enablement sucks and they are a bunch of fake teachers

Hey Savages,

I feel like sales enablement doesn't know what they are talking about 95% of the time, they either have never sold, have little to no experience in sales, or they sold for 6 months 5 years ago, yet they advise on all aspects of sales and are supposed to create an onboarding plan for us.

The reason for my rant is that I'm crushing it at my role, have exceeded all expectations in my short tenure so far, yet I receive a passive aggressive slack about two damn modules that i didn't complete during my onboarding, which was almost two months ago.

I had no idea it was incomplete otherwise i would have done it and move on, idc. The director of sales enablement slacked me saying his minion reached out in the past few weeks to ask me to finish it, blah, blah, blah. Which is not true, I checked my last conversation with the girl helping me and it was a month ago and didn't mention anything about these damn modules.

What annoys me is that on top of offering zero value, they are the ones annoyed when I am the one doing all this busy work instead of focusing on what really matters.

Lastly, they don't do anything but talk about adding decks and saying hi to new hires, they are even worse than marketing.

Anyone feel similarly about sales enablement?

Is enablement fucking useless?

Attached poll

yes no other

*Voting in this poll no longer yields commission.

🤓 Sales Tech

25

37 comments

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jefe

Arsonist

11

🍁

I think they often are but don't have to be.

champchamp

Arsonist

1

Certified Savage

Curious, how have enablement reps helped you? I truly don't see the value in having them besides keeping things a bit more organized.

jefe

Arsonist

4

🍁

Don't have much firsthand experience with them tbh, BUT I think they're like any other function. If done properly, and with the right people in place, they can be a good thing. Standardization of training and best practices can really help. Especially with greener reps.

Notmyrealname

Politicker

1

AE

Ex-top sales reps. If I had to guess I reckon there was a huge salary discrepency between the good and the bad

CuriousFox

WR Officer

7

🦊

Yeah. Just do what they want to get em off your ass. It's easier that way.

champchamp

Arsonist

1

Certified Savage

Yeah, haha. I'm playing the stupid training in the background while I type this... should be smilin' and dialin' though...

Fenderbaum

Politicker

6

Retired Choirboy🪕

.

champchamp

Arsonist

1

Certified Savage

Yup!

Pachacuti

Politicker

5

They call me Daddy, Sales Daddy

Sales Enablement is not *completely* useless.

That said, I would simply say in this case “I checked everything and your minion never reached out to me. However I’m happy to complete your modules”. Complete them and move on.

champchamp

Arsonist

0

Certified Savage

Okay... maybe 90%-95% useless? haha.

Loved the response, and loved that you used the word minion as well haha.

I replied with something similar and I'm currently working on their dumb modules, haha.

Pachacuti

Politicker

0

They call me Daddy, Sales Daddy

I never discount sales training, even when it seems semi-pointless. There is always a gem somewhere and sometimes its good to be reminded of Sales 101 stuff. It lets you think back to deals you lost and you may have missed something.

antiASKHOLE

Tycoon

4

Bravado's Resident Asshole

I'm still trying to figure out what they do. So, for input, I really don't have any haha

champchamp

Arsonist

1

Certified Savage

Nothing, they just put together PowerPoint presentations, which i agree might be some work but these only need to be done sporadically.

Then they ask you how your onboarding is going and tell you to reach out if you need any help, which is fucking never because when you need help you reach out to your manager or teammate... People who are actually doing the job you will do.

antiASKHOLE

Tycoon

1

Bravado's Resident Asshole

Oh, I guess I just don't pay attention to them at all.

Mobi85

Politicker

4

Regional Sales Manager

I agree with you, my typical passive aggressive response back is with a screen shot showing a lack of communication and asking in what channel the message was sent in because it was not received on my end.

Not a big fan of just checking boxes to get stuff done unless it has some actual value behind it.

champchamp

Arsonist

0

Certified Savage

Totally agree, I replied with something similar and he was way more chill and nice about it after he saw that his minion never reached out.

1nbatopshotfan

Politicker

4

Sales

They always suck but just knock these dumb things out and you never have to speak to them.

champchamp

Arsonist

0

Certified Savage

Yeah, I'm playing the stupid trainings in the background while I type this, haha.

Notmyrealname

Politicker

2

AE

I've worked with great sales enablement peeps who do a fantastic job providing coaching and resources. I've also worked with some who have no idea what they're doing. Seems the same as any other role I guess.

champchamp

Arsonist

0

Certified Savage

Curious, what was the background of those that provided good coaching and what did they coach you on?

DevSomeBiz

Valued Contributor

2

Senior B2B Sales Guy.

Thanks for reaching out, *insert name here*. I checked my email and my slack, but I don't see those requests. I want to make sure that there isn't a tech issue on my end causing me to miss critical messages like this. What did they use to reach out?
Either way, I'll wrap up those modules by EOB Friday. Thanks for alerting me!

Oh, and copy your boss on this.

champchamp

Arsonist

0

Certified Savage

Thank you, replied with something similar haha. My manager agrees with me and told me to just 2X the speed and get through them haha.

TennisandSales

Politicker

1

Head Of Sales

"they are even worse than marketing" oh SHIT!

Shots fired!!!

but I would totally agree.

ive only worked at one org that was mature enough to have a sales ops function and they really had zero value.

champchamp

Arsonist

2

Certified Savage

I SAID WHAT I SAID. Haha forreal though, dont see how they help, even our managers are like "Yeaahh, just fly through them. I'll teach you what you really need to know."

I think companies would be better off just paying a bonus to the managers and top performers to put together a short onboarding process. They'd be happy with the bonus, it'd be more valuable for new hires, and it'd save the company money.

Win-Win for everyone.

TennisandSales

Politicker

0

Head Of Sales

100% with this!

Sunbunny31

Politicker

1

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

Ours has added things to our stack and I need to figure out what value they're adding for me - on the fence as of now, but we'll see. I really like a couple of the enablement managers; they're clearly trying to improve things for us, and have been very responsive when I encounter issues.

Will it help me progress sales, stay more on top of deals? Jury is out as of now.

Skrtskrt

Good Citizen

1

AE (Account Executive)

I used to feel that way, but I’m now working with a much more intelligent and capable SE team and it is a world of difference. They understand their role and are truly trying to add value instead of telling me how to sell. They come up with trainings on new products rolled out by the company and even great decks for us to edit and use.

Kosta_Konfucius

Politicker

0

Sales Rep

Everyonce in a while they are helpful, I will say once a year

ThatNewAE

Big Shot

0

Account Executive - Mid enterprise

It was fancy when the term 'Sales enablement' came into picture.
In my org, sales enablement does literally nothing than arranging new product training sessions. Some random assessments so very randomly (towards month end usually that pisses all AEs off).
They would give some generic advice, even more generic material to use.

My major annoyance is with the fact that most sales enablement folks haven't even sold a pen in their entire life. How am I to trust them with their teaching, if they haven't built credibility?

SaasSlingin

Politicker

0

Sr AE

Some of our best reps moved to enablement and boy does it seem like an easier gig. Never found them all that useful though (literally think theyd be better off serving as mentors) and wonder wtf are they doing outside onboarding and running new trainings?

mastersfan

Opinionated

0

Account Executive

Most suck. There shouldn’t be much line between coaching and enablement, yet there is.

Chipsandsalesa

Good Citizen

0

Sales Development Rep

I’d say reply respectfully but clarifying that you hadn’t been spoken to. “Sorry for any miscommunication on this but I just checked my conversation history and have not been told about this issue prior to this issue. Now that I’m aware of the issue I will handle this as quickly as I can. Thanks”

playerone

Politicker

0

Regional Account Executive

My VP is subscribed to the inbox, so anytime I ask for information on a new proposal she gets in my inbox quick lol

nomdeguerre

Executive

0

Account executive

I agree with you mostly they are useless. The idea of sales enablement is not useless, in fact it is needed considering the 57% of reps don’t make quota.

The problem is, like you said, mostly they are staffed by people who has no clue what it means to sell. Mostly they are from marketing or people who used to be in marketing, and let’s face it marketing people are useless when it comes to selling.

Secondly, all the material they provide is product focused. And as we all know, even though product is important, nobody really buys or cares about your product. They buy solutions to their problems.

Thirdly, the enablement platforms out there are just content repositories. They don’t have any data on the individual sellers abilities and gaps, so they can’t serve up content that is actually relevant to the individual. The result is that everybody just ends up looking at the same thing which doesn’t help.

SoccerandSales

Big Shot

0

Account Executive

Every once in a while we get a helpful slide deck out of them, but 95% of the time, very little value.

NoSuperhero

Politicker

0

BDR LEAD

Not entirely, when it comes down to training new sales reps they can be really useful when done right.

MoonDog349

Valued Contributor

0

Sales Manager

Who hurt you? Just click through the modules like we all do my guy.

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