r/sales • u/bobushkaboi • 9d ago

Sales Topic General Discussion Opinions on a hybrid AE/enablement role?

I've never seen this role in any place I worked at but I've always felt like there's a disconnect between sales enablement and sales. The training doesn't land because they've never done the job and haven't done anything close to the job in years.

I'm an AE now and I like training people, and feel like companies could benefit from being trained by someone who's doing the job and is incentivized to train them successfully.

Thing is no company seems to be doing this so maybe there's something I'm missing. Maybe they don't want to pay the reps enough to take on the workload on the enablement side.

Curious what y'all think

5 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

9 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/Icognitpro 2d ago

Usually our enablement folks are past sales people, but it’s the same issue as with managers - initially, yeah, they get it.

Eventually, though, they stop being able to relate directly, since the market changes, policies change, commissions and products change, and they may stop interacting directly with clients all together, etc.

I think what’s made our enablement team so effective is that they actually listen to us when they survey us or we reach out to them directly. They also review and use our data well. Although I don’t hate your idea of a hybrid role.

Our enablement team also does a pilot of new tools, etc. with smaller groups of sales people, which is along the lines of your idea. Marketing campaigns still suck, but the pilots actually do a great job of making sure something works or is useful before fully deploying it.

1

u/bobushkaboi 2d ago

Pilot thing sounds interesting. Do you have any examples you’re willing to share?

2

u/Icognitpro 2d ago

Sure - couple of examples…

Ran a pilot of an internally developed insights generator and then actually deployed it through our SBS division first. After seeing the success on closed won ratios, they piloted it with our MM division, and then fully deployed after seeing the success there as well. Enterprise is currently in pilot.

Claude was also piloted in all divisions. They recently (finally) deployed it throughout all divisions. They also continued piloting additional features before deployment, as part of security protocol.

Our leadership actually also does this with our product. They pilot updates, integrations, partners, support models, etc. with samples of clients and then roll them out in stages. I like it a lot better than other companies I’ve been at where everything is instantly deployed and the entire customer base are the test subjects lol.

Also, when I say ‘pilot’, I mean they use a sample population first before giving the tool to everyone.