Sales Enablement

Landscape Report 2023

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 1

Contents
3 Introduction

4 Key findings

5 Our participants, their teams, and their orgs

30 Enablement metrics, data, and challenges

42 Challenges facing enablement teams and departments

52 Sales kickoff and rep engagement

55 The most important skills for enablement

64 Artificial intelligence in enablement

69
The future of enablement

75
Conclusion

2
Introduction

Introduction
Welcome to 2023’s Sales Enablement Landscape Report!

Once again, we’re diving head first into the world of sales enablement. With the
help of 150 of our community members, we’ve created a report that examines every
aspect of the multifaceted role of sales enablement.

From team size and reporting structures, to the use of artificial intelligence and the
most impactful metrics, this report breaks down everything you need to know about
enablement and a glimpse into your peers’ experiences.

Our goal?

To bolster enablement professionals’ understanding of their own function so

that they can learn from their peers, enhance their knowledge, and improve their
strategies and standing within organizations.

Sales Enablement Collective’s mission is geared towards supporting and elevating

sales enablers (and the function as a whole) and this report is another way for us to
do just that.

Now sit back, relax, and enjoy the findings.

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 3

Introduction

Key findings
In order to get the most out of the report, you’ll want to read it in its entirety and take
in the breadth and depth of content.

But if you’re pressed for time, here are some of our key findings and highlights:

37.8% of respondents worked in sales before enablement, and an additional

28.4% were in sales management or leadership roles prior to becoming enablers.

The most common enablement team size was 2-4, with 33.8% of respondents in
that range. Solo practitioners closely followed at 31%.

50% of our enablement respondents use content adoption as a measure of

enablement’s success, while only 22.3% use employee NPS.

77.7% are either optimistic or very optimistic about the growth of artificial
intelligence in the enablement space.

In an ideal world, 44.6% of respondents would have enablement report directly

to the C-suite.

For all the details, turn the virtual page and read on.

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 4

Part 1

Our participants, their

teams, and their orgs
To kick off the report, let’s first understand our participants and their organizational setups.

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 5

Organization type

Unsurprisingly, the overwhelming majority of our respondents

are working in the B2B sector. With enablement a big driver of
performance, we're curious to see how it develops across B2B and
B2C in the coming years.

B2C
2.7%

Consultancy
3.37

B2B
82.43%
B2B and B2C
11.49%

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 6

Location

It was extremely encouraging to see more worldwide responses

in this year's survey. While North America-based respondents still
make up the majority, the growth of enablement in other parts of the
world, like Europe, is now reflected in our data.

North America Europe

30.41%
63.51%

2.03%

2.03%
Asia

Central & South 2.03%

America

Australasia

• Most represented country in North America - United States

• Most represented country in Europe - United Kingdom

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 7

Our participants

Despite the sales world being traditionally male-dominated, and a 2018 LinkedIn report stating
that 39% of sales roles were held by females, among our 150 respondents the roles are reversed.
In fact, in our 2022 report female respondents made up 57% of respondents, so that percentage
has increased.

With diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging becoming increasingly important in the workforce,
it’s good to see that enablement doesn’t appear to have the same barriers to entry as other roles, at
least among our respondents.

Likewise, it’s heartening to see that some respondents were comfortable enough to disclose their
non-binary identity. Gender identity should not be an obstacle to working in any business role,
enablement included.

Prefer not to say:

1.68%
Non-binary
1.68%

Female
61.49%

Gender
Male identity
35.15%

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 8

Career background

Sales experience is a major talking point in the enablement space - do you need to have
worked in a sales or sales-adjacent role to be an effective enabler? The debate continues, and
analyzing our respondents’ backgrounds doesn’t provide any definitive answers.

66.22% worked in either a sales, sales management, or sales leadership role prior to working in
enablement. This leaves just over a third (33.78%) who’s previous role was not in a sales role.

Prior to working in enablement, which of the following best described your role?

Sales - 37.84%

Sales management/leadership - 28.38%

Learning & development - 12.16%

Marketing - 6.76%

Customer success - 4.05%

Other - 4.05%

Product - 3.38%

Product marketing - 2.03%

HR - 1.35%

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 9

Who are enablers enabling?

Another of the enablement community’s big discussion points revolves around what
enablement is and what it should be. We’ll have more on that later in the report, but we
started by asking our respondents which of the following best described their role.

What began as sales enablement has evolved into revenue, GTM (go-to-market), and other
forms of enablement, supporting people across all areas of the business.

This evolution is visible among our responses. While sales enablement is still the single
biggest form of enablement (38.51%), our respondents in revenue, GTM, field, product, and
success enablement combined to form 52.03% - over half of responses.

Which of the following best describes your role?

38.51%

27.7%

16.22%

9.46%

3.38% 3.38%
1.35%

Sales Revenue GTM Field Product Success Other (incl.

enablement enablement enablement enablement enablement enablement consultancy)

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 10

Enablement job titles

Our respondents’ answers provided an interesting look into the world of enablement job titles
too. There’s an incredible breadth of titles that fall under the enablement umbrella.

One fascinating takeaway was that 12.84% of our respondents had “sales” enablement in
their official job title, but said their role was best described as revenue or GTM enablement.

Does this disparity between job title and actual role, in over one-in-ten positions, cause
confusion among jobseekers and the enablement community? That’s for the enablement
community to decide.

Below is a selection of the variety of job titles that existed among our respondents:

VP of Sales Enablement Director of Sales Training & Enablement

Sales Content & Readiness Manager Revenue Enablement Manager

Director of Global Sales Productivity Senior Director of Sales Enablement

VP of Sales Operations and Enablement GTM Enablement Manager

Senior Manager, Field Enablement VP of Revenue Training & Enablement

Sales and Partner Enablement Director of Revenue Enablement & Marketing

GTM Enablement & Productivity Lead Head of GTM Enablement

Talent Development - Sales Enablement Growth Enablement Manager

Senior GTM Sales Enablement Manager Sales Excellence and Enablement Lead

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 11

What a range, right? This list does a great job of highlighting the many responsibilities that
enablement can hold within an organization too.

Enablement (of course!), operations, productivity, excellence, growth, talent development,

readiness, content, and training are all keywords appearing in these job titles.

It’s worth taking a moment to give some kudos to our respondents and enablers everywhere
for wearing so many hats.

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 12

 Enablement team size

Team size is something that naturally varies from organization to organization. Larger
ones will often have more enablers on board, but being a one-person band is a common
challenge in the space.

This is reflected in our respondents’ answers, where 64.79% answered stating that their team
was between one and four people in size.

How large is your enablement team?

33.8%
31%

17.61%

9.15%

2.82% 2.82%
1.41% 1.41%

I’m a solo 2 to 4 5 to 9 10 to 15 16 to 20 21 to 25 26 to 30 31 or more

practitioner

(Results excl. consultants)

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 13

 Enablement to rep ratio

Often more important than the amount of enablers in an organization is the enabler to rep
ratio. A solo practitioner is much more likely to effectively enable 25 reps than 250, of course.

We asked our respondents to select the ratio which was closest to their current operating
ratio, and the responses were interesting.

The “golden” ratio is often stated to be 1:50, and 69.72% (nearly 7 in 10!) are around that mark
or below it.

Additionally, the median ratio was 1 enabler to 50 reps, right on that golden ratio.

Less than 1 enabler to 25 reps - 16.9%

1 enabler to 25 reps - 30.28%

1 enabler to 50 reps - 22.54%

1 enabler to 75 reps - 7.04%

1 enabler to 100 reps - 4.23%

1 enabler to 150 reps - 9.25%

1 enabler to 200 reps - 2.41%

1 enabler to 250 reps - 2.41%

More than 1 enabler to 250 reps - 4.93%

(Results excl. consultants) 14

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023
 Reporting structure

With enablement having a plethora of responsibilities and often wearing multiple hats within
an organization, the subject of where enablement should report to is often contentious.

When analyzing the reporting structures of our respondents, we can see some interesting
developments. Just over a third (34.51%) of our enablement professionals report to sales.

However, that leaves 65.49% of our enablement respondents who report to someone other
than sales, with RevOps and C-Suite being strong contenders.

34.51%

24.65%
20.42%

9.87%
5.93%
1.51% 1.51%
0.8% 0.8%

Sales RevOps C-Suite Operations Human SalesOps Product Customer Other

Resources Marketing Success

(“Other” incl. Business Development, Strategy, Finance, Education)

(Results excl. consultants)

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 15

C-suite reporting

Diving into the results a little bit closer, we can see an interesting divide even just among
respondents who report directly to the C-Suite. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Chief Revenue
Officer (CRO) dominates this data - but CROs aren’t the only C-suiters that enablement is
reporting to.

Chief Delivery Officer

3.45%
Other (incl. undisclosed)
Chief Commercial Officer 3.45%
3.45%

Chief Sales Officer

3.45%

Chief Revenue Officer

58.61%
Chief Operations
Officer
6.9%

Chief Executive Officer

20.69%

(Results excl. consultants)

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 16

 Enablement team responsibilities

Following on from enablement team structures, we wanted to understand what our

respondents’ teams actually get up to in their roles. With enablement often differing
drastically from organization to organization, are there responsibilities that all enablers
can relate to?

Is your enablement team responsible for onboarding?

No
4.06%

Yes
62.16%

Partially, in
collaboration
with other teams
33.78%

(Results excl. consultants)

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 17
 Is your enablement team responsible for sales kick-offs (SKOs)?

No
16.72%
Yes
48.75%

Partially, in
collaboration
with other teams
34.53%

Who is responsible for the creation of content in your organization?

Enablement
12.82%
A combination
of some/all
62.91%
Marketing
14.15%

Product Marketing
10.12%

(Results excl. consultants)

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 18
The breakdown of statistics among our respondents here is fascinating. As expected, 95.95%
are at least partially responsible for onboarding - which is often regarded as enablement’s
primary purpose.

However, perhaps more surprising is that 83.11% of our enablers are involved in sales kick-offs,
with just under half saying they’re totally responsible.

This is close to as many enablers who design and create content in their organization (75.73%).

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 19

Cross-functional collaboration and attitudes to enablement

There’s a lot more to enablement than just whether you’re onboarding new reps or not, or
how involved you are in creating content. We wanted to ask our respondents about how
they collaborate with the other stakeholders in the organization.

Enablement must be truly cross-functional to thrive, so we asked our respondents which

relationships are flourishing in their organizations, and which are struggling.

What function do you collaborate with most (apart from sales)?

31.69%
23.34%
22.64%

11.57%
9.16%
0.7% 0.7%

Product Marketing RevOps Product C-Suite Strategy Other

Marketing

(Results excl. consultants)

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 20

Which department do you most wish you had a better relationship with?

20.42%
18.31%

11.97%
9.86% 9.86% 9.15% 8.45% 8.16%
3.82%

Product Marketing Sales Operations Product Human C-Suite Sales Customer

management/ Marketing Resources teams Success
leadership

(Results excl. consultants)

Interestingly, here we see that product marketing (31.69%) is the most collaborated-with
function apart from sales, and less than one in ten (9.86%) voted it as the department
they wanted to have a better relationship with.

Perhaps that’s because product marketing and enablement tend to have a strong cross-
functional relationship?

On the other hand, one in five (20.42%) of our enablement respondents want a better
relationship with the product team, the most popular selection.

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 21

Enablement charters - yay or nay?

In the enablement space, charters are a bit like marmite. You either love ‘em or hate ‘em,
and this is very much reflected in our respondents’ views.

A charter is a guiding document, providing direction and focus to your enablement team,
while also acting as a file which you can direct any other department towards when they
have questions about what you actually do.

But do enablers actually use charters and do they think they’re effective?

Does your organization have an enablement charter?

No
Yes
39.65%
41.65%

Working on one
right now
18.61%

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 22

Do you believe enablement charters are effective?

Other
7.38%

Not sure
14.74%
Yes
59.64%

No
18.24%

(Results excl. consultants) (“Other” answers incl. “They help focus the efforts of the enablement team,
but are largely considered irrelevant to everyone else in sales”, “When appropriately socialized”, “It's only
valuable if everyone sticks to it”).

The statistics from our respondents show a divide in opinion. Less than half (41.65%)
actually have an enablement charter at the moment, though that figure reaches 60.26%
when we include those still in the process of creating one.

This is far from unanimous adoption of charters. A similar divide was seen when we asked
our respondents whether they believed charters were effective.

Less than two-thirds (59.64%) said yes, while 32.98% were either unsure of their worth or
simply don’t see them as worth the time.

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 23

Value placed on enablement

One of the most common complaints in the enablement space is that the role simply isn’t
valued enough by organizations. We wanted to judge the mood of our respondents both
towards their own company’s view of enablement, and on the function overall.

On a scale of 0 - 10, how much value do you think is placed on enablement at your
organization?

Reporting
to C-suite

7
Without a
charter
Avg.
5.9
6.35
6.47
Reporting
to RevOps
With a
6.45 Reporting
charter

6.88
to Sales

6.61

(Results excl. consultants)

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 24
With zero being the lowest, and 10 being the highest possible score, we can see that
enablers feel their team’s work is valued largely in the middle of the road, with an average
vote of 6.47 out of 10.

What really stands out is that the largest positive deviations from the average are found
in two distinct groups of respondents - those who report directly to the C-Suite, and those
who have an enablement charter.

Could those factors be the key to proving enablement’s value internally? It’s not
surprising that directly reporting to senior leadership in the C-level could help
enablement be seen and understood as a value driver.

Is there cross-functional support for enablement in your organization?

No, there’s no cross-functional

support at all Yes, across all
4.02% functions
16%
No, there’s little
cross-functional
support
14.08%

Yes, across some

functions
66%
(Results excl. consultants)

What’s interesting about this result is that the majority of our respondents do have at
least some level of cross-functional support for their enablement efforts (82%),
which is heartwarming to see.

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 25

On a scale of 0 - 10, how much value do you think is placed on enablement as a
function overall?

Average on the function overall:

Avg. 5.76/10 5.9

5.76

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Average for own company:

Avg.6.47/10 5.9
6.47

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

What’s fascinating about this statistic is that enablers are generally more positive about
how enablement is valued in their own organization compared to in the wider world.

While there’s no definitive answer, the enablement function has unfortunately seen a
number of layoffs in recent times which may affect our respondents’ wider perception of
how the function is valued.

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 26

Hurdles to stakeholder support

To cap this section off, we provided our respondents with an open forum to share the
single biggest hurdle in the way of stakeholder support in their organization.

We then analyzed each individual’s response and assigned it a category, allowing us to

share the top five most common themes among our respondents.

What is the biggest hurdle in the way of stakeholder support in your organization?

27.7%

18.92%

11.49%
9.46%

2.7%

Competing Stakeholders not Time and time Lack of Disagreement

priorities & a lack understanding the management resources, over ownership
of alignment or value or impact of budget, or of certain
communication enablement headcount activities

Over a quarter (27.7%) of our respondents stated that their biggest challenges in regards
to stakeholder support came about as a result of competing priorities and a lack of
alignment or communication.

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 27

 “There’s a lot of duplicative work and efforts between HR & Enablement; we
just started talking more to each other recently and are realizing we need to
collaborate more in each other's spaces to reduce overlap”

“We have no leadership alignment - everyone is busy chasing their

own dream.”

“Having aligned OKRs - identifying roadblocks and dependencies - doubling

work because there are no defined swimlanes (eg. with PMM)”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the second most common roadblock to stakeholder support was
simply that the stakeholders don’t understand or value enablement enough.

Nearly one in five (18.92%) stated that it was the biggest roadblock, and there’s no doubt
that more than this number struggle with it.

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 28

Below is a selection of comments from those struggling with this:

“Stakeholders don't know what enablement is able to do. They have very low
expectations and that means low support and that we’re rarely invited in.”

“Enablement impacts are seen as too abstract, and therefore prioritized low”

“There’s a lack of understanding around the valuable impact of sales

enablement”

With these two categories making up 46.62% of our respondents biggest roadblocks to
stakeholder support, it’s clear that there’s still work to do when it comes to educating
organizations on why enablement is impactful and why it should be prioritized.

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 29

Part 2

Enablement metrics
and data
As we’ve seen in the previous sections, proving enablement’s value is often a difficult task.
One of the more reliable ways to do this is by using cold, hard data and metrics.

We asked our respondents both how they measure rep performance and enablement team
performance to understand what the enablement community views as key metrics.

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 30

Measuring rep performance

We began by asking our respondents the top three metrics they used to measure their
sales reps’ performance.

While win/close rates were unsurprisingly the most popular data point, with 72.97% of
respondents putting it in their top three, there was plenty of disparity from the second
most popular answer onwards.

What metrics do you use to measure a sales rep's performance?

Win/close rates - 72.97%

Sales velocity - 40.54%

Deal stage conversion rate - 35.81%

Pipeline with source - 32.43%

Time to first sale - 25.68%

Time to quota - 25%

Sales confidence - 18.92%

Content usage - 15.54%

Available selling time - 4.05%

Other (incl. deal health, booking attainment, behavior change) - 5.41%

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 31

Next, you’ll find listed some of the most interesting additional comments left by our
enablement respondents on how they measure reps:

We look at the ability to use the sales methodology in calls and information
gathered. This is more qualitative than quantitative which makes it hard
to track.

Measuring outcomes is quite sporadic, most enablement teams need

to ensure they are clearly measuring and reporting success of their
interventions.

A significant way we measure behavior & performance indicators is

via a competency model & supporting scorecards in Chorus (and
analyzing trends).

There are more metrics I wish to track, but we do not have the technology in
place to accomplish that. (Things like content utilization, content impact to
win-rate. etc.)

Our CRM is set up for finance and not sales metrics, so it is difficult to track
impact on sales performance.

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 32

Behavior change is #1 - lagging indicators like win rates/etc. are still
measured but correlated with behavior change.

I align my measurement to Kirkpatrick's framework.

We are also starting to look at including Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

to help determine the effectiveness of our sales efforts when acquiring new
customers. We can't just focus on increasing productivity if we aren't sure our
sales people are doing the right things.

This is a constant challenge for a small sales team with a small data set. We
often find out data tells us different things from month to month, as the data
set isn't large enough to provide consistent information.

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 33

Challenges facing sales teams

Knowing the metrics enablement teams use to benchmark their sales reps’ performance is
great, but it can be even more useful to know what challenges are stopping sales teams from
achieving top marks.

We asked our respondents to rank the top three challenges facing their sales teams, and
once again we had a single standout answer, with lots of variation below it.

Nearly two-thirds of our enablers’ sales teams are struggling to generate pipeline (65.54%).
A similar percentage are struggling to access sales content effectively, and also aren’t
spending enough time selling (25.68% & 22.97%), two issues which are possibly related.

What are the top three challenges facing your sales teams?

Reps struggling to generate pipeline - 65.54%

Sales cycle is too long - 37.16%

Not enough leads/wasting time on unqualified leads -37.16%

Deal stage conversion rate - 35.81%

Sales and marketing aren’t aligned - 34.46%

Can’t access sales content effectively - 25.68%

Lack of selling time/not enough time spent selling - 22.97%

Adoption of AI tools - 6.08%

Transitioning to virtual selling - 6.08%

Not facing any challenges - 2.03%

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 34
Next is a selection of some of the most interesting additional commentary left by your
enablement peers, discussing sales team challenges:

There is a general sales leadership assumption that professional sellers

don't need hand holding and are expected to perform right out of the gate.
However, the opposite is true.

They are so geographically dispersed that it is hard to establish consistent

processes and success measurements. This also makes it hard to reach them
with timely enablement content.

The increasing complexity of the customer decision-making process: Buyers

are now more informed than ever before, and they have access to a wealth of
information at their fingertips. This makes it more important for Marketing and
Sales to be aligned.

Limited tools for efficient coaching, or for measuring/ensuring quality,

execution of account plan and prospect timelines. Limited training programs
specifically to upskill from the needed software sales skills/best practices of
the last 5+ years, vs 2023. The market need has changed faster than the tools
to support it.

Too much change and information overload from other departments is

causing burnout for reps, leading to difficulty in driving effective enablement.

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 35

Measuring enablement’s performance

While rep performance is key, it’s arguably even more important to know how to measure
enablement’s own performance. We’ve seen already in this report that it’s a struggle for
many enablement professionals to prove their value, so knowing what metrics your peers are
using to measure their performance is very valuable.

We asked our respondents to select their top three metrics for measuring enablement
performance and incredibly, not one was used by more than half of enablers. 50% of our
respondents use content adoption to track their team’s performance, with 40.54% leaning
on win rate to do so. Interestingly, less than one in four (22.3%) regard employee NPS as a
top three metric. Almost 5% of the enablers who took our survey have no official metrics for
tracking enablement’s own performance. This could prove an issue for these teams going
forward.

What metrics do you use to measure enablement's own performance?

Content adoption - 50%

Win rate - 40.54%

Quota attainment - 39.19%

Sales cycle length - 29.73%

Pipeline growth percentage - 28.38%

Employee Net Promoter Score (NPS) - 22.3%

Lead-to-customer conversion rate - 16.22%

Deal size - 10.14%

No official metrics - 4.05%

Other (incl. sales velocity, pipeline quality, behavior change) - 12.84%

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 36

To follow up, we asked our respondents to share their most important metric when measuring
enablement success. We received a wealth of varied responses, and in the following graph
you’ll see the results after we categorized each response into a specific box.

With enablers striving to tie their initiatives to positive revenue outcomes to showcase value
to data-driven stakeholders, it’s unsurprising that the two most common themes were
metrics related to rep performance versus their KPIs, or overall revenue improvement (20.27%
& 14.19%).

In your opinion, what is the most important metric when measuring

enablement’s success?

Rep performance to KPIs (Quota, Win/Loss, etc) - 20.27%

Revenue improvement - 14.19%

Time to X (Quota, first sale, ramp, etc.) - 6.76%

Content and process adoption - 6.76%

Sales team confidence- 5.41%

Sales velocity - 5.41%

Behavioral change - 2.7%

NPS - 2.7%

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 37

Next, you’ll find some of the most insightful comments from our enablement respondents on
how they measure their success, and why:

The "why" metric, and that is any metric that shows why revenue is growing,
why a rep is getting stronger, or why collaboration is growing and collateral is
being produced faster, ultimately providing better visuals and information for
customers to help them make decisions faster.

Enablement does not control the success of the product, or the happiness of
our customers. So the most important thing to measure is the ability for the
sales team members to make their quota. (Note - ironically, enablement has
no control over quota numbers.... but sales reps will leave the organization, if
they don't believe that they can hit their numbers - so our job as enablers is to
help them hit their numbers!)

I don't think there is one metric. Enablement touches so many areas of the
GTM/revenue function that I have key metrics for each team. Eg. MQL-SQL
conversion, successful discovery calls booked, the time that deals spend in
certain deal stages reducing over time, improving comms with internal teams
like legal and opps.

Measurable revenue or business impact (More profit, less cost, or more

efficiency, revenue growth.) Everything else drives towards that, otherwise
enablement is viewed as a cost center.

Overall it has to be quota attainment. Everything else can be great, but if no

one is hitting their number then there's something wrong.

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 38

Qualitative vs quantitative data

Another debate in the enablement sphere surrounds qualitative and quantitative data. Is one
more important than the other, or is one more useful for stakeholders than the other?

It appears the answer, in the eyes of most enablers, is no. Seven in ten respondents (70.27%)
believe the two differing types of data are equally important to enablement.

Qualitative data
10.81%

They are equally important

70.27%

Quantitative data
18.92%

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 39

Our respondents had some interesting thoughts on when to use both types of data:

It's not really an either/or choice but a combination. For example, in the
past I've had quantitative data to yellow-light an AE's low proposal to win-
rate. I then used qualitative data from account reviews, joint calls, sales
skills assessments, Gong recordings, etc. to understand why. We had one AE
closing 2 out of 10 proposals and another closing 2 out of 4. Qualitative data
revealed targeted training was needed for the former AE in how to fully qualify
a prospect on their initial calls, before doing all the work of a proposal.

I believe qualitative data is most important, but my leadership measures

quantitative data, often drawing conclusions that do not match my
observations. This is a weakness we have in our organization.

For a team as small as ours and a sales cycle as long as ours, relying only on
objective measurements can lead to a false sense of accuracy. Just because
someone hasn't put data in Salesforce (arrgh!) doesn't mean they're not
working on it.

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 40

I use both in my reviews for leadership, usually highlighting how the
qualitative matches the quantitative.

To encourage the team to experiment and try new things, we find it is

important to leverage qualitative feedback in the short term as well as
quantitative over the long term.

Quantitative data helps you capture the raw numbers, but the key is to dig
deep on the "why" behind the numbers.

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 41

Part 3

Challenges facing
enablement teams
and departments
One of the wonderful things about enablement networks and communities like Sales
Enablement Collective is that enablers from across the globe can come together to share
common challenges and understand they’re not alone in facing certain roadblocks.

We wanted to better understand what the challenges facing enablement departments are.
By understanding the issues, we can band together as a community to solve them.

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 42

What are the top three challenges facing your enablement department?

A lack of formal, internal alignment on

what enablement is or does - 61.49%

Not enough enablers in the team - 50%

Lack of support/enthusiasm from reps - 43.92%

Lack of support/enthusiasm from managers - 38.5%

Lack of support/buy-in from senior leadership - 28.38%

Lack of support/buy-in from other departments - 27.7%

Content isn’t as good as it needs to be - 34.46%

Other - 16.22%

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 43

We had plenty of submitted answers for “other”, including: not having clear outcome goals,
poor data collection from reps, lack of understanding from requesters on what change they
actually want and why, lack of enthusiasm from managers, and competing priorities.

What stands out is that the percentages are so high on these, meaning that many enablers
are facing the same issues, even across different organizations. Here’s what some of our
respondents had to say on the challenges facing their teams:

Various departments (HR, Marketing) are competing to get enablement in

their team as they see the benefits, but they want to dictate enablement
agenda (e.g. get enablement to do wider L&D based on traditional learning
models, or marketing wanting a way in to dictate content.)

There’s a lack of a clear understanding from the program requester on what

change they want and why they want it (example: what KPIs to change, in
what direction, and how will you know it has happened?)

There’s a lack of understanding that projects and asks cannot be

done instantly.

Enablement resources have been halved due to overall sales team reduction,
but output expectations remain similar.

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 44

The industry needs to promote and educate, especially in regions outside of
North America.

The layoffs are throwing everything for a loop, and now it's time to reassess
once again who does what and what our goals are.

There’s a lack of sales manager buy-in on sales enablement initiatives,

combined with lack of sponsorship and focus from executives/C-Suite, and
executives wanting to reduce scope of enablement down to just training and
comms (we do so much more!)

Sometimes it's not about the leaders' buy-in, but more so just keeping them
on track, as their plates are very full (too full, in my opinion) to help us deliver
consistent messaging and reinforce behavior.

Sales is a business-wide responsibility. Getting other functions to understand

this is the biggest challenge.

I’m in a very innovative space highly impacted by generative AI, so balancing

product enablement, GTM enablement, and role enablement has never been
more stretched but important. It’s the ‘innovate and scale’ dilemma.

It's getting harder to align a good enablement strategy with constantly

changing business priorities. Popcorn enablement doesn't provide
great results.

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 45

Budget

Notably, the last set of statistics showed us that 37.84% of enablers see a lack of budget as
one of their top three challenges. Let’s take a deeper look at what our respondents expect to
happen to their budgets - are they going to go up in a time when an increase is needed?

Do you expect your enablement budget to increase or decrease in the next 12 months?

51.79%
48.65%

33.93%
29.05%

10.14% 10.71%
5.41% 3.38%
1.79%
0%

Decrease Decrease Stay the same Increase Increase

significantly somewhat somewhat significantly

For respondents who said lacking budget is a challenge

(Results excl. consultants)

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 46
What stands out is that, of our enablement respondents who said a lack of budget was one of
their top three challenges, 35.72% expect their budget to increase at least somewhat. This is
marginally larger than the overall percentage who expect to see a budget increase (32.43%).

What is good to see is that no enabler who saw a lack of budget as a major challenge is
expecting a significant decrease in available funds.

Overall, only around 10-15% of enablers are expecting to see the budget available to them
drop. In a time when enablement’s value has been questioned, this is a positive sign.

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 47

Headcount

Unfortunately, the enablement industry has seen layoffs in recent times, and we wanted to
better understand the extent of these and how organizations have been affected.

Did your organization make an enablement hire in the last 12 months?

Other
0.7%

Yes
58.45%

No
40.85%

Has your organization's enablement team increased or decreased in headcount in the

last 12 months?

Decreased
Increased
headcount
headcount
30.99%
33.1%

Stayed the same

33.8%

(Results excl. consultants) Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 48

What the results show us here is that a significant number, nearly a third (30.99%) of our
respondents’ teams saw a decrease in headcount. This is despite the fact that earlier we saw
a whopping 50% of enablers see a lack of team members as one of their major challenges.

While we know how valuable enablement is, and how much potential it has to improve
organizations when properly resourced, we hope that stakeholders and leaders start seeing
that too.

Industry challenges

To cap off our section on enablement challenges, we wanted to hear from our respondents
on what they believe the biggest challenges facing the industry as a whole are.

The aforementioned layoffs, budget issues, and a lack of understanding among stakeholders
are all problems - but we wanted to hear from real-life enablement professionals what they
see as the defining challenge for enablement overall.

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 49

What is the biggest challenge facing the enablement industry as
a whole?

There’s a lack of formal education, training, and expertise in enablement. Too

many people have entered this space from sales or similar roles, but are not
properly trained in enablement.

Too many early career enablement professionals have an "in-between" profile

with a little sales experience and a little training experience. When the team
feels understaffed vs. need, the influx of this kind of profile on the market has
been difficult to deal with from a recruitment standpoint.

People not understanding the true role and scope of what enablement does
means it ends up bigger and diluted to everything training. Training is not the
be all, end all to enablement.

Lack of strategic, long-term investment in a challenging macroeconomic

climate. This should be when companies are increasing their investment
in enablement to achieve a strategic advantage, but enablement budgets
& headcounts are usually based off of sales modeling, which takes a more
agile/short-term approach. Companies that have reduced their
enablement teams in FY23 will lag in growth during FY24 and spend time
playing catch-up.

Scalability. Most of the enablers haven't realized that the problem isn't about
not having enough enablers, but about not finding a scalable way of working.

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 50

A lack of acknowledgment of the work enablement does and as a result they
think salaries are fair, but often they are low until an enablement rep shows
the results of their efforts

I think it's a new and evolving function. The main challenges come from within.
I love what I see happening in the landscape from thought leaders to actual
sales enablement forums and groups. I get great support and ideas from
other sales enablement professionals.

Enablement is a "catch-all" role for an experienced professional and quickly

becomes a "fixer" job across all departments, functions, and metrics.

A too-fuzzy understanding of the industry and roles with overlapping areas

of responsibility / no agreed-upon role definition. That can be good, but right
now it's such a broad and diffuse term virtually anyone can call themselves
an enabler. This means it's very hard to compare enablers - anyone can bring
their own definition and therefore be radically different
from expectations.

Lack of clarity in enablement responsibility cross-functionally (Enablement

vs L&D, Marketing, RevOps, SalesOps, Sales Management etc). No standard
success framework that can be emulated.

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 51

Part 4

Sales kickoff and

rep engagement

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 52

Earlier, we discovered that 83.11% of our respondents are at least partially responsible for
SKOs in their organization. We asked them some questions about their recent and upcoming
kickoffs to better gauge the direction these events have gone since the 2020 global
pandemic forced us all into a virtual world temporarily.

How did you deliver your last SKO?

No SKO
4.05%

Hybrid
18.92% In-person
53.38%

Virtual
21.62%

How do you plan on delivering your next SKO?

Don’t know yet

27.7%
In-person
42.57%
Hybrid
11.49%

Virtual
17.57%

The in-person connection can’t be beaten by over half of our respondents’ organizations, with
53.38% of previous SKOs being held face-to-face. Additionally, 42.57% already know their
next event will be in-person as well.
Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 53
While face-to-face interaction is popular for good reason, what are the most effective ways
to engage reps at SKOs?

What type of session tends to be most engaging for reps during your SKO?

47.97%

22.97%

14.19%
8.78%
4.05%

Workshop Gamified or Presentations Roleplay Other

sessions competition and keynotes sessions (incl. Q&A with
sessions product team, a
combination of
the above, etc.)

Workshop sessions were the overwhelming favorite type of session, with gamified and
competition sessions trailing behind in second place.

Both of these (47.97% and 22.97%) are considerably more popular than the traditional
keynote sessions - less than 15% of our respondents think presentations are the most
engaging type of session at an SKO.

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 54

Part 5

The most important

skills for enablement
Getting hired in enablement is tougher than it’s ever been. Competition is fierce and there are
often limited opportunities or roles available. We asked our respondents if they were involved in
the hiring process for new enablement team members - if they answered yes, they shared the
top three most important skills they look for in a new hire.

We hope that these numbers enlighten enablement job seekers, and help them tailor their CVs
and personal development.

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 55

When you're hiring to fill a junior enablement role, what are the top three skills you look for?

Adult learning skills - 4.05%

Communication - 43.24%

Content design - 8.78%

Creativity - 13.51%

Data analysis - 11.49%

Leadership skills - 0%

Organization - 12.84%

Project management - 35.81%

Sales skills - 19.59%

Strategic thinking skills - 13.51%

Time management - 4.05%

Grit - 4.73%

Proactivity - 17.57%

Emotional intelligence - 15.54%

Adaptability - 18.92%

Team-oriented - 10.14%

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 56

19.59%, or almost one in five enablers on hiring teams see sales skills as one of their top
three most critical attributes for junior roles. The debate will undoubtedly rage on about
whether you can truly engage reps without sales experience, but a solid percentage of our
respondents see it as an important factor.

The two most popular skills were communication (43.24%) and project management
(35.81%). Communicating information is at the heart of enablement, whether it’s to sales reps
or cross-functional stakeholders, so it’s not surprising that it ranks so highly here.

But what about when hiring for senior roles - do our respondents’ priorities change?

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 57

When you're hiring to fill a senior enablement role, what are the top three skills you
look for?

Adult learning skills - 6.76%

Communication - 23.65%

Content design - 2.7%

Creativity - 2.03%

Data analysis - 12.84%

Leadership skills - 43.92%

Organization - 9.46%

Project management - 21.62%

Sales skills - 12.16%

Strategic thinking skills - 52.7%

Time management - 2.03%

Grit - 2.7%

Proactivity - 8.11%

Emotional intelligence - 19.59%

Adaptability - 9.46%

Team-oriented - 7.43%

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 58

It appears that priorities absolutely change when hiring for senior positions. Sales skills
(12.16%) are considered less important here than in junior roles (19,59%). Similarly, proactivity
is seen as less critical in a senior role (8.11%) than in a junior position (17.57%).

Let’s examine the biggest differences in our next chart:

Junior role skills vs. senior role skills

Skills Senior roles Difference Junior roles

Leadership skills 43.92% +43.92% 0%

Strategic thinking skills 52.7% +39.19% 13.51%

Communication 23.65% -19.56% 43.24%

Project management 21.62% -14.19% 35.81%

Creativity 2.03% -11.48% 13.51%

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 59

It won’t shock anyone to know that leadership is in the top three most important skills for
senior roles for 43.92% of respondents, while no one voted for it in the junior role section.

What’s interesting is that only 2.03% see creativity as a top skill for senior roles, with 11.48%
seeing it as extremely important in junior roles. Could it be that the creative, outside-the-box
ideas are left to more junior members of enablement teams while the senior enablement
leaders focus on strategic, big-picture items?

Over half (52.7%) of our respondents on hiring teams view strategic thinking skills as critical in
senior roles, but it’s seen as much less important for junior positions.

Here’s some more commentary from our respondents on the most important skills for an
enablement professional to possess:

Sales and client/persona knowledge are essential for enablement professionals

in whichever type of business they are operating. I have witnessed many L&D/
Adult Learning-experienced enablement practitioners who have found it hard to
adapt without these to the specific needs required for enablement activities.

Resilience and being able to manage stakeholders at all levels is key.

A balance of some sales and L&D experience — some come from one
background more than the other (totally ok!), but they should come with both.

An ability to prioritize tasks at hand - enablement will always have more asks
than bandwidth to deliver.

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 60

A diverse mix of sales, customer success and other backgrounds is key! Not
everyone needs to have carried a quota, but it's important to have a mix.

I think as a sales enablement specialist you need to come with an arsenal of

skillsets. I have a L&D background as well as having spent time as a BDR and
account executive. Having done what they do helps my brand with reps, and
builds my reputation as a source of knowledge and support to leverage in
deal cycles.

Curiosity is key. I want to see they have a willingness and interest to learn. We
have a highly intelligent community and I want them to feel empowered through
curiosity not intimidated.

I look for people my sales team will trust. Are they likable? Does conversation
come easy? Would my reps be comfortable sharing to this person? How does this
person deliver feedback?

Enablers need to be agile and think quickly and expect the unexpected. They
need to deal with a lot of emotions and understand it isn't personal.

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 61

Upskilling and networking in enablement

Now that we have an understanding of the most desirable skills in enablement, it’s time to
look at how enablers tackle personal development, networking, and upskilling.

Which of the following methods are you using to upskill and develop new knowledge
in enablement?

75%

63.51% 62.16%
58.11%
51.35%
48.65%

17.57%

Events Courses Webinars eBooks/ Enablement Local LinkedIn/

articles communities/ meetups social media
groups

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 62

Which of the following methods are you using to network with your enablement peers?

75.68%
73.65%

40.54%
29.05%
21.62%

Events Webinars Enablement Local LinkedIn/

communities/ meetups social media
groups

It won’t shock you to know that LinkedIn and social networking sites are the most popular
ways to network with enablement peers (75.68%). In fact, if you’re reading this report there’s a
good chance you found it there. Closely following social media are enablement communities
and groups, just like us at Sales Enablement Collective! 73.65% of our respondents use these
groups to network.

Interestingly, when it comes to upskilling most of our respondents are branching out across
a variety of methods. Every option besides local meetups and eBooks/articles garnered over
50%, but for all intents and purposes only local meetups weren’t popular among
our enablers.

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 63

Part 6

Artificial intelligence
in enablement
It’s impossible to talk about any job role in 2023 without discussing artificial intelligence (AI).
After an initial worldwide fear that “this is going to make my job irrelevant”, there’s been a
perspective shift towards looking at how AI can make people more effective in their roles.

There are a whole host of ways that AI can be used in enablement, and so we asked our
respondents how they felt about these developments and how much they’d embraced them.

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 64

What is your general sentiment about the growth of artificial intelligence (AI)
in the sales and enablement space?

44.59%

33.11%

18.24%

1.35% 0.68% 0.68%

Very Optimistic Hesitant Unsure Pessimistic Very

optimistic pessimistic

It seems that AI gets an A+ grade from enablement professionals, with 77.7% feeling
optimistic about the growth of AI in the sales and enablement space.

This could very well be related to the fact that teams are forever being asked to do “more
with less”, whether that be budget or team members. AI has the potential to support
enablement significantly in that way.

Only a very small percentage of our respondents (1.36%) feel pessimistic about these
developments, further showing the eagerness of enablers to embrace AI.

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 65

Do your enablement or sales teams use AI as part of their day-to-day role?

Not at all Yes, regularly

22.97% 21.62%

Occasionally
54.05%

Do you plan on adopting (more) AI tools in the future?

No, we’re not interested in

adopting AI tools at all
0.68%
Yes, we’re actively searching for
AI tools to add to our tech stack
31.76%

Not currently, but

that might change
in the future as the
technology develops Yes, but we’re waiting for the
40.54% technology to develop further
25.68%

While AI has only just really burst into public consciousness in the past 12 months, 75.67% of
our respondents are using AI at least occasionally in their day-to-day role. Additionally, over
half (57.44%) are already planning on adopting AI tools into their tech stack going forward, a
strong vote of confidence in the technology.

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 66

How teams are using AI

Here’s a list of just some of the answers we received when we asked respondents whether
they could: “Expand on how your teams use AI?”.

The fact that there’s already such a wide range of use cases highlights that it’s an exciting
time to be an enablement tech stack aficionado.

Outreach personalization Creating click path and video learning

Revenue analytics Discovery training and role play simulations Content creation

Competitive intelligence Formatting lists Guided selling Emailing

Call analysis and conversation intelligence Territory and account planning

Summarize meeting notes LinkedIn and social media posts Predictive analytics

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 67

And why teams aren’t using it

But we also asked those who aren’t actively using AI why they’ve opted against it - and our
respondents shared some valid concerns:

“Fear of company “It’s not permitted by our organization

information being due to privacy and copyright concerns.
stolen.” Management is not convinced that AI can
provide insights or useful resources that are
as good as or better than those created by
“Lack of
humans in the organization.”
knowledge and
understanding of
how to use AI.” “We do not have the tools in place to use AI
effectively. Furthermore, I'm skeptical of the
quality of work that AI can create outside
“New to the
of organizational tasks such as calendar
team, we are
management.”
just learning how
to use it and
advised not to “We haven't explored it much. I had done a
use it for business lot of research on it, tried to adopt it, and it
at this time.” wasn't welcomed to my teams.”

“We are quite behind in terms of investments in newer tools to support

sales enablement.”

Whether it’s privacy concerns, doubts about the quality of AI output, or simply not being in the
position to invest in AI, not all of our respondents are riding the AI wave quite yet.

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 68

Part 7

The future of
enablement
Our final set of questions focuses on the future of enablement as a function. When it comes to
the future of our respondents’ roles specifically, we wanted to get a genuine understanding of
their frame of mind.

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 69

Overall, what is your outlook on the future of enablement and the way the function
is evolving?

41.22% 40.54%

13.51%

2.7% 0.68%

Very positive Somewhat Mixed or Somewhat Very negative

positiv unsure negative

Again, seeing that over four in five (81.76%) of our enablement professionals have an at least
somewhat positive outlook on the future of this critical function – despite the ups and downs
of recent months – is encouraging to see.

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 70

Let’s dive deeper into why our respondents feel positive (or not) about where enablement’s
headed as a function:

“I am a very optimistic person, but I also worry that with the economy
shrinking, more and more enablement positions will be eliminated because
they are not directly revenue-generating.”

“Enablement is becoming a must-have for any team looking to scale and

grow both their markets and their people. With the war for sales talent in full
swing, enablement is no longer a nice-to-have, but a requirement for top
sales performers and managers.”

“I’ve seen how sales training was devalued and divested over the prior two
decades. Will enablement wither as well?”

“I have been in a number of organizations where enablement was valued up

until a leadership change; it seems that if the right exec leaders are in place
then the outlook is positive - if not it’s under-seen and under-valued. Being
dependent on this dynamic makes me uncertain.”

“When I started in this space, the term enablement wasn't even used. Now just
about any decently-sized enterprise has some type of enablement function
or plans to build one”

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 71

“It is an exciting time to be in enablement! The tools and the skills are
constantly improving, and while the job of the seller is also changing - their
change is happening slower, giving us enablement staff time to truly have an
impact on the success of our sellers.”

“Ultimately, enablement lives in a similar space that recruiting does. We are at

the whim of the economy as a whole. A large portion of our value comes from
onboarding new employees and upskilling underperforming employees. As
the economy grows, there will be more hires to train, and companies will have
the patience for enablement to work with low performers. When the economy
falters, the opposite is true. Enablement as a whole is gaining more respect,
but at the end of the day, we will never bring direct value to an organization,
so our fate very much lies in the hands of those we teach.”

“Enablement, just like all other forms of education, is critical to any business
growth. With the ever-growing volume of competitors and new entrants into
all markets, it comes down to skills more so than it does product.”

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 72

Who should enablement serve, ideally?

One of the ongoing discussions about the future of sales enablement involves the duty of
enablement and who it should actually be helping out.

What began as “sales” enablement has evolved into “revenue,” or “GTM” enablement across
certain organizations, with the function supporting more teams than anyone would’ve initially
envisioned.

We put it to our respondents, asking them exactly what departments should be served by
enablement in their ideal world.

In an ideal world, what departments should be served by enablement?

Sales - 5.41%

All revenue-generating teams - 29.73%

All GTM teams - 46.62%

Company-wide - 16.89%

What immediately stands out is that despite “sales” enablement being the name of the
game, only 5.41% of our respondents would, in an ideal world, serve only sales.

It speaks to the power of enablement as a cross-functional force that the two most popular
selections were serving revenue-generating teams (29.73%) and serving GTM teams
(46.62%).

While this is the ideal state that most of our respondents want, it remains to be seen how long
it’ ll take for this setup to become the standard in organizations.
Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 73
Ideal reporting structure

Another similar discussion point in the enablement sphere is who the function should
report to, with many stating that the Chief Revenue Officer is the ideal point of contact for
enablement.

But do our respondents agree?

In an ideal world, where should enablement report into?

C-suite - 44.59%

Sales - 23.65%

Revenue Operations - 17.57%

Learning & development - 8.11%

Marketing - 1.35%

Product marketing - 0.68%

Almost half (44.59%) of enablement professionals would ideally want to report directly to
the C-suite, which is the largest selection by quite a margin. Once again, this highlights the
cross-functional aspirations of enablement - reporting to the C-suite is a surefire way to gain
buy-in from stakeholders and reach across the wider organization.

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 74

Conclusion
And with that, we conclude 2023’s Sales Enablement Landscape report. Yet again,
this is Sales Enablement Collective’s most comprehensive, detailed report yet and we
hope you enjoyed it and the insights into the industry it provided.

As ever, through these results, we hope to give enablement professionals a glimpse into
the situations of their peers - the willingness to share knowledge, ideas, and advice is
just one of the things that makes the enablement community so great.

Our hope is that this report helps highlight the value and significance that enablement
brings to modern organizations. We’d be remiss to not thank every single one of our
respondents, as this piece of research would not be possible without them.

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 75

Meet the team

Daniel O'Dowd
Copywriter
Daniel enjoys writing, whether it’s 100 words or 1,000. He has a degree in
Journalism from Dublin City University and had a stint working in sales
before he moved from writing freelance, to creating content full-time for
the Sales Enablement Collective.

Jack Debono
Head of Sales Enablement Collective
Jack has a passion for all things events. He loves being able to bring
communities closer together and does exactly that in his role with SEC.

Ivana Pusceddu
Senior Artworker
Ivana is our in-house Senior Artworker and looks at all our design
requirements. She's responsible for the layout and visual elements in
this report and is always happy to hear your thoughts!

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 76

Sales Enablement Landscape Report 2023 77