Enablers! It's time for yet another edition of This Month In Sales Enablement with all the resources you need to stay up to date with the Sales Enablement space including insights, events, jobs, and more! Brought to you by Devon McDermott and Felix Krueger.

• Subscribe to the LinkedIn newsletter
• Keep on scrolling for a list of this month's resources

2023 Predictions

Enablement Trends for 2023 (by SEC)

This article from Sales Enablement Collective — features a teaser of some of the winners of their 2023 Ones to Watch focused on enablement stars in the space and trends–which is coming out soon! 

Highlights Include: 

• Enablement leaning into AI - Thomas K. Cheriyan
• A focus on building real sales skills  “This will also affect enablement organizations’ hiring strategy, with a need for enablers with a successful sales background.”  - Aaron Evans
• Enablement specialization and a move to specialized expertise, CS Enablement, BDR, Enablement etc - Celine Grey
• Tying enablement programs to the right things. “...enablement teams should associate their programs to behaviors and things they can directly influence.” - Nick Lawrence

Felix’s 2023 Predictions

Getting more done with less - Enablers need to create greater business impact with fewer resources. 

• Prediction 1: Enablers will be more strategic in their approach (impact on GTM strategy and impact on stakeholder perception)
• Prediction 2: 2023 will be the year of AI - AI won’t steal your job but the people most comfortable with AI tools will. 
• Prediction 3: Increased Enablement maturity levels outside the US.

Devon’s 2023 Predictions

• Prediction 1: AI - ChatGPT - as an essential part of the enablement workflow
• Prediction 2: Real Investment in the Enablement Function → with a focus on Revenue Enablement orchestration, team structure, and openness to more varied backgrounds in the role for sales enablement.
• Prediction 3: A Move Beyond Revenue Enablement - Enablement expanding to other teams in the organization like product and engineering! (we’re already seeing the need for it)

What are your predictions for Enablement in 2023? Let us know in the comments below! 

Jobs 

Are you looking for an Enablement job? 

Check out the latest Sales Enablement job board (brought to you by Steffaney Zohrabyan) or add yourself to the Enablement Squad Talent Directory.

Are you a hiring manager looking for great talent? 

Message Steffaney Zohrabyan to add your job to her job board or check the Enablement Squad Talent Directory.

Communities for networking: WiSE, SES, SEC, Enablement Squad 

Recruiters specialised in Enablement talent: Enablematch 

Career Search Advice: My 59-Day Career Search Advice (by Mike Kunkle)

Did you know that job seekers receive a 50% discount when joining The Building Blocks of Sales Enablement Learning Experience? DM Felix Krueger to see if you qualify!

ChatGPT 

What is Chat GPT? 

“ChatGPT is a language model developed by OpenAI. It is based on the GPT-3 architecture, which stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformer. ChatGPT is a variation of GPT-3 that was specifically fine-tuned for conversational language understanding and generation. This means that it has been trained on a large dataset of conversational text, such as dialogues, transcripts, and chat logs, in order to learn the patterns and conventions of human conversation.

Once trained, ChatGPT can generate human-like responses to a given input, making it suitable for tasks such as chatbot development, question answering, and text completion. It can generate contextually relevant and coherent text, making it an efficient way to simulate conversation with a machine.” 

- Explanation generated using Chat GPT

You can access ChatGPT here for free. 

Use Cases for Enablement

Not sure what to use it for? Here are some use cases:

Fast summaries and exploration of topics 

Prompt Example: “What are the top challenges of business leaders in the medtech industry?

Enable faster, more accurate customer support  - Rapid and creative responses to queries.

Prompt Example: “Create a friendly email response to a customer that is frustrated because she can’t find an online resource that explains how to add new users to the Marketing Automation Platform she has subscribed to.”

Inspire creativity - Thought starters & ideas for getting your creative juices flowing, unblock if you are struggling with where to start.

Prompt Example: “Write a motivational introduction for an onboarding session designed for new sales hires of a database management software company.”

Faster completion of admin tasks for office workers Creating sales email templates and talk tracks, writing emails (weekly updates, internal recaps or client follow-ups) 

Prompt Example: “Write a template for a friendly email follow-up aimed at a decision-maker that has received a proposal for a UX research system subscription.”

Future Use Cases for Enablement

Multiple ChatGPT layers: Industry specific versions of ChatGPT that support tailored applications 

Job co-pilot: Highly personalized just-in-time coaching

Buyer Acumen: Create a deep understanding of organizations and their personas based on the latest company announcements in seconds.

Automations for efficiency and impact: Time-saving automation in the sales process, customer engagement, tracking, follow-up, customer comms and more (Article: ChatGPT what it means for SF Marketers)

More effortless navigation: Voice-to-text and text-to-voice for more natural interactions. 

Customized Learning Paths for Enablement Teams - Sales skills tracking and mapping, learning assessments, progress and feedback to enablement.

Customer Service - More diverse, deeper customer support solutions and experiences

Subscribe to the State of Sales Enablement podcast to be notified of the upcoming ChatGPT episode. (Apple | Spotify)

Articles

Now is not the time to Under Invest in Sales Enablement (by Destination CRM)

“There will be a significant cost if you choose to underinvest in your sales organization at a time they need more help vs. less”

Key insights: 

1. The economy is in a challenging spot now and it’s unclear whether this downturn is leading to a recession. Regardless, sales quotas are sure to go up, while support to help sales teams achieve their goals will go down.
2. Author Dickie’s research shows that making financial cuts to achieve revenue success in a challenging economy doesn't work. Pushing sales teams to work harder isn’t enough; they need support that comes from enablement teams and tech 
3. You may retain reps through a downturn (because they don’t have anywhere else to go with hiring freezes), but when revenue improves, those who went above and beyond without support are quick to entertain outside offers and voluntarily leave. 

Fast-forward your journey to Enablement mastery with The Building Blocks of Sales Enablement Learning Experience

Training is so much more effective when combined with coaching. 

We know this, right? This is true when it comes to developing training programs for sellers and front-line sales managers, yet most training resources available to enablers don't offer a coaching component. 

The Building Blocks of Sales Enablement Learning Experience has been designed with this gap in mind and offers learning and implementation guidance supported by Felix Krueger and Mike Kunkle.

Steve Shorey is the global sales enablement leader at Thales, a publicly listed +€16b ($17B USD) cyber security business, and was one of the first to join The Building Blocks of Sales Enablement Learning Experience and its associated coaching sessions. 

Here is what he had to say two weeks after joining: 

"If you’re really into Enablement, you would be a fool to not take advantage of this program! Imagine being able to pick the brains of both Felix Krueger AND Mike Kunkle ! Seriously, if you want to make an investment in you and your career, consider joining us! After one group coaching call, my mind is swimming, yet have a starting point and can continue to get coaching each week to discuss progress! I am so grateful to have this opportunity. Thank you for sharing your thoughts, ideas, and passions with me. Big Hugs!!"

Big hugs straight back at you, Steve!!!

Listeners receive a 15% discount on all membership plans with the coupon code TMISE15.

If you want to make 2023 your most successful enablement year yet and take advantage of the 15% discount, join The Building Blocks of Sales Enablement Learning Experience today!