Whether you’re a seasoned professional or new to the field, understanding the nuances of sales enablement managers is essential for success.

In this guide, we’ll delve into the core responsibilities, salary insights, essential skills, and more, providing you with the knowledge and tools you need to excel as a sales enablement manager.

What is a sales enablement manager?

A sales enablement manager is responsible for managing and supporting the sales team so they can effectively sell your company’s products or services. This support can take on many forms.

It includes designing sales enablement programs and training sessions to help the team improve their performance, learn the latest tools, or stay up to date on changing business trends. Additionally, the manager must also provide the sales team with the necessary learning materials and resources, demos, customer reviews, and testimonials needed to drive sales.

However, the role of a sales enablement manager isn’t just restricted to the sales function. They must also act as a liaison between sales and marketing, ensuring smooth collaboration between the two. This collaboration is necessary to guarantee that all marketing efforts are optimized for generating more leads.

What does a sales enablement manager do?

To stay on top of their key role of supporting the sales team however possible and whenever needed, a sales enablement manager has to juggle several responsibilities constantly.

For starters, they need to ensure that the team has all the resources and information necessary to drive conversions. But this doesn’t just mean creating and providing the team with the right content. Instead, it means taking the time to train every customer success agent so they know how to conduct calls, counter customer objections, answer queries, and close sales.

Enablement managers must also regularly analyze sales data, monitor business trends, and study competitor actions. This way, they can better design relevant sales strategies aligned with the overall business goals. Similarly, managers also need to stay on top of emerging technologies so that they can implement new tools as needed to streamline the sales process.

Lastly, the sales enablement manager facilitates cross-departmental communication between sales, marketing, and product teams. This is crucial because marketing teams require information, like sales call recordings, to create meaningful content focused on real customer pain points.

Sales enablement manager’s main responsibilities

The sales enablement manager must constantly keep an eye on a diverse range of tasks. These range from analysis and research to sales training and support to overlooking marketing content.

Amidst all this, it’s hard to keep track of what the manager’s key responsibilities here, so we list them down below:

• Define and execute a comprehensive sales enablement strategy, aligned with overall business goals.
• Develop and manage all sales collateral tailored for different stages of the customer journey and various user segments.
• Design and conduct onboarding and training programs for the sales team focused on product knowledge, sales techniques and best practices, and industry trends.
• Evaluate and implement relevant tools to boost productivity and train the sales teams on the effective use of CRM systems and sales analytics tools.
• Monitor and analyze sales performance metrics to measure effectiveness and identify areas for improvement.
• Conduct market research to inform sales strategies and enable the sales team to position the company’s products effectively.
• Work closely with marketing to create relevant content for lead generation and with product management to stay updated on product roadmaps and upcoming releases.

Sales enablement manager salary

The average salary for a sales enablement manager in the United States is $146,200 per year. However, this salary will greatly vary depending on a few key factors, the most important of which is work experience.

Let’s look at what salary you can expect based on your years of experience, according to Glassdoor:

• 1 to 3 years: $136,000/year
• 4 to 6 years: $143,000/year
• 7 to 9 years: $152,000/year
• 10+ years: $161,000/year

While these figures are the average salaries, you could earn more if you find yourself in the right industry where sales enablement managers are in high demand. Here’s a look at such industries and the salaries they offer:

• Aerospace and Defense: $170,500/year
• Financial Services: $161,500/year
• Information Technology: $161,300/year

Lastly, another important aspect that affects salaries is location. Here are the average sales enablement manager salaries offered in some of the big cities across the US:

• San Francisco: $173,000/year
• New York: $153,500/year
• Houston: $147,000/year
• Boston: $145,000/year
• Chicago: $144,000/year

Sales enablement manager career path

• Sales Representative: Your role is restricted to generating and qualifying leads and joining senior members with their client calls to gain initial exposure to the sales process.
• Account Executive: Typically, after 1 to 2 years as a representative, you get to manage relationships with prospects and customers, conduct sales calls and demos, and close deals.
• Sales Enablement Specialist: For this role, you need 3+ years of sales experience to transition to enablement. Here, you focus on creating and implementing strategies and enablement initiatives to support the sales team.
• Sales Enablement Manager: With 5+ years of experience, you can reach this position where your job is to oversee all possible aspects of sales enablement, from training and content development to technology implementation and strategy optimization.
• Director of Sales Enablement: For this position, you need 7+ years of experience. At this point, you look after broader responsibilities, like designing the sales strategy, managing the sales enablement team, and driving alignment between sales, marketing, and product teams.
• Chief Revenue Officer: After 15+ years, you become CRO, where you must lead the overall direction for the sales department and shape the company’s go-to-market strategy.

Best practices for being a great sales enablement manager

• Take time to understand sales needs: To create useful support content and enablement initiatives, you must focus on first understanding the challenges, goals, and needs of the sales team.
• Provide targeted training: Most enablement managers don’t succeed in making an impact because they deliver generic training that doesn’t address the skill gaps and knowledge needs of the sales team.
• Create custom content: Don’t mass-produce sales resources based on general use cases. Instead, design custom content as needed for specific use cases and customer types for maximum impact.
• Don’t say no to technology: Leverage the right tools to effectively streamline the sales processes, automate repetitive tasks, and empower the sales team to work more efficiently.
• Regularly incorporate feedback and iterate: At regular intervals, collect feedback from the sales team to understand their changing requirements and challenges. Then use this feedback to iterate and refine your sales enablement programs.

Sales enablement manager FAQs

• What is the main difference between sales operations manager and sales enablement manager? The sales operations manager is responsible for leading the day-to-day of the sales team, defining sales processes, and making sure that the team is on track to meet goals. In contrast, sales enablement managers focus on empowering the sales team with the help they need to achieve those targets.
• Is sales enablement a stable career? No matter the company, sales is always a safe career path. Considering the close role sales enablement plays in boosting and optimizing sales, it is a given that this role will offer a stable career path as well. In fact, the role is now in high demand in certain industries, since companies are realizing that sales and sales enablement require two distinct skill sets and expertise.
• Who does a sales enablement manager report to? Typically, sales enablement managers either report to sales or marketing heads. However, companies have now started establishing separate sales enablement teams as well, with their own directors to report to.
• What are the goals of sales enablement? The goal of sales enablement is to drive sales revenue and to do so by helping the sales team close deals and win over customers seamlessly.

Conclusion

We hope this guide has provided you with valuable insights into the roles, responsibilities, and rewards associated with this role.

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