Why Sales Enablement Belongs in Your L&D Strategy

Sales and learning have long had a fraught relationship. At one level, they go together naturally. Sales teams hinge on their ability to take dynamic, capable people and set them up to hit ever larger goals. There’s a reason that “sales trainers” and “sales enablement managers” proliferate across businesses.

But learning and sales also clash, and it usually comes down to issues of time, money, and attitude.

Salespeople have aggressive quotas to hit, meaning any time spent learning is time not spent closing. What’s more, frontline sales teams are often some of the biggest in an organization; it gets costly to send them all to a day-long workshop. Finally, many sales leaders do not view missed goals and team dysfunction as a skills gap. Often, they attribute performance problems to deficits in work ethic or personality styles.