The First 90 Days: How to Win as a New Enablement Leader

Introduction: A Seat at the Table. Now What?

Welcome to enablement. You're the change agent. A builder of systems. A shaper of culture. And the expectation? Deliver revenue growth and fast.

This blog gives you a structured path to do just that, adapted from the Sales Growth Team’s “How-to Guide: Quickly Finding Success in Your New Enablement Role.” Whether you’re starting from scratch or inheriting a complex system, this 4-phase plan, “Assess, Know, Do, Embed”, will help you diagnose quickly, act decisively, and deliver repeatable success.

1. ASSESS: Find the Signal in the Noise

Your first job? Understand reality. Not the interview version. The gritty, seller-lens reality.

Key Moves:

• Stakeholder Interviews: Meet with sales leaders, marketing, product, and customers. Listen. Ask where momentum is stuck. Ask why do they buy?
• Process and Content Audit: What's working to progress the customer conversation? What’s collecting dust?
• Seller Assessment: Use the MICCE framework (Motivated, Inspired, Capable, Credible, Empowered) to baseline seller readiness. What is their Propensity & Capability? Think, are we set-up to succeed?
• Call Reviews: What do top sellers do differently? What stories actually grip?

Why It Matters:
One company found high seller motivation, but low win rates. Why? Their sellers didn’t know how to uncover value. Yes they were fired up by the new service, but had no concept of how to position its value to their clients.

2. KNOW: Turn Content into Capability

Most sellers and customers are drowning in content. Your job is to make it useful and usable.

Best Practices:

• Microlearning: Break training into short, actionable bursts. Always connect to a “doing” activity.
• Persona-Based Playbooks: Forget features. Teach sellers how to talk to the people who buy.
• Manager Enablement: Coach the coaches. If managers aren’t reinforcing behaviour, it won’t stick.
• COVER Framework: Use a common framework like COVER “Challenges, Objectives, Value, Environment, Real” to structure discovery skills, deal reviews and coaching.

📊 Enablement done right can deliver a 3 to 4 x improvement in quota attainment for middle performers.

3. DO: Execution Is Where Change Happens (or Dies)

70% of sales transformations fail and the breakdown happens in the doing.

Here’s how to avoid that:

• Programs, Not Training Events: Tie each training initiative to a broader behavioural program. Use deal reviews and community calls to reinforce.
• Pilot First: Test new motions with a small team. Build early wins. Refine. Accelrate from a position of strength.
• Drive Accountability: If no one is inspecting behaviour, no one is changing behaviour.
• Use AI to Coach in Real Time: Tools like Aircover turn training into moment-of-truth coaching.

“When you turn cynics into advocates, you win. Start small. Make it a system. Tell the stories.”

4. EMBED: Make Best Practice the Practice

Change isn’t change until it sticks.

How to Embed:

• Conversational Intelligence: Use CI tools to identify and amplify what top performers do.
• Peer Learning: Create a culture where sellers learn from each other. Community calls are gold.
• Story Sharing: Bake win stories and objection-handling stories into playbooks and onboarding.
• Scale with AI: You can’t be everywhere. But coaching can. Use AI to nudge and reinforce behavior at scale.

“You win when you embed best practice. Anything less is a temporary performance boost.”

Final Checklist: How to Grow into Your New Role

✅ Use a framework: Assess, Know, Do, Embed to build your plan
✅ Diagnose seller capability and propensity
✅ Build trust by “meeting sellers where they are”
✅ Design full programs, not one-off trainings
✅ Use tech to coach behaviour, not just track it
✅ Create a seller community where growth thrives

Conclusion: Be the Growth Engine, Not the Help Desk

Enablement is no longer a support function. It’s a revenue lever. The sooner you think like a General Manager, aligning people, systems, and stories to revenue outcomes—the sooner your teams will feel the impact.

Remember: Culture eats training for breakfast. Behaviour beats knowledge. And nothing sticks until it’s embedded.

🎧 Ready to lead from day one? Get the full how-to guide here…