"Sales enablement is a strategic, ongoing process that equips all client-facing employees with the ability to consistently and systematically have a valuable conversation with the right set of customer stakeholders at each stage of the customer’s problem-solving life cycle to optimize the return of investment of the selling system." (Forrester Research).

Sales enablement executive (strategical view) and management functions (operational view) can have several places in an organization, it often depends on the culture. Often, it's a function within marketing, and often it's a function within sales / sales operations, and rarely it's a function within product/portfolio management.
Ideally - from my today's point of view - the executive role is a role reporting directly to the COO - if that role is existing!

But, as the character of sales enablement is a cross-functional one, it's more important how the overall sales enablement strategy looks like and how the different functions along the sales support supply chain are involved in the big picture (council, program, initiative modes are possible), e.g what are deliverables and what are services?

Recently, there was an interesting conversation on that topic on LinkedIn - please have a look, deep insights on the role, the function etc.:

http://www.linkedin.com/groupItem?view=&gid=1429907&type=member&item=48988091...

I hope, that adds some value!

Brian Koles

Sales & Business Development Director, ChallengePost

Posted on May 13, 2011

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Ellen Bristol

The 'Sales Enablement Manager' (or 'Sales Process Expeditor' or 'Sales Collaboration Assistant' or some other vague title along those lines) comes about when management's push for increased sales production is met with the excuse that sales reps are spending too much time processing new orders and/or holding the customer's hand through account setup. Basically, it's a position sales orgs create as an intermediary between sales and customer service to relieve sales reps of this workload so they can focus on generating new business. Think of it as a personal on-boarding team.

With all the marketing automation, CRM systems and sales process hyper-segmentation that comes with the 'Sales 2.0' movement, customers, especially at technology companies, are viewed as data-points passed from one process to the next in the customer acquisition flowchart. The fact that a customer decided to become a client because of their relationship with the sales rep gets completely overlooked, and they are passed along to Sales Enablement Manager whose role is to make them feel like they weren't completely abandoned after signing on the dotted line.

This role is usually just a temporary/stop-gap solution en route to creating a more fluid on-boarding process. The person(s) in this role inevitably get overwhelmed with case load, and frustrated customers who feel lost in the fray now have even more points of contact to distract when they have customer service needs. My advice is to NOT fall for the temptation of creating a new role, and to instead allocate resources to helping new customers feel more comfortable latching off the sales rep and onto the customer service team.

Ellen Bristol

President, Bristol Strategy Group

Posted on May 23, 2011

Thanks for the question, Emma, because I've been puzzled about the idea of such a position. The sales enablement process is what's really important. As Tamara states above, enabling the sales force to produce desired results is a cross-functional responsibility. When our clients understand how to rely on cross-functional performance indicators, they thrive. Whether their companies need to have an individual dedicated to managing sales enablement is another story. And most likely the answer is no, they don't, not really.