售前团队的培训赋能Enablement到底该怎么搞才有效？

As a presales leader, what is the biggest and most challenging aspect of your job?

For me, the answer is simple. In leading global sales engineering teams, the biggest and thorniest issue I've encountered is execution. Specifically, it's difficult to manage the wide variance in on-the-ground execution quality among different presales consultants, and companies struggle to accept the average time-to-value for new presales hires. These are undoubtedly huge challenges, but fortunately, they are solvable. I've done it myself and helped others do it, so I wrote this article to help other presales leaders solve these pervasive problems.

Let's start with the problems before we develop solutions.

In my experience, presales leaders typically face three critical issues related to team capabilities.

First, even when an experienced presales engineer joins a new company, the time-to-value typically ranges from 6 to 12 months, and in complex enterprise software sales, 9-12+ months is not uncommon. Here, I define time-to-value as the time it takes for an SE to win their first project contract and operate essentially independently in the field. This reality is roughly 2x the expectation typically held by corporate leadership. So this is already a big problem because people quickly assume the presales organization can't meet field support expectations in a timely manner. That's strike one.

Second, even when the SE team reaches a relatively stable state, I've found consistently troubling and significant fluctuations in the quality and level of work among individual members. This problem is doubly tricky because the evidence is often anecdotal and therefore hard to quantify. Additionally, when performance falls short, the typical corporate response is for senior leadership to ask presales leaders: "Why aren't you doing better at making your people more effective in the field?"—Ouch! That's strike two.

Third, and finally, in the high-growth SaaS world, new product releases and features come so fast that it's nearly impossible for the presales organization to consistently, effectively, and timely learn new material and master selling techniques across the entire SE organization. Strike two!

02

Where Does the Root of the Presales Training Problem Lie?

- Getting to the Root of the Problem -

Unfortunately, every presales team I've been a part of as an individual contributor had these exact same problems. This experience followed me into my management career and misled me into believing these were systemic problems everywhere, with no solution. Maybe your experience differs from what I've described, but I bet as you continue reading, you'll find yourself nodding in agreement.

For me, it remains a mystery why presales leaders are often expected to take on the primary responsibility for this. I find it puzzling because many of these same companies invest heavily in sales enablement but don't hold sales managers to the same expectation of upskilling their Account Executives and coaching them to be top performers while also managing their teams, influencing deals, constantly traveling, and building customer relationships.

This tension between experience and expectation made me swing like a pendulum for a long time—between accepting mediocrity as a harsh reality and blaming myself for not being what my team and company needed as a presales