Let me start with an unusual question: Do you know what bloodletting is?

Stay with me here – I promise this connects to sales enablement.

For most of human history, bloodletting was a standard medical practice across civilizations, from ancient Greece to 19th-century Europe. The logic seemed sound: you're sick, your body is out of balance, so let the blood out. Doctors weren't malicious – they were trained, respected, and trusted by many.

But people got worse, not better. Some died. 

This is a clear example of good intentions paired with flawed instincts. The framework was broken. The mental model was flawed. The method didn't evolve, even though evidence showed it wasn't working.

And here's my observation after two years leading sales enablement at TomTom: I've seen the same thing happening in our field.

We all want to do our best. We adopt frameworks, implement best practices, and follow what the experts preach. But are we asking ourselves: Is it really working? Or are we just doing what seems logical because everyone else is doing it?

This is my story about good intentions, wrong instincts, and how we're trying to be different at TomTom. 

So let’s dive in!

Understanding the chaos we inherited

If you know TomTom, you probably remember those navigation devices. If I ask Gen Z about them, they have no idea what I'm talking about. 

But TomTom today is actually quite unique – we're one of the few companies that successfully transformed from a pure B2C hardware company into B2B. Today, 90% of our business is B2B.

In simple terms, we sell the Lego blocks of traffic maps and navigation to different tech companies, who then integrate them into their tech stack. We do it behind the scenes – that's why you don't know what we're doing these days. Uber is one of our biggest customers. So is Microsoft. 

But it’s not all been plain sailing. Two years ago, this is what we walked into:

Six independent training programs running simultaneously. We have a very strong learning culture at TomTom, which is wonderful. But it also meant everybody started doing training programs, and they didn't talk to each other. No connection whatsoever. Sometimes they even overlapped, and nobody knew about the overlap.

Sales onboarding done via Excel. Every sales manager had their own Excel spreadsheet with what they thought onboarding should look like. Sometimes they'd push it to product marketing, saying, "Hey, can you fix this?" It was horrible.

Five separate SharePoints to manage different content – from sales, from marketing, and to store our trainings. A complete nightmare and an inconsistent documenting culture.

How did it feel? Like this:

Finding our identity: The grocery store metaphor

The first thing we had to fix wasn't systems or processes – it was defining what sales enablement actually is. People thought we solved all the problems. When we didn't (because we couldn't), they got disappointed.

We went through so many iterations. We tried calling ourselves magicians, orchestrators, conductors, movie directors – but it was still vague. People kept asking, "What do you do exactly? Can you help me close that deal?"

Then we landed on something that worked: the grocery store.

We started saying, "Sales enablement is a grocery store. We provide you with everything you need to close deals, to be confident out there, and to be a scalable organization. We ensure the stock is full and at your fingertips."

That became clear to everyone.

This led to our North Star. Given that we're only four people, we focused on three areas:

  1. Learning and training
  2. Onboarding
  3. Collateral and information management

And our ambitious goal? Commercial teams should find everything they're looking for in a maximum of three clicks.

Even though it was clear and exciting, it still felt overwhelming at times. But we kept telling ourselves: repetition is the mother of learning. We also learned we needed to create champions who would spread the word about what we were doing. 

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Sales Enablement CollectiveOna Allison