Before I get into the substance of what I want to share with you today, let me tell you a quick story. This morning at the Postilian Hotel, I was the one who got stuck in the elevator for fifteen minutes.

There was another gentleman in there with me, attending a different talk, and at some point one of you always asks the other, "So, why are you here?" I told him I work in sales enablement, and his polite confusion got me thinking again about a question I've asked myself many times over the years.

What is sales enablement, really?

I used to answer with something like, "We work with sales leaders on developing sales excellence." It's true. It's accurate. But it doesn't resonate. It doesn't tell anyone why they should care, and it certainly doesn't tell a sales leader why they should give you their time, their team, or their trust.

So I want to walk you through how I think about field relevance, structured around four pillars that have shaped my approach. The goal of all of this comes down to one thing: being relevant to the people we serve.

Start by asking the right questions

We're in sales, so we should ask questions. That's table stakes.

When I sit down with a sales leader, I ask about their key indicators. Almost always, the answer comes back the same: "I need to achieve my numbers." Okay, how do you achieve your numbers? Well, you need pipeline, and you need win rate. Two levers. That's it.

So I can help with pipeline. I can help with win rate. That's what we do.

But then I push further. What else is getting in your way? And the answers start to spill out. There's friction between sales and pre-sales. The partner organization has its own agenda. Digital sales is doing its own thing. Don't even get them started on professional services, with its own P&L.

That friction is real, and it's structural. So the question becomes: how do you build a high-performing team of teams that turns that friction into something productive? You can't erase it. You probably shouldn't try. What you can do is use it to make better decisions.

And then the fourth pillar emerges: developing people. From hiring to onboarding to retaining to growing them into the next role. We could spend hours on this alone.

These four pillars, taken together, are what earned me my seat at the sales leadership table. I'm proud of it, but I don't say it to brag. I say it because it's the natural result of being relevant to sales leaders. If you're relevant, you get invited in.

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Sales Enablement CollectiveIvan Nyagatare

Pillar one: building a high-performing team of teams

When I talk about a team of teams, I'm not talking about the sales team alone. I'm talking about pre-sales, sales, partner management, and digital sales working together. Those four functions are the ones that act on pipeline and win rate, which means they're the ones who need to operate as one unit.

The framework we've leaned on is Patrick Lencioni's Five Dysfunctions of a Team. If you haven't read it, get the book. It's an easy read, and it'll change how you think about team dynamics.

The premise is simple. In the absence of trust, people won't open their mouths. They won't disagree. And in our remote-first world, on Zoom and WebEx, it's even easier to disengage.

You disagree, you keep quiet, you hang up the call, and you go right back to doing what you were doing before. Absence of trust leads to fear of conflict, which leads to a lack of commitment, which leads to no accountability, which leads to poor results.

Let me give you a scenario that'll feel familiar.

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There's a new RFP. The seller has been chasing this customer for years, finally sees an opening, and wants to respond. Pre-sales pushes back: "This is a stronghold for the competitor, you already asked me to respond to another RFP, you haven't qualified this properly." Partner management chimes in: "This partner wants to work it, that one doesn't, and remember when that partner wasn't friendly to us on the last deal?"

That's the kind of friction that plays out every single day. It's not anyone's fault. It's structural.

What makes a difference is whether the team can have that conversation openly. Can they disagree out loud? Can they agree to disagree, make a clear decision, and move forward together?

When you can, you make a decision with clarity. You know why you're answering or not answering that RFP, because you've genuinely tested the ideas together. And now everyone is more committed, more accountable, more ready to contribute to the outcome.