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"Enablement is the back-end engine and backbone of revenue. It's often my first hire," says Cathy Hardin, CRO of Omnidian, who has two decades of GTM experience. "People who don't understand enablement often say, 'That's what sales managers are for.'"
Sales enablement leaders have long faced an uphill battle in proving the value of their programs. Despite overwhelming evidence that enablement boosts revenue, drives productivity, and improves sales rep retention, securing budget and buy-in (especially from CROs) remains a challenge.
Why? Because too often, enablement is seen as a cost center rather than a strategic growth driver.
This guide changes that. We’ll equip you with a complete playbook to position enablement as a revenue multiplier, backed by insights from top CROs and the latest industry research. Here’s what we’ll cover:
1) The challenges of pitching enablement
2) The enablement opportunities
3) Building the business case for sales enablement
4) The enablement pitch playbook
5) Enablement as an investment in business growth
The challenges of pitching enablement
Most organizations have unique business practices, so different CROs have different perspectives and priorities for sales enablement.
Both present enablement leaders with the challenge of demonstrating the value of their programs. Let's take a look at two of the main challenges in detail.
Understanding the CRO's priorities
Before pitching enablement initiatives, it's important to understand what drives your CRO's decision-making.
CROs are under a lot of pressure to keep that consistent growth going every quarter while making sure their sales teams are running smoothly. They're crunching metrics like customer acquisition costs, sales cycle length, and revenue per rep.
In today's market, they're also focused on reducing the ramp time for new hires and ensuring that every sales investment delivers a clear ROI.
Revenue targets are an obvious top priority for CROs. It’s also one of the most significant areas of concern. Clari’s 2024 Revenue Leak Report surveyed 420 revenue professionals. The report revealed:
👉 The majority of companies did not hit their 2023 revenue targets (61%), with only 31% of CROs confident they’ll hit targets in 2024.
📈 CROs report losing 16% of their revenue to Revenue Leak (revenue lost due to breaks in the revenue process).
💰 Almost two-thirds (64%) planned to grow their revenue teams in 2024.
CROs also pointed to sales enablement as a solution. Improving sales enablement was the second most urgent focus for new sales/revenue tech in 2024, with 33% of revenue professionals ranking this as their top priority.
Cathy Hardin understands the value that can come from this investment. One of her main priorities is standardization across the organization:
"In prior organizations, we have scaled to 40 to 50 sales managers. Someone needs to make that consistent. How do we create this underlying infrastructure of systems and tools that flow all the way through?"
Are you currently hitting your revenue targets? Where’s the disconnect? How does your CRO feel about the value of enablement, process standardization, and training? Answering these questions is the ideal place to start.
Communicating the strategic value
"Sometimes enablement fits under ops, a few levels down from C-level, which is a challenge. You need a value prop around specific metrics and business problems," says Steve Goldberg, Executive in Residence at Permira.
No matter where enablement sits in your corporate hierarchy, Steve’s second statement remains the same—you need to communicate the strategic value of enablement to win support.
In the next section of the guide, we’ll cover some of the broader positive impacts of enablement. From a CRO point of view, there’s a wide range of key metrics enablement leaders can point out to prove value.
Sheela Zemlin, formerly a CRO in public and private software companies, gave a few examples:
"Customer-facing time: The team is only in front of customers 25% of the time. So, if they can get ramped quicker or prep for meetings with micro-content and increase time in front of customers, that’s one way to measure it. Second, measuring the knowledge they have on products and the corresponding win rates. Can we talk about differentiators and pain points, etc.? Can we look at the segments and products you're trying to sell? Are we providing training and content in those situations? Lastly, fewer escalations and demands on resources across the board—especially less demand on sales engineers. If you can get sellers more self-sufficient and confident, it can reduce costs."
Want to read more about enablement challenges and how to tackle them? Check out this guide next: 11 Sales Enablement Challenges and How to Manage Them
The enablement opportunities
Sure, there are some challenges with pitching enablement. But you likely wouldn't be here if you thought the challenges were too difficult to overcome. So, let's get into the good stuff—the positive impact enablement can bring.
For instance, businesses with an enablement strategy can achieve a 49% higher win rate on forecasted deals. Plus, they’re 80% more likely to boost those win rates with a unified enablement platform.
What would a 49% higher win rate mean for your business? Beyond the revenue increase, enablement programs and technology tap into several other benefits.
Higher productivity
More productive sales reps find more chances to build their pipeline and increase revenue.
Part of this is cutting down the amount of time reps spend on hunting for resources and answers. Take Road Scholar, for instance—they reduced repetitive questions by 4x after adopting Spekit. Surfacing the right answers, content, and training exactly when and where employees need it has a massive impact on efficiency and effectiveness.
Adopting enablement best practices, processes, and Spekit’s just-in-time enablement platform also showed similar improvements for ZoomInfo. Using Spekit to provide reps with real-time answers and guidance, ZoomInfo saw:
📈 3x increase in engagement on key process updates
💰 Millions in pipeline recovered
⏳ Enablement team freed up to focus on strategic initiatives
🚀 Faster onboarding, targeted coaching, and leadership-driven reinforcement
Consistent content and messaging
When your internal content and messaging systems are in sync across the organization, you save time and money by having a single source of truth your team can reference and trust. This was one of the benefits CoBank found when implementing Spekit’s contextual guidance and in-app answers.
It makes sense—when customers, prospects, and internal sales teams give and receive consistent messaging and content, there’s less confusion. Less confusion, in turn, leads to fewer conflicts and a higher likelihood of closing deals.
Faster ramp-up time
One key revenue-boosting opportunity is rep ramp-up time—the shorter the ramp-up time, the faster your reps make sales.
For example, Keegan Otter, the Director of Sales and RevOps at Sendlane said:
“With Spekit, we were able to grow our sales team from 2 to 20 in just 6 months. Plus, we've generated $3.7 million in pipeline and have already closed three-quarters of a million in that timeframe because we've been able to ramp up reps so fast.”
Similarly, Copado found that new hires would take 6–9 months to ramp up. But, after adopting Spekit’s just-in-time enablement for training and content, ramp time decreased massively to just 90 days.
Building the business case for sales enablement
Before we get into the practical elements of building a pitch to your CRO, let's cover some of the background. You need to build a business case that highlights the revenue impact and operational efficiency.
The best cases or pitches aren't aspirational or solely based on industry trends; they're grounded in data relevant to your business needs.
During our interview, Cathy Hardin highlighted content analytics as a compelling data point for CROs. "If it's content we believe [reps] should be using, I'm looking at the analytics of how often we are sending it out and using it," she said. "If it's marketing collateral, I rely on marketing to track and use it. I am very data-driven and would rather have that data, but teams don't always have access to it with current tooling."
So, what kind of additional data can we gather to build your enablement business case?
Analyzing current gaps and needs
The first step is figuring out why your business needs enablement in the first place. What gaps would it fill?
Start by documenting the specific challenges your sales team faces. Here are some questions that might help you find them:
- How long does it take new reps to ramp up to full productivity?
- What percentage of reps are hitting their quota?
- What deals are stalling in the pipeline, and why?
In particular, look for patterns from lost deals and what your top performers excel at compared to others.
Next, it's worth considering doing some internal research to help you build your case. You can survey or interview your sales teams to gather quantitative or qualitative data about their non-selling activity, challenges, and common obstacles.
This research can help you find tailored insights and determine where enablement would have the most significant impact.
Quantifying the ROI of enablement
After you've spotted the gaps, it’s time to figure out how enablement can lead to positive ROI. Focus on the metrics that matter most to CROs and other executive leadership. Here are a few ideas:
Time to Revenue: Calculate the cost of your current ramp time for new hires. To illustrate a rough example, let's say it takes 6 months to ramp up a sales rep with an annual quota per rep of $1 million, which gives a monthly quota of $83,333.
Now, let's say reps make 0% of quota attainment in months 1–2 (training and onboarding), 25% of quota in months 3–4, and 50% in months 5–6.
In this (again, rough) example, the total revenue in the 6-month ramp is:
($0 x 2) + ($20,833 x 2) + ($41,667 x 2) = $125,000
If enablement can cut down that ramp time, even by 20%, there would be a positive revenue impact from reaching full productivity sooner.
Win Rate Impact: Analyze how better-equipped reps could improve win rates (this is where that survey/interview data would come in). Even just a 5% improvement in win rates could translate to millions in additional revenue, depending on the size of your organization.
Sales Efficiency: Quantify the time enablement could save reps through better content organization and automated flows. Remember how Road Scholar reduced repetitive questions by 4x?
If your best-performing reps earn $100K in revenue annually, every hour redirected to selling (rather than admin) can add to positive ROI.
These are a good place to start, but don't forget about some indirect benefits of enablement that can influence overall efficiency and ROI. Some of those benefits could include:
- Reduced training costs
- Lower turnover rates
- Improved compliance adherence
If you need a little more help measuring enablement impact, check out our guide and template: Measuring Enablement Impact: Connecting Training to Business Results
With these data points in mind, you'll be ready to build a specific enablement pitch for your CRO.
The enablement pitch playbook
Let's face it—pitching a solution isn't just about having the right numbers. Any decent sales rep could tell you that. It's about telling a compelling story that connects with your leadership team and shows them exactly how enablement will drive growth. So, here's the playbook for making that pitch count.
Craft a tailored narrative
Think of your pitch as a well-crafted sales story. Instead of leading with generic enablement benefits, start with what matters most to your organization.
Is your business growing quickly but struggling to maintain consistency? Is it entering new markets and needing to get your reps up to speed fast? Or maybe it’s moving upmarket and facing more complex or longer sales cycles?
The story needs to tie these specific challenges to concrete solutions. And if you've done the work on building the business case, you should have a solid starting point in mind. If you conducted interviews, it would also be a good idea to include direct quotes from your research to enhance the narrative.
For example, if your sales team spends hours searching for the right content, show how investing in the right enablement technology can return that time to selling. Or, if new reps are taking too long to close their first deals, show how structured enablement can speed up their path to success.
Emphasize alignment with sales goals
Here's where your pitch can shine—show how enablement can fill the gaps and amplify existing sales initiatives. The narrative above helps conceptualize what you have in mind, but using your research data can drive the beats of your narrative home.
For example, if the business invests a lot in account-based selling, highlight how an enablement platform like Spekit can help every rep execute the strategy effectively by surfacing the right content in the right place at the right time.
If it’s focused on making higher-value deals, demonstrate how enablement can help reps consistently sell value across larger opportunities or close big deals quickly.
Preparation and delivery tactics
Now, let's get tactical about the pitch itself. Think of it as your high-stakes sales meeting because that's exactly what it is. While we've addressed some challenges CROs face in this guide, do your homework on what keeps your specific leadership up at night. Prepare answers to tough questions; some of those might include:
Pre-meeting prep:
- "How will enablement initiatives align with short-term goals while supporting long-term growth?"
- "How will enablement help us stand out in the market and address buyer expectations?"
- "What's your plan to make sure we have high adoption rates?"
- Build a clear roadmap that shows quick wins and long-term value (ideally, do this with a narrative structure).
- Have the numbers ready from your business case, but remember to keep them in context.
During the pitch:
- Start your pitch with the strongest points first. The gaps you find in your business case are a good place to start.
- Try to make the pitch visual; it can help the story stick better and demonstrate points more easily.
- Stay focused on business outcomes.
- Have options ready—CROs and other leadership may want to do test runs. So, consider a minimum viable program, then scale it up to full-scale transformation.
What's most important about the whole process is being crystal clear about what you're asking for and what happens next. Whether you generally need a bigger budget or a specific technology investment, spell out exactly what success looks like and when leadership can expect to see results.
Enablement is an investment in business growth
Remember, you're not Oliver Twist asking, "Please, sir, may I have some more?" You're inviting leadership to invest in a strategic advantage.
Position yourself as someone who really gets the daily sales challenges and the bigger picture of where the business needs to go. If you do the business case work, you can make this connection.
So, what's next? Build the business case of enablement for your organization. Remember:
- Analyze the current gaps and needs.
- Quantify the ROI of enablement as it addresses those gaps and needs.
- Craft the pitch by creating a story that connects with sales goals. It would be great to weave some business case research into that narrative.
Finally, pitching enablement and getting budget approval is just the start—what about implementation and ongoing success metrics?
For that, you'll need to know how to make and run a strategic enablement program, as well as tools for helping you achieve your enablement strategy.
One tool that will help you achieve these goals is Spekit, the leading platform for AI-powered, just-in-time enablement. For reps, Spekit helps boost productivity with instantly accessible and contextual content. It’s the easiest platform for enablement leaders to set up, maintain, and see clear ROI from.
If you want to see how an AI-powered enablement platform can change the game for your business, chat with an enablement expert today.
