RevOps Co-op

Being replaceable is being promotable. I learned that at 26 years old. I had just stepped into my first role leading leaders in the wine and spirits industry. One of my direct reports was older, more experienced, and not thrilled about reporting to me. At one point he said: “I graduated from high school before you were born.” What he meant was: I’ve been here longer. I know more. I deserve this job. What leadership saw was something different. He owned the biggest customer relationships. He held critical knowledge in his head. He was the only one who could manage certain accounts. He had made himself indispensable. And because no one could step into his seat without risk, he couldn’t be promoted out of it. The very thing he thought made him valuable made him immovable. That lesson has stayed with me for decades. Senior leaders don’t get promoted because they are indispensable. They get promoted because they have built someone who can replace them. If no one can step into your role tomorrow, you are not ready for the next one.

The fastest way to lose credibility with the C-Suite is to report on activity instead of outcome. Your CEO doesn't care that 98% of the sales team took the certification. They care if that certification stopped the leaky bucket in Q4. That’s why I shifted my dashboard from "Outputs" to "Impacts": ❌ Stop Reporting: Number of reps trained. ✅ Start Reporting: Time-to-Ramp. (Did we shrink the cost of a new hire?) ❌ Stop Reporting: Tool adoption % (Logins). ✅ Start Reporting: Deal Velocity. (Did the tool actually make the sales cycle faster?) ❌ Stop Reporting: "Satisfaction Scores" on training. ✅ Start Reporting: Win Rates against [Competitor X]. (Did the training help us beat the competition?) My job isn’t just to support the sales team. My job is to de-risk the revenue forecast. If the data doesn't map to the CRO’s number, it’s just noise. ❓What is the #1 metric you wish Enablement would actually take ownership of?

Anyone up for a debate? You can tell who the hiring manager is the moment you read an Enablement job description. When an Enablement leader writes it, the role is focused on building sales systems, driving performance, and mastering the craft. When a Sales or Marketing leader writes it, the critical skills anchor on specific industry experience. 👊 Here’s the truth — great Enablement is function-agnostic. 🙊 A real Enablement pro can enable in any industry because they understand how to translate business strategy into frontline execution. Their job is to ask all the questions, connect the dots across all teams impacted (particularly those with unintended impact other may not see), clearly document the details, and ensure every frontline rep is able to articulate value props to your ICP. Untangling this for themselves- and for those they serve- makes them great Enablement practitioners AND great hires, despite the industries on their resume. If you’re hiring an Enablement leader, ask yourself: 🤔 Do you want someone who can talk about your product? 🎯 Or someone who can transform how your teams sell it? Because the difference between those two hires is the difference between activity… and impact. Hire for Enablement mastery. The industry part comes later. Any rebuttals? I'm here for it!👇

"Managers don't have time to coach" is a system failure, not a reality. 𝐈𝐟 𝐜𝐨𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐬𝐧'𝐭 𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠, 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐞𝐥𝐬𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐲. Most of the time, it is work that doesn't improve performance. I saw this play out clearly when I was working in the wine and spirits industry. Back then, working in the field meant grocery store visits. We would walk the perimeter of the store, counting displays, and surveying shelf placement. I was working with a General Manager who believed one of his Sales Managers didn't have what it took. This particular team was consistently at the bottom. Performance was weak. Confidence was low. The default assumption was a lack of capability. We went into the field together for a day of store visits. Before we started, I made one ask of the GM: Don’t direct. Ask questions. He agreed- willing to try anything as a last resort to turn performance around- but it wasn’t natural. The leadership culture was highly directive. Tell people what’s wrong. Tell them what to fix. Move on to the next account. At the first stop, he caught himself mid-sentence. He paused. Then he asked the Sales Manager to walk him through what he was seeing in the store. The Sales Manager froze. Took a deep breath, and everything in him shifted. The Sales Manager identified every issue the GM would have pointed out. And more. But more importantly, he explained what he was already doing about it. Over the course of the day, the dynamic continues to improve. Trust replaced tension. Coaching replaced correction. That shift carried forward. Within a year, that same manager went from the bottom of the pack to consistently top three. He was promoted. The GM changed how he led across his entire team because he saw that less directing led to more performance. This wasn't a time issue. It was a leadership behavior issue. Coaching didn’t require more time. It required a different use of time. 𝐖𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐰𝐞 𝐬𝐚𝐲 𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐝𝐨𝐧’𝐭 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐜𝐨𝐚𝐜𝐡, 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐰𝐞’𝐫𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐬𝐚𝐲𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐬 𝐰𝐞’𝐯𝐞 𝐝𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧𝐞𝐝 𝐫𝐨𝐥𝐞𝐬 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐬 𝐨𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥. We’ve normalized low-leverage work. We’ve trained leaders to tell instead of develop. And then we’re surprised when performance stalls. Coaching is not an add-on. It is the job. It builds capability and trust, and both of those drive revenue. If your managers don’t have time to coach, don’t accept it. Ask what they’re prioritizing instead.

This week I kicked off the first Enablement Builders Roundtable. Nine Enablement leaders. Different companies. Different stages. We all started in the same place: the operating model. Whether you are building Enablement from the ground up or fixing a function that feels stuck, the model determines whether the work actually drives impact. We often default to more content, another training, or a new tool. However, the real lever is the system behind how the work happens. When I bring leaders into this conversation, I start with six questions: How does work come in? How do we decide what matters? How are we structured to deliver against it? How does work get executed in the field? How do we reinforce behavior through managers? How do we measure whether anything changed? When those answers are unclear, the pattern is predictable. Work comes from every direction and everything feels urgent. Ownership gets blurred across RevOps, Product Marketing, L&D, and Sales. The function eventually gets pulled into reactive support. Over time, you become busy but not effective. This came up immediately in our first session. Most teams think they have a prioritization problem or a capacity problem. In reality, they have an operating model gap. At its best, Enablement owns readiness and execution. We partner across the business, but we are not a catch-all for requests. We create clarity on what gets prioritized, align work to the company's biggest bets, and drive impact through manager reinforcement and behavior change at scale. That only happens when the system is defined. The diagnostic is usually straightforward: Where are decision rights unclear? Where does ownership overlap or create friction? What work are you doing today that does not align with your highest priorities? Where are you relying on effort instead of system design? ------------------- The pilot cohort of The Enablement Builders' Roundtable is small and in flight. If you're interested in joining the next cohort, next month, I'll share information on how to join.