Conceptualizing an integrative typology of sales enablement strategy

Abstract

Recent conceptualizations of sales enablement (SE) provide a foundation for emerging scholarship yet do not capture the vast complexities of developing an SE strategy. SE is not a singular construct. As a point of departure for future scholarship, the authors conceptualize a framework integrating extant knowledge of SE research and theorizing to develop a typology of SE strategy components. To establish a baseline for the typology, this paper first reviews the theoretical foundations of SE. Next, research domains on the periphery of the phenomenon (go-to-market strategy, organizational learning, change management, technology adoption) are reviewed and organized. Building from extant literature, the emergent typology integrates relevant literature streams with the various perspectives of the organization where SE strategy is devised and utilized (top management, sales management, salesperson). In addition to internal organizational factors, the authors include performance indicators, external contingency factors, and a research agenda associated with each SE typology component area (i.e., SE strategy: people, process, and system components). Ultimately, this work contributes to the sales literature by providing a nuanced view of SE strategy.

Keywords:

• sales enablement
• go-to-market strategy
• organizational learning
• change management
• technology adoption
• conceptual theory building

Introduction

The nature of the sales discipline is evolving as rapidly as its surrounding environment (Kerr and Marcos-Cuevas 2023; Lauzi et al. 2023). Such fluctuations can be categorized as micro-level shifts (e.g., informed buyers, growing data availability, digitization of content) or macro-level shifts (e.g., globalization of consumer markets, workforce demographic fluxes, changing social/cultural landscapes) (Dugan et al. 2020). As markets are increasingly dynamic and competitive, and organizations constantly strive to optimize performance, sales enablement (SE) has emerged as a business imperative (Toman, Adamson, and Gomez 2017). For example, Matthews and Schenk (2018, 13) indicate that SE empowers sales organizations to operate at a dynamic process level—i.e., to develop situational fluency in their salespeople and leverage a constant stream of key performance indicators (KPIs) to provide ongoing analysis that detects and adapts processes to market changes long before others in their space.

Such claims correspond with patterns also reported by Matthews and Schenk (2018) that while only 19% of companies studied in 2013 had a dedicated enablement person, program, or function, that number had increased to 59% in 2017. More recently, 71% of respondents reported that their companies planned to increase their enablement investments (Seismic 2023), and over 50% of CSOs believed that enablement would expand beyond sales to support marketing and customer success in the next three years (Gartner 2022a). Such expansion aligns with the emergent concept of revenue enablement, which introduces the idea that enablement functions may grow to “support all revenue-generating channels and customer-facing, revenue-generating roles” (Gartner 2022b). Advances to concepts like revenue enablement, which is also predicated on the notion that SE is restricted to the sales function, provide a source of motivation to form a more complete understanding of SE—i.e., to develop a distinct conceptual foundation as broader enablement initiatives expand.

What are the underlying threads behind such data and emergent concepts? To start, SE plays a critical role in sales motivation and productivity amidst constant changes to the buyer environment, buying behavior, data-driven decision making, technology-enabled workflows, and requisite salesperson talent demands (Gartner 2022a). By equipping sales teams with the right resources and knowledge, SE strategy empowers sellers to engage customers effectively, accelerate deal cycles, and drive revenue. However, SE is not the same as revenue enablement nor is it a universal solution. When reflecting on their SE discipline, organizations reported a corollary between SE and sales performance: the SE discipline met or exceeded expectations (67% of salespeople achieved quotas), met only some expectations (60% of salespeople hit their benchmarks), or achieved few expectations (42% of salespeople met their goals) (Matthews and Schenk 2018). Thus, simply investing in SE will not produce a desirable impact; rather, having an accurate understanding of what SE is (conceptualization) and determining how SE leads to market efficiency (strategy) is essential to meeting or exceeding expectations.

Regarding conceptualization, Peterson et al. (2021, 543) defined SE as “an overarching dynamic capability that aligns varied firm resources to benefit the customer journey and selling productivity.” Compared to this capability perspective, however, Rangarajan et al. (2020) offered a framework of SE as organizational initiatives that create value for both sellers and customers through 3Ps (people, process, performance). This conceptual heterogeneity might explain the aforementioned SE expectation and salesperson quota achievement correlation conundrum. That is, SE is not a singular construct. Consequently, a typology of SE is needed to provide an overarching categorization of SE components that can strategically align firm resources for customer journey and sales productivity gains. Otherwise, the scholarship on SE remains narrow in scope and fails to provide forward looking guidance to theory development or sales leaders. Thus, the opportunity remains to develop an SE framework and strategy that is beneficial and has meaningful practical implication. With a typology in hand, however, a paradigm shift can occur that advances SE from a collection of functions supporting sales (e.g., sales training, sales technology, sales operations) to a cohesive enablement strategy that leads sales. To reconcile variations in SE conceptualizations, Table 1 depicts the degrees to which SE has been defined, coding for elements that designate SE as a capability, strategy, technology, or HR endeavor.

Table 1. Defining sales enablement.

Authors	SE Definition	Strategy	Capability	Tech	HR	Focus	Theoretical bases	Approach
Keeling, Cox, and de Ruyter (2020)	Define strategic sales enablement as the process of educating and engaging channel partners (at the individual level) in selling more effectively with the objective of increasing sales performance, expanding business & creating more sustainable partnerships.	✓		✓	✓	Channel Partner Relationships	Individual Learning Orientation and Deliberate Learning Activities (Knowledge Articulation and Codification)	Empirical; Survey of Channel Partners
Peterson and Dover (2020)	Discuss SE as a dynamic capability of a firm using cross-functional assimilation (marketing, training, operations, management, automation, etc.) of content, processes & technology that allows firm to assist the customer’s journey more productively.		✓	✓		Customer Journey	Dynamic Capabilities Theory	Conceptual
Plangger et al. (2020)	Address enablement investment to facilitate knowledge transfer by B2B firms to assist supply chain partners in using and selling the firms’ products & services.			✓	✓	Supply Chain; Channel Partner Relationships	Focus on Managing/Transferring Knowledge and Types of Learning	Conceptual; Framework Building
Rangarajan et al. (2020)	Define firm-wide strategic initiative that incorporates the 3Ps (People, Process, Performance) to deliver value to seller firms and customers alike; also references Matthews and Schenk (2018) definition of SE.	✓		✓		Internal Management of SE	N/A	Conceptual; Framework Building
Peterson et al. (2021)	Establish an overarching dynamic capability that aligns varied firm resources to benefit the customer journey and selling productivity.		✓			Process Model of Operations	Dynamic Capabilities Theory and Resource-Based View	Empirical; Ethnographic Inquiry
Rapp and Beeler (2021)	Assert sales enablement as representing organizational-level factors/issues (e.g., strategy, technology, human resources) that exist at the macro-level.	✓		✓	✓	Macro-Level Strategic Decisions	N/A	Conceptual
Lauzi et al. (2023)	Define sales enablement as a set of cross-functional initiatives within an organization aimed at improving the effectiveness and efficiency of the sales force.				✓	Cross-Functional Initiative	None	Empirical; Case Study
Current Paper	Establish sales enablement strategy as a firmwide strategy that directs internal and external resources, integrates firm culture, and establishes operations that empower the sales function to capitalize on the firm’s core capabilities.	✓				Internal Management of SE	GTM, Organizational Learning, Change Management, and Technology Adoption	Conceptual; Typology Building

To understand SE as a cohesive strategy, we merge the extant process model (Peterson et al. 2021) with organizational frameworks (Rangarajan et al. 2020). Leveraging such research, along with literature streams advocated as inherent to SE (go-to-market strategy, organizational learning, change management, technology adoption), we develop a typology that maps out the components of SE strategy. Our typology of SE strategy components—further organized around perspectives of the organization (top management, sales management, salesperson) where SE strategy is devised and utilized (see Lauzi et al. 2023)—advances the field of SE. Specifically, our integration allows us to identify the knowledge gaps that require greater consideration across each component. Additionally, our work addresses internal components, performance indicators, and external contingencies for designing and implementing SE strategy. Expanding knowledge pertaining to SE strategy is in turn critical to helping sales organizations coordinate responses to a host of shifts in the sales environment and produce returns on otherwise siloed investments (e.g., technology spend per salesperson, sales operations) (see Peterson et al. 2021). With such insights in mind, we define SE strategy as a firmwide strategy that directs internal and external resources, integrates firm culture, and establishes operations that empower the sales function to capitalize on the firm’s core capabilities. Our conceptualization provides practical guideposts for organizations to enhance the effectiveness of their SE strategy and optimize resource allocation.

Among calls for theory development in the sales discipline via conceptual research (Sohi, Haas, and Davis 2022), our theoretical work also contributes to SE theory development. First, our conceptualization extends understanding of SE strategy in a way that allows firms to view SE across the firm and focus on its design and implementation as an overarching strategy. Second, viewing SE as an overarching strategy, we develop an integrative typology that offers a holistic conception of the SE framework and specifies how firms can capitalize on their existing dynamic capabilities in design and implementation of SE strategy. Third, our typology of SE strategy encompasses three levels of the organization (top management, sales management, salesperson) and incorporates a discussion of the external contingencies impacting SE strategy development. This integration extends existing multi-dimensional SE frameworks by highlighting the critical links between organizational processes, varying perspectives within the firm, and broader market dynamics. Further, by offering a nuanced depiction of SE that addresses how resources across an organization are distributed to support sales activities, this integration fills a gap identified by Lauzi et al. (2023) regarding limited understanding of SE strategy across firm levels and challenges in improving cross-functional coordination. Finally, we incorporate performance indicators and external contingency factors to capture how SE strategy adapts to on-going changes in the environment.

To achieve these contributions, we first review the SE literature to provide a baseline for the established scholarship and explicate the literature gaps. Next, based on insights from SE literature, we review the scholarship on go-to-market (GTM) strategy, organizational learning, change management, and technology adoption—i.e., foundational areas in strategy development that impact decision-making across levels. Aggregate insights from these scholarship domains then serve as the basis for our emergent typology of SE strategy components. We conclude with a research agenda for exploring underdeveloped elements of SE strategy in the future.

Literature review

Sales enablement

Many organizations have adjusted their sales and customer management approaches in response to the changing business landscape. Such shifts involve adopting a holistic approach to selling—i.e., aligning multiple departments, leveraging sophisticated information to realize sales success, and developing an infrastructure that more effectively creates value for customers. These approaches reflect the phenomenon of SE, focused on optimizing the sales process and enhancing performance through the alignment of people, processes, and technology.

SE emerged in academic literature as a strategy for integrating sales and marketing functions to manage strategic accounts and key intermediaries (Wiersema 2013). More recent work extends the conceptualization of SE to depict a “cross-functional assimilation (marketing, training, operations, management, automation, etc.) of content, processes, and technology that readies a firm to more productively assist the customer’s journey” (Peterson and Dover 2020, 46). While as many as 85% of firms indicate the presence of SE initiatives (Peterson and Dover 2021)—the concept is minimally addressed in academic literature. Complicating the study of SE are both the myriad definitions of SE (see Table 1) and gaps in depicting how foundational areas of research support the development of SE strategy at multiple firm levels.

SE has been considered as a part of managing channel partner relationships (Keeling, Cox, and de Ruyter 2020), defined as a dynamic capability (Peterson and Dover 2020), and used to develop a process model of operations (Peterson et al. 2021). However, there has been little consensus on what SE strategy means as an overarching approach that sales leaders can use when designing, implementing, and managing SE initiatives. While scholarship suggests that SE improves sales outcomes (e.g., performance, supplier relationships) and mitigates negative consequences (e.g., burnout, turnover intentions), scholars have offered varied approaches to the study of SE. For example, Westbrook and Peterson (2020), characterized SE as a job resource that could help to improve salespeople’s job abilities. Other work in the domain has focused on its technological aspect, associating SE with diversifying knowledge transfer to supply chain partners and using technology tools to automate sales processes (Montecchi et al. 2022; Plangger et al. 2020). Further, research by Peterson and Dover (2020) used dynamic capabilities theory to explain how SE is more akin to a firm capability than a specified corporate function.

As a capability, SE manifests within organizational processes, structures, and frameworks. Peterson et al. (2021)’s multi-stage process model explains how firms develop SE and align their resources to benefit the customer journey. The authors also advanced the conceptualization by offering a multi-dimensional perspective of SE as a dynamic capability, including insight triangulation (consolidating and sharing knowledge across functional areas), enablement infrastructure (integrating and coordinating resources to help the salesforce), and sales support envelopment (making sense of sales function inputs and outputs).

In terms of SE as a planning mechanism, Rangarajan et al. (2021) identified the tactical sales process advantages of a robust SE strategy. In a post-COVID environment, the authors indicated that SE tools are being increasingly used throughout the sales process to facilitate relationship development as well as to strengthen and customize sales presentations. Lauzi et al. (2023) extended the literature by exploring the strategic and operational nuances of SE across hierarchical levels of a firm. Their findings suggested that sales leaders should view SE as a growth strategy and noted that the challenge of empowering all employees on the same systems would be achievable if the SE team similarly enabled managers. Further, they contextualized SE across organizational levels: top management, middle management (i.e., sales management), and sales operations (i.e., salespeople). We adopt this terminology in our approach to SE strategy.

Table 2 offers a summative overview of extant SE literature and illustrates gaps in the literature. First, Table 2 highlights a gap in SE literature on how managers strategically apply SE to their operations. Though research cites the need for managers to be equipped to lead enablement efforts (Lauzi et al. 2023), no collective understanding of SE strategy exists across organizations. Second, though literature has clearly delineated SE from CRM (Peterson et al. 2021), questions about where ownership and leadership of SE strategy are housed within organizations remain. Even practitioners are split, with some arguing that SE is a sales operations issue and others supporting SE through training and onboarding teams (Emerick and Masak 2021). Third, the scholarship lacks a systematic way for researchers and managers to consider the gamut of issues that arise as SE strategy interacts with varied internal and external factors. Thus, there is a need to integrate extant SE models into a typology that addresses internal and external elements of strategy, and that can be applied to scholarship and practice.

Table 2. Overview of existing sales enablement literature.

Paper	Key contributions to SE literature	Methodology
Wiersema (2013)	Identifies SE as essential for dealing with strategic accounts and key intermediaries in the sales process, especially in integrating marketing’s role as a function in customer relationship management.	Qualitative/Interviews
Keeling, Cox, and de Ruyter (2020)	Identifies SE strategy as an important factor in addressing deliberate learning within and between channel partners. Find that strategic SE results in sales performance through greater return on investment, learner motivation, and learning engagement of channel partners.	Empirical/Survey
Peterson and Dover (2020)	Proposes SE framework of technology, content, and people supporting SE as a mechanism between the customer journey and the traditional selling process.	Conceptual
Plangger et al. (2020)	Asserts that strategic enablement investments require both human and technological enablement in order to generate four types of learning environments.	Conceptual
Rangarajan et al. (2020)	Provides a framework conceptualizing SE as the composite of people, process, and performance. Identifies SE as an emerging force in the sales landscape due to its ability to strategically align the tools, technology, functions, and training that firms currently offer salespeople in disparate ways.	Qualitative/Interviews
Westbrook and Peterson (2020)	Finds that SE initiatives reduce burnout and turnover while increasing sales performance. Asserts that equipping the sales organization through strategic SE initiatives improves performance and prevents attrition.	Empirical/Survey
Peterson and Dover (2021)	Finds that though SE initiatives are largely targeted to salespeople and account managers, other stakeholders exist in different geographical regions, and the services offered by SE teams vary greatly across regions.	Empirical/Survey
Peterson et al. (2021)	Establishes SE as a multi-dimensional construct and multi-stage process model that includes sales support diagnostic, sales capital reconfiguration, enablement infrastructure rollout, enablement performance evaluation, and enablement calibration.	Qualitative/Ethnography, Fieldwork, and Interviews
Rangarajan et al. (2021)	Proposes that in a post-COVID environment, SE enhances salesperson efforts across the sales process, with particular gains in customization of the sales presentation.	Qualitative/Interviews
Rapp and Beeler (2021)	Defines SE as macro-organizational-level factors and issues critical to sales success (e.g., technology, strategy, human resources). Posits that SE refers to coordinated firm actions to increase sales performance in scalable ways using tools, content, information, and strategy shared across the sales organization.	Conceptual
Montecchi et al. (2022)	Explores SE in the context of retail technology and identifies that strategic enablement facilitates knowledge transfer across and between organizations using technology and AI tools.	Qualitative/Ethnography
Lauzi et al. (2023)	Uncovers similarities and differences in the understanding and operationalization of SE across functions and hierarchies at a technology firm. Identifies differences in how sales leaders and salespeople understand SE and suggests that empowering all employees globally on the same systems requires SE teams.	Qualitative/Inductive Case Study
Current Paper	Conceptualizes a typology of SE strategy by integrating extant knowledge of SE (people, process, performance), peripheral literature streams (organizational learning, change management, technology adoption), and perspectives of the organization (top management, sales management, salesperson).	Conceptual

To move beyond Table 2 and address such gaps in the SE literature, we review lines of scholarship that provide foundational knowledge of SE. Specifically, we review scholarship addressing GTM strategy, organizational learning, change management, and technology adoption. Each of these four domains are highlighted because they are the foundational areas in strategy development that impact decision-making across levels of the firm. To start, GTM strategy provides the overarching context in which SE strategy exists, which thus impacts the complexity of underlying sales and marketing processes addressed by SE strategy.

The three additional areas of literature (organizational learning, change management, technology adoption) are specifically cited by Peterson et al. (2021, 546) as critical to synergizing SE across the firm; “SE span across the firm and holds a learning orientation (organizational learning) to base change processes (change management) and the adoption of sales tools (technology adoption)—so the firm can rise above its disjointed approaches and provide synergistic sales support that provides returns across assets and investments.” In our context, organizational learning (i.e., aligning long-term business goals and employee development with SE strategy), change management (i.e., the resources needed to manage the organizational response to change created by adopting an SE strategy), and technology adoption (i.e., idiosyncratic needs of individuals and groups when adopting sales-enabled technologies) have direct bearing on how SE strategy is developed with the GTM strategy. To advance our understanding of SE strategy, we therefore assess and extend these literature bases that directly frame the conceptualization of SE strategy. Further, within our review of these four peripheral SE domains, we identify knowledge that informs our understanding of SE strategy and shortfalls that require future scholarship.

Go-to-market strategy

An important element of the understanding SE strategy is to understand how it relates to marketing strategy and sales strategy. According to Panagopoulos and Avlonitis (2010), marketing strategy is concerned with generating and sustaining competitive advantage for targeted market segments, while sales strategy is concerned with relating to and interacting with individual customers. Per our conceptualization, SE strategy is at the intersection of marketing and sales strategies—e.g., supporting marketing and sales strategy integration, translating firm-level competitive advantages and segmentation decisions into successful individual customer level interactions. GTM strategy is the overarching plan that addresses how a firm brings new products to market. (e.g., market research, product positioning customer engagement), thus is fundamentally grounded in customer needs. GTM strategy therefore encompasses both sales strategy and marketing strategy, meaning that it is imperative to consider the GTM strategy literature as the context in which SE strategy is grounded.

A GTM strategy is the way that a firm delivers its products or services to its customers and is vital to understanding how the sales process evolves. That is, GTM strategy development involves decisions on how a firm can use its marketing mix to deliver its unique value to customers. Such concerns include which consumers to target, pricing, marketing messaging, and branding—thus accounting for the characteristics of a firm’s offering and its intended markets. For example, Schuhmacher, Kuester, and Hultink (2018) found that GTM strategies should differ across levels of product innovativeness and target consumer dynamism.

Within the sales function, salesforce characteristics such as structure, size, channels of distribution, and control systems all play a role in GTM strategy (Anaza et al. 2023; Mantrala et al. 2010; Vinhas and Anderson 2005). Mantrala et al. (2010) offered a model with five interrelated layers of sales force management. The first layer is the marketing-sales interface and the role of the sales force in a GTM strategy—e.g., whether a firm needs a sales force. GTM strategies should consider several firm and customer characteristics when deciding on the value of a personal selling approach, such as product complexity, customer knowledge levels, and product life stage (Good and Calantone 2019; Jones et al. 2005).

In addition, there has been scant research on how context impacts SE. In fact, SE strategy formulation should include situational considerations—e.g., customer-base, industry, region, and macro-environmental factors such as culture, political, economic, and technological factors. Developing strategy should be matched to the specific situation; accordingly, marketers have increasingly considered the need for contingency approaches. For instance, agile selling (a sales methodology that emphasizes flexibility and responsiveness to change) is based on contingency planning (Friend, Johnson, and Ranjan 2020). Marketers using agile methods to break projects down into smaller tasks and iterations that allow for quick adaptations to changing market conditions or consumer preferences. Similarly, mapping the customer journey and identifying potential points of friction allows marketers to develop contingency plans for addressing issues that may arise along the way. This mapping ensures a smoother, contextualized experience for customers, maintains loyalty, and positively affects performance (Homburg and Tischer 2023).

Organizational learning

As SE represents a new area of strategy and implementation for most firms, understanding the process by which organizations learn and incorporate new information is critical. Organizational learning occurs when individuals develop new ideas; such knowledge is then shared, actions are taken, and common meaning is developed (Chonko et al. 2003). The knowledge generated and the insights developed from organizational learning spark behavioral changes within firms (Slater and Narver 1995). Learning organizations are defined as those entities that create, acquire, and transfer knowledge, and then modify behaviors to reflect the new insights generated from this process (Garvin 2022). As a result, organizational learning enables ambidextrous sales organizations to leverage current competencies and new opportunities (Aman, Azam, and Akhtar 2022) that correlate to sales growth (He and Wong 2004). Conceptually, organizational learning and SE share a focus on knowledge acquisition, employee development, continuous learning, and performance improvement.

SE strategy requires that learning needs to be codified and scaled across an organization. Therefore, SE serves as a pivotal function uniquely positioned to identify new collective knowledge, determine who needs the knowledge, and implement tools to broadly share such information. While robust literature exists on organizational learning, scholarship addressing the role of cross-functional initiatives like SE to facilitate learning within an organization has been limited, opportunities exist to understand how SE facilitates organizational learning and knowledge dissemination across functional groups.

Organizational learning literature can be characterized into two main streams. The first introduces types of learning or aspects of learning practice. Research in this area can articulate how SE impacts evidence-based decision-making and provide knowledge to guide successful resource allocation. The second stream explores various areas in which organizational learning is an important aspect of successful implementation. For example, both self-directed learning (Artis and Harris 2007) and peer-based learning (Chan, Li, and Pierce 2014) uniquely connect to performance improvement. Additional research examines strategic initiatives where organizational learning is critical to producing competitive advantages, such as CRM (Raman, Michael Wittmann, and Rauseo 2006). Such scholarship explores relationships between organizational learning and collaboration between functions within a firm.

To achieve desired results, individual and organizational learning need to be aligned with an overarching climate of learning (Bell, Mengüç, and Widing 2010). For example, Le Meunier-FitzHugh and Piercy (2007) found that organizational learning was an antecedent of collaboration between the important sales-marketing interface that helps organizations to communicate effectively with customers. Other work identified cooperation between sales and marketing as a contributor to phenomena such as organizational learning (Malshe and Al-Khatib 2017). Though some confusion exists on the role of organizational learning as an antecedent or outcome of cooperation, it is clear that an environment of cooperative work is essential. That is, the learning climate developed in cooperative organizations enables salespeople to develop customer knowledge and customer-oriented behaviors (Wang 2015).

Literature on organizational learning has implications for the future study of SE. In many organizations, SE aims to provide tools, resources, and knowledge to the sales function. Such efforts require the collaboration of many functional areas, including training, HR, technology, sales, and top management. An improved understanding of how the learning climate of the organization permeates each functional area will illuminate how SE can serve an organization.

Change management

SE represents a change for most sales organizations, either from a strategic development perspective or through adding a new function to the organization. Changes that coincide with the introduction of SE are often accompanied by acceptance problems (Alavi and Habel 2021; Guenzi and Nijssen 2021; Pullins, Tarafdar, and Pham 2020). An example of such a change would be developing new protocols for digitalization. As such, SE strategy must incorporate elements of change management to facilitate the short- and long-term success of SE endeavors.

Change management is defined as “the process of continually renewing an organization’s direction, structure, and capabilities to serve the ever-changing needs of external and internal customers” (Moran and Brightman 2001, 111). Current knowledge of change management in sales research provides a rich perspective. Scholarship identifies the various organizational and individual variables that foster effective change management (Jones, Roberts, and Chonko 2000). Significant differences are known to exist in change management across different types of firms (e.g., maturity stage; Hansen 2009), yet detailed assessments of critical external variables are needed to extend that knowledge to show the complex contextual drivers of sales force change (Guenzi and Storbacka 2015; Shum, Bove, and Auh 2008).

When change management is successful, several behaviorally oriented (e.g., aligned firm structures, internal support, skills development) and outcome-based (e.g., revenue growth, customer acquisition, salesperson/customer retention) benefits ensue. Furthermore, assessing the frameworks and processes required to manage the cadence of change is nuanced (e.g., Oh 2017; Shum, Bove, and Auh 2008). However, our current understanding of effective change management is incomplete, as about 70% of initiated change programs still fail (Guenzi and Storbacka 2015). Extant literature cautions against change management frameworks that view change as a process occurring in a piecemeal fashion. An interconnected approach to change management that considers the relationship between individuals and learning organizations is recommended (Jones, Roberts, and Chonko 2000). SE is an effective bridge between such concepts, serving as a more permanent organizational structure to manage change cross-functionally and holistically, to eliminate the lag between program change, adoption, and results.

SE and change management efforts further overlap in their emphases on effective communication, stakeholder engagement, adoption, training, and performance evaluation. As stated by Peterson et al. (2021, 544), “the sales force benefits from change management when firms possess a capability that synergistically brings together its siloed activities, orchestrates changes among myriad organizational actors, and fosters firm-wide process-based changes needed to drive resource allocations and intended outcomes.” By incorporating change management principles into SE initiatives, organizations can increase the likelihood of successful implementation, minimize resistance, and achieve desired sales outcomes. However, as Peterson et al. (2021) indicated, organizational learning alone is insufficient to trigger change. Thus, there can be tension when firms become more agile to meet environmental demands, yet salespeople remain inert to engage in such change.

SE can bridge these two conditions by leveraging insights from change management literature to continually allocate resources and scale with agility (Peterson et al. 2021). However, the scarcity of literature connecting change management to SE indicates a significant opportunity. For example, Shum, Bove, and Auh (2008) noted the critical role of change management in the sales force as salespeople face dramatic changes. While change management has been portrayed as a transformation that needs balance and top management support for enhanced productivity, Beverland and Lindgreen (2007) showed the importance of identifying assumptions and moving to new values. Kunkle (2021) argued that SE projects were change management initiatives in disguise. However, there are gaps in connecting change management to SE implementation, the needed methods, and the vast nature of SE.

Technology adoption

Though SE strategy encompasses many aspects of the organization, most SE capabilities are supported by advances in digitization and sales technology, requiring sales organizations to take into account if, when, and how technology will be adopted by their teams (Rapp, Agnihotri, and Forbes 2008). From a firm perspective, technology is a solution to myriad sources of tension that limit the sales cadence (Tanner and Shipp 2005). However, while tools in the sales tech stack received favorable perceptions proximal to their rollout, the long-term view of technology adoption showed high rejection rates in the months that followed their launch (Jelinek et al. 2006; Speier and Venkatesh 2002). As a remedy, the technology acceptance model indicates that perceived use and perceived effort foster adoption (Davis 1989). That is, salespeople adopt technologies that they believe will enhance their performance (Schillewaert et al. 2005).

Several firm characteristics also help to align the person-technology fit (e.g., management commitment, leadership support)—along with leveraging social influence (e.g., peer usage, customer interest, competitor utilization); playing to individual salesperson characteristics (technical self-efficacy, experience); and structuring team conditions (team potency, team goal acceptance) (Cascio, Mariadoss, and Mouri 2010; Schillewaert et al. 2005; Weinstein and Mullins 2012). The firm-level and cross-functional nature of SE, whereby sales teams and salespeople are given the resources they need to succeed, relies on technological tools to facilitate support.

When organizations support the use of technology via day-to-day operations, salespeople perceive greater usefulness and are more likely to adopt the technology (Jelinek et al. 2006; Schillewaert et al. 2005). An example of sales technologies includes CRM systems that manage customer information and pipelines, sales automation tools that automatically segment customers and assign leads, and collaboration software that facilitates communication or marketing material sharing among employees. Moreover, Singh et al. (2019, 18) argued that digitization and AI are highly disruptive technologies poised to be both “more significant and more far-reaching than previous sales technologies” in terms of their impact on the sales function. SE is an emerging function that needs to be integrated into such extant knowledge.

As stated by Peterson et al. (2021, 544), the “sales force benefits from technology adoption when firms possess a capability that utilizes technology to move enterprise-wide initiatives forward by supporting firm infrastructure, revenue-generating activities, as well as accompanying sales processes, strategy, learning, and coaching.” SE serves to connect technology and coordinated process gains. However, conceptual questions remain, as SE employees are not inherently in supervisory or peer roles. As the power structure and division of authority possessed by the SE function is still in flux, it is unclear how the current knowledge of technology adoption will translate for modern sales forces. This perspective is especially true while the field aims to move from a single company case setting (e.g., Jelinek et al. 2006) and builds off the known importance of cross-functional team dynamics (Weinstein and Mullins 2012) toward a broader consideration set of factors facilitating technology adoption.

Scholarship has also moved beyond the drivers of technology adoption to consider the consequences of sales force adoption (e.g., effort and selling behaviors; Rapp, Agnihotri, and Forbes 2008). Such works show the piecemeal breakdown of research focusing on either the motivators or outcomes of technology adoption. The full spectrum of this process is missing, which is where a permanent structure like SE comes into the mix. Further, a host of post-implementation outcome variables need to be captured to reflect technology usage, efficiency, and performance. While these processes vary across organizational and environmental conditions (Igwe, Ebenuwa, and Idenedo 2020), the rate at which technology is diffused throughout the firm measures the performance of SE technology adoption (Bill, Feurer, and Klarmann 2020).

Sales enablement strategy typology components

Aggregate insights from scholarship on SE, GTM strategy, organizational learning, change management, and technology adoption allow us to form a typology of SE strategy components. We organize the typology, starting with strategy components related to people and processes, and then adding system strategy components. In comparison to Rangarajan et al. (2020) 3Ps (people, process, performance) framework, we instead integrate SE systems as a strategy typology component that captures the important role of the tech stack (see Table 1 for the prevalence of SE as a technology in extant literature) and view SE performance as an outcome measure of each strategy component—as assessment is an integral aspect of strategy planning.

Our literature review identifies myriad touchpoints that connect extant knowledge to SE strategy. These points of connection, in turn, produce a granular understanding of SE. Our SE typology offers a holistic bridge between the conceptual elements of extant literature streams while extending the various firm levels at which an SE strategy can be implemented—i.e., (a) senior leaders at the strategic, top management level who generate opportunities to develop comprehensive SE strategy components that reflect differences in market forces; (b) sales managers at the tactical, middle management level who develop and implement SE strategy components throughout their departmental span of control; and (c) individual salespeople at the operational level who create and implement their own SE strategy components.

External contingency factors are also incorporated into the SE strategy typology, as they reflect environmental forces that affect a firm’s inner workings yet cannot be controlled by the organization (Zeriti et al. 2014; Zoltners, Sinha, and Lorimer 2008). The external environment includes macro-environmental forces (e.g., political, economic, social, technological), market conditions, industry concerns, and customer-based contingency factors. Macro-environmental forces affect the availability and application of the firm’s resources and the customer’s journey (Dugan et al. 2020). Firm structures and cultures are formed in response to (or in alignment with) external forces. The resulting typology identifies 11 SE strategy components—three pertaining to SE strategy people components (training and development, role adjustments, workforce technology capability), three involving SE strategy process components (content management, cross-functional interfaces, strategy alignment), and two related to SE strategy system components (sales tech stack, technology diffusion), with corresponding performance indicators and external contingencies. In Table 3, we organize these materials in an SE strategy typology.

Table 3. A typology of sales enablement strategy components.

	Top management	Sales management	Salesperson
Sales enablement strategy people components
Strategy components	Training & Development (OL) –Structure strategy to support training resources & continuous learning that enhance SE for sales managers & salespeople. Role Adjustments (CM) – (Re)define staffing resources & roles across the firm per the SE strategy & promote SE initiative acceptance. Workforce Technology Capability (OL/TA) – Assess & address gaps in workers’ knowledge, skill, & proclivity to adopt technologies needed to support SE initiatives.	Training & Development (OL) – Equip managers with knowledge to coach teams & develop ongoing training methods & delivery. Role Adjustments (CM/GTM) – Leverage data to develop value propositions, assess sales capabilities, & standardize sales methodology. Workforce Technology Capability (TA) – Set expectations for stakeholders on using technology to meet team & company goals.	Training & Development (OL) – Utilize learned knowledge to collect ongoing feedback & develop personal learning plans. Role Adjustments (CM/GTM) – Tailor customer goals to buying journey & purchasing requirements. Workforce Technology Capability (OL) – Leverage self-learning systems to develop knowledge & adapt to varying technology needs.
Performance indicators	Performance Metrics (OL/TA) – Identify KPIs & measurement of SE’s ability to execute firm’s mission.	Performance Metrics (OL/GTM) – Use departmental metrics to monitor KPIs.	Performance Metrics (OL) – Leverage learning assessments to identify needs and increase knowledge.
External contingency factors	Cross-Regional Knowledge (OL) – Assess pressures, opportunities, & market trends across idiosyncratic markets, & identify correct constituencies served.	Cross-Regional Knowledge (CM) – Customize strategic planning for territory management & account prioritization with localized knowledge.	Cross-Regional Knowledge (OL/GTM) – Facilitate collaboration & knowledge sharing among customer-facing cohorts & customer groups.
Sales Enablement Strategy Process Components
Strategy components	Content Management (OL) – Develop, organize, & cultivate collateral resources that are shared across the organization. Cross-Functional Interfaces (CM/GTM) – Orchestrate interfaces in stages of sales cadence & ensure common understanding of the SE initiative. Strategy Alignment (TA) – Improve firm-wide processes & structures to align with the implementation of SE technology.	Content Management (OL) – Envelope managers in sales material development & direct consistent messaging. Cross-Functional Interfaces (CM/GTM) – Connect with functional leaders to coordinate sales cadence & empower the field force. Strategy Alignment (CM) – Align individual departmental goals with broader organizational strategy.	Content Management (OL) – Transfer intimate knowledge to the SE to develop sales content, product info, & messaging frameworks. Cross-Functional Interfaces (CM) – Determine if sales tasks are supported by other functions & who possesses requisite resources. Strategy Alignment (OL/GTM) – Ensure that SE strategies & selling process support evolving individual-level mission & customer needs.
Performance indicators	Process Assessment (OL/GTM) – Assess resource access & variance in market approaches.	Process Assessment (GTM) - Verify sales messaging dissemination, consistency, & cadence.	Process Assessment (CM/GTM) – Align process strategy with mission, customer needs, & sales results.
External contingency factors	Market Adaptations (CM) – Tailor resource support & content across multiple cultural, legal, & political landscapes.	Market Adaptations (CM/OL) – Ensure ongoing relationship management support that fits cultural, local, and industry conditions.	Market Adaptations (CM/GTM) –Drive customer stakeholder engagement with local & broader elements of the sales organization.
Sales Enablement Strategy System Components
Strategy components	Sales Tech Stack (OL/TA) – Budget, acquire, & repurpose technology systems to enable sales; establish firm support of SE function in integrating systems. Technology Diffusion (TA) – Establish technology training, support systems & policies to assure technology diffusion.	Sales Tech Stack (TA) – Provide technological updates, assuring technology access, & facilitating acceptance of corporate adopted technologies. Technology Diffusion (TA/GTM) – Customize strategies across technology diffusion stages to ensure all reps can achieve performance gains.	Sales Tech Stack (TA) – Gain access to new tools & leverage current technology solutions to support SE strategies. Technology Diffusion (TA/OL) –Encourage the adoption of technologies among sales colleagues to achieve team-level goals.
Performance indicators	Technology Penetration (TA) – Measure the adoption, diffusion, & usage of SE technology throughout the organization.	Technology Penetration (CM/GTM) – Accept functional level corporate technologies & their impact on sale performance.	Technology Penetration (TA) –Attain individual technology usage metrics & team-level integration goals.
External contingency factors	Technological Readiness (TA/GTM) – Establish appropriate autonomy to make technological adjustments in response to local regulations & tech accessibility.	Technological Readiness (CM/TA/GTM) – Adjust interfirm collaborative SE technologies for local sales teams.	Technological Readiness (TA/GTM) –Develop paths to desired outcomes by aligning sales technologies with buying processes and local conditions.

OL: organizational learning; CM: change management; TA: technology adoption; GTM: go-to-market.

Sales enablement strategy people components

Each of SE’s theoretical facets relates directly to people—i.e., the individuals being recruited, onboarded, developed, managed, and supported within the sales organization. From a strategic perspective, training and development is a key component of the people portion of SE strategy. More specifically, SE strategy people components reflect the needed training and development of salespeople—from hiring and onboarding to training and coaching (i.e., return on training investments, sales managers as coaches, the transfer of firm-wide best practices, platforms for information dispersion, and arming salespeople with the right content) (Rangarajan et al. 2020).

Developing SE strategy around people also requires consideration of the roles and competences of the workforce. Human resource design can shape the roles of the sales force, along with their interfacing counterparts. SE strategy can therein shape how these roles require adjustment. Further, SE requires that the workforce has the requisite technology capabilities to successfully adopt, implement, and use the SE technologies dictated by the strategy. Accordingly, we find that the SE strategy people components are training and development, role adjustments, and workforce technology capability (see Table 3).

Training and development

Sales scholarship emphasizes the critical nature of recruitment, onboarding, training, and coaching (e.g., Bolander et al. 2020; Magnotta, Murtha, and Challagalla 2020), with a variety of internally (e.g., firm strategy) and externally driven (e.g., customer demands) factors dictating the knowledge, skills, and abilities that take center stage for a given field force. Knowledge acquisition obtained through training and development represents an important aspect of SE strategy people components. Organizational learning asserts that, at a macro-level, firm leadership develops strategy that facilitate knowledge sharing (Garvin 2022). At the top management level, training and development is used as a tool to anticipate informational needs for both the customer and the organization, along with providing the needed support for sales training and growth (Hallikainen, Savimäki, and Laukkanen 2020). Components of SE strategy include support for continuous learning and development.

Sales managers must also develop unit-level strategy to support the firm’s training and development. For example, they often develop a coaching strategy to ensure that SE training is utilized and applied to sales processes. Organizational learning recognizes the interrelated importance of structuring SE components in a way that encompasses training resources for sales managers and allows for multi-faceted knowledge generation and transfer. Sales managers play a critical role in SE training and development, since failures in training are often attributed to one-time training programs and minimal follow-up (Lupton, Weiss, and Peterson 1999). Therefore, sales managers should acquire knowledge and develop strategy for their own personal development so that they could check in with and coach their salespeople (Badrinarayanan et al. 2015; Plank et al. 2018).

At the individual level, salespeople formally and informally prepare strategic plans to apply knowledge to customer accounts, and strategy for collecting ongoing feedback and competitive intelligence (Rapp, Agnihotri, and Baker 2011). Salespeople may also develop their own strategic development plans, taking responsibility for their learning approaches and skill development, in order to ensure they are prepared to successfully use the SE strategy developed at higher levels. The training and development components at each level work together to provide a road map for management (including self-management) to assure appropriate and timely knowledge acquisition.

Role adjustments

Top management must also address the people component of SE strategy by determining its approach to staffing and defining role responsibilities. Role adjustments stem from customizing SE goals based on the buying journey and purchasing requirements, but also require understanding individuals in the workforce to ensure that the talent exists to fulfill the requisite roles. The typology component of role adjustments thus represents the structure through which top management (re)defines staffing resources across the firm. Organizational commitment to change management allows firms to continually equip managers and salespeople with sales capabilities and standardizing methodologies. To effectively manage SE change, the roles at various levels must be strategically defined and adjusted to support the sales force (Peterson and Dover 2021). The role adjustments typology component extends to all areas of the business that interface with SE tools.

Organizational strategy fueled by a change management perspective allows sales managers to set expectations for the adoption and implementation of SE strategy while ensuring goal alignment across departments and stakeholders impacted by such strategy. At the managerial level, sales managers must therefore monitor and adjust roles within their unit to support the broader efforts of the organization (Anderson and Huang 2006). In such instances, strategy must exist to help the sales force to develop their value propositions (Terho et al. 2015). Role adjustment at the managerial level involves assessment, standardization, and role clarity (Malshe et al. 2017). Sales managers should assess salesperson characteristics and available resources to determine which role adjustments will be effective (Hallikainen, Savimäki, and Laukkanen 2020). As sales managers adjust the roles of salespeople to align with SE strategy, the need for role clarity increases. When providing role clarity, functional leaders need to provide direction for standardizing the sales methodology and automating repetitive tasks.

These unit-level strategies help to ensure that roles are defined and adjusted to support change efforts associated with SE. As the sales role is adjusted by senior- and unit-level managers, salespeople must then adjust their own roles to align with customer buying journeys—e.g., adjusting purchasing requirements to meet the unique roles of each buyer (Ulaga and Kohli 2018). SE components such as buyer persona profiles and customer journey mapping are important tools that salespeople can use to assess which role adjustment proclivities intersect with the key stakeholders in the buying process.

Workforce technology capability

Our typology also identifies workforce technology capability as a people component of SE strategy. Workforce technology capability involves assessing and bridging the gaps in people’s knowledge, skills, and proclivities via technologies that support SE initiatives (Avlonitis and Panagopoulos 2005). Relatedly, the sales organization needs to appropriately use SE technologies, and strategy must be in place to ensure such resources are provided (Cascio, Mariadoss, and Mouri 2010). Sales management should then strategically set expectations for its units on technology adoption designed to support SE goals. Sales managers should model SE technology use and provide strategic direction to their units to maximize SE effectiveness (Homburg, Wieseke, and Kuehnl 2010). Such actions help ensure that technology investments are optimally utilized to support SE. However, uncertainties remain regarding: (a) tension between “systematized” training and coaching at the potential expense of sales manager experience, and (b) the depth/breadth of the net that sales managers should cast to recruit nontraditional sales talent (see Rangarajan et al. 2020). Consequently, the SE research agenda should focus on issues such as the characteristics hiring managers seek in salespeople.

Finally, salespeople need to ensure their own technological capability by leveraging self-learning systems necessary for utilizing SE technology (Artis and Harris 2007). Through assessing customer comfort with new tech mechanisms, salespeople can develop additional strategies for specific customer groups. In committing to these processes across both its sales and customer cohorts, the firm can continually evaluate what technology skills related to SE are required by the salesforce, how technology compensates for skill deficiencies, and how to ensure that technology adoption efforts are successful at the interface of technology workforce capabilities (Avlonitis and Panagopoulos 2005; Jelinek et al. 2006).

External contingency factors (cross-regional knowledge) and performance indicators (performance metrics)

As a core external contingency, cross-regional market forces emerge from an idiosyncratic marketplace. The varying level and type of pressures that occur across the marketplace affect the content and application of organizational learning on assessing market opportunities, identifying marketplace constituencies, managing sales territories, and fostering collaborative behaviors that occur among customer-facing personnel. From a performance perspective, SE must also justify its value within the organization by producing measures of its effectiveness (Peterson et al. 2021).

At the organizational level, performance metrics can assess firm-level KPIs and abilities. Organizational learning literature has established that metrics to assess both knowledge transfer and the health of the learning climate help to pinpoint which processes people use that support SE strategy. Performance metrics may also refer to the adoption of sales assistance technologies and convergence into realized gains. Such gains span the gamut of KPIs, which, in SE strategy, include behavioral modifications, salesperson learning, short-term sales metrics (e.g., revenue, win rates, percentage of quota obtained), and long-term sales metrics (e.g., relationship expansion, referrals, customer satisfaction).

At the functional level, sales management has long recognized its role in setting and monitoring functional-level behavioral and outcome metrics (Malek, Sarin, and Jaworski 2018). Strong metrics are needed to drive outcomes in the sales force (Kerr and Marcos-Cuevas 2022), and KPIs can be used to assure strategic alignment of SE at all levels. Such integration increases the level of accountability throughout the organization and empirically establishes the impact of SE strategy. Performance metrics can focus on measuring the integration of SE components in the sales process, improvements in forecasting accuracy, and tracking changes in performance. Such performance metrics include assessments of important SE strategy people components (e.g., user satisfaction) and the usage of tools that enhance performance (e.g., sales content usage). Nuanced metrics aligned with salesperson goals may also appraise the team’s ability to function and work alongside narrow measures of individual performance (see Rangarajan et al. 2020). Collectively, the scope of SE’s sales playbooks requires that KPIs be regularly translated, updated, and adapted to reflect the desired output at all levels of the organization.

Sales enablement strategy process components

The process components of SE strategy involve the firm’s ability to coordinate SE efforts across functions, customers, and vendors. From a strategic perspective, SE processes reflect intrafirm coordination (i.e., the requirement that salespeople work closely with multiple functional areas within the firm) and ownership of SE (i.e., the decision facing firms to locate their SE initiatives under the purview of marketing, sales operations, or another functional area) (Rangarajan et al. 2020). In extending this perspective, we find that the process components of SE strategy include content management, cross-functional interfaces, and strategy alignment (see Table 3).

Content management

Organizations must manage market intelligence and organizational knowledge from various sources (Claro, Ramos, and Palmatier 2023). The volume, velocity, and variety of materials generated and integrated by salespeople have increased over the past several years. Organizational learning clarifies the manner in which content created by sales representatives can be shared for firm gain (Chonko et al. 2003) as well as how emergent insights can impact behavioral change for other firm stakeholders (Slater and Narver 1995). Organizational learning that occurs by developing and leveraging content meant to facilitate collaboration is a core strategy of SE. Further, a company’s value proposition and competitive advantage are sustained when the resources it uses are valuable, unique, and irreplaceable; a key asset is the organizational knowledge gained from previous strategy and choices (Grant 1996). The SE typology component of content management similarly involves creating, storing, accessing, and distributing content to support sales process effectiveness.

At the top management level, this component includes the firm directing the shared development, cultivation, and organization of collateral resources. In the context of utilizing social media as a marketing tool within sales strategy, senior-level ownership and integration across functions is required (Andzulis, Panagopoulos, and Rapp 2012). Agnihotri (2020) found that the viewing organizational knowledge as a competitive advantage is needed to integrate social media into the sales strategy. Thus, SE strategy components concerning content and knowledge management must originate within the higher levels of the organization so that firm structure can support its messaging, resourcing, and development. In turn, the sales force has less urgency to generate its own collateral materials, and the resources they use are more effective because they reflect identified best practices.

Content management likewise requires sales managers to guide how organizational knowledge is utilized in developing sales materials and to direct how the sales force implements consistent messaging concerning the firm’s competitive advantages. Sales managers are essential to bridging the necessary inputs of content management (e.g., identifying effective materials developed on the frontline, motivating salespeople to share materials) with the intended outputs of content management (e.g., connecting materials to strategic initiatives at the senior level, encouraging salespeople to leverage available resources). Once strategic decisions are made regarding the content management associated with SE, functional-level managers need to help develop and apply organizational knowledge. Such tasks are critical as sales managers have oversight responsibility for assuring the sales force’s strategy application and messaging in a manner that aligns with organizational strategy (Malshe 2009).

At the salesperson level, the role of these boundary-spanning stakeholders encompasses the evolving components of SE strategy, technologies, and infrastructure critical to their work life. As noted by Le Meunier-Fitz Hugh and Piercy (2006), salespeople transfer intimate knowledge to develop sales content, product information, and messaging frameworks by providing competitive intelligence and customer information vis-à-vis internal selling. Salespeople also translate content to match the needs of specific customers.

Cross-functional interfaces

When SE strategy process components reflect change management principles, the focus shifts to cross-functional interfaces. SE requires implementing new tactics and processes throughout the sales organization, in collaboration with other functions. This process requires change, and the sales organization must manage the various interfaces throughout the firm that the sales function coordinates with. Cross-functional interfaces reflect various aspects of intrafirm coordination. For example, SE represents the strategy efforts that stakeholders must extend toward integrating activities and learning across functional areas, combining efforts between inside and outside sales forces, and aligning with customers and markets.

At the strategic level, top management orchestrates the integration of various interfaces. These cross-functional interfaces are required to align processes at myriad stages and levels of sales strategy (Hughes, Le Bon, and Malshe 2012). Given that sales and marketing are two traditional functions interacting during strategy implementation processes (Malshe et al. 2022), the sales-marketing interface has emerged as a well-studied cross-functional group, although other functional interfaces are also important. Scholarship has identified various challenges and rewards among the coordinating efforts across these functional areas (Homburg, Jensen, and Krohmer 2008; Hughes, Le Bon, and Malshe 2012; Malshe and Sohi 2009). Cross-functional interfaces require orchestrating integration across varied stages of the sales cadence, with SE serving this coordinating function (Wiersema 2013). Recent research suggests that SE has the ability to assimilate across functions (Peterson and Dover 2020), further supporting top management’s need to understand of SE strategy. Additionally, cross-functional interfaces should be responsible for assuring organization-wide understanding of SE strategy. Top management’s commitment to SE, along with its development of communication programs about SE strategy, contribute to a common understanding of SE (Lauzi et al. 2023).

At the managerial level, cross-functional interfaces involve sales managers connecting with other functional leaders to coordinate the sales cadence and empower the field force. SE strategy by nature requires coordination across functional areas (Peterson et al. 2021), and the “ownership” of SE ambiguously shifts within firms as it moves from a technology to a sales function to a firm-wide enablement consideration. Therefore, functional leaders must coordinate to ensure that the sales force is empowered to implement the change (Hughes, Le Bon, and Malshe 2012). However, sales managers should note an increase in achieved firm expectations among organizations with formal SE structures, signifying the benefits of establishing goals and supporting frameworks (Matthews and Schenk 2018). Scholarship focused on the coordination of SE strategy’s activities and ownership can generate insights on how sales managers respond to and establish best practices for formalizing SE structures.

Salespeople also employ cross-functional strategy components in internal sales navigation (Claro and Ramos 2018). For example, the sales force is responsible for internal coordination and internal selling to represent customer interests, and marshals the resources needed to gain support for sales tasks with other organizational functions (Le Meunier-Fitz Hugh and Piercy 2006). At this level of engagement, cross-functional interfaces involve salespeople determining which organizational functions support their sales tasks and pinpointing who possesses the requisite resources they need to perform their roles. However, due to factors such as differing roles and worldviews, these interfacing stakeholders often falter (Biemans, Malshe, and Johnson 2022). Salespeople’s internal coordination abilities impact how much they can promote teamwork with peers in other functions to support customer outcomes (Steward et al. 2010), thus maximizing SE process effectiveness. Adding to the complexity of these interfaces is that salespeople are not independently engaging with stakeholders across the marketing, service, finance, R&D, and manufacturing functions. SE strategy offers an opportunity to assess the simultaneous interfaces that salespeople must navigate and the joint outcomes that the organization values.

Strategy alignment

Given the need to coordinate both firm strategy with ever-evolving marketplace demands, and the continuous improvements required for performance, change management is fundamental to our SE typology component of strategy alignment. SE change management programs will aim to measure SE’s alignment with the overall mission of the organization. At the organizational level, this component reflects top management’s need to assess varying approaches to the marketplace and improve firm processes via implementation of SE—all with the goal of attaining performance expectations. SE offers a framework for melding the external shifts requiring attention with the internal capabilities of the firm.

Sales managers must then align their departmental goals with a broader organizational strategy (Lauzi et al. 2023), representing a link between organizational strategy and the individual salesperson’s engagement with that strategy. In this role, managers trigger a chain of strategic alignment to encourage salespeople to coordinate their behaviors with the firm strategy (Inyang and Jaramillo 2020). Managerial support is critical to seller perceptions of technology-related strategy (Speier and Venkatesh 2002). As a challenge, both sales organizations and their managers must balance the frequency, magnitude, and implementation speed with which they make strategic changes (see Johnson, Friend, and Agrawal 2016)—e.g., while frequent and quickly implemented changes to SE strategy better reflect market conditions to maximize performance, hasty and continuous changes will face pushback from salespeople. At the salesperson level, strategy alignment ensures that SE strategy supports both the evolving individual-level mission and customer needs. Relatedly, the SE process model developed by Peterson et al. (2021) identifies five steps necessary for bridging the diverse intra-firm activities needed to enable salespeople.

External contingency factors (market adaptations) and performance indicators (process assessment)

Market adaptations—i.e., accommodations made in SE strategy in response to multiple cultural, legal, and political landscapes, as well as industry-specific variations—affect SE and change management. Furthermore, across levels of the firm, measuring the performance of SE strategy process components (process assessment) is important to ensure forward momentum and continued strategy implementation. Since the effectiveness of salesperson content management may be mitigated where a firm’s technological infrastructure is constrained—e.g., when investment in data-sharing systems is low, understanding the contextual role of forces like the technological infrastructure is vital to unpacking how SE strategy will operate in various internal and external sales environments.

At the organizational level, process-related performance indicators can assess resource allocation and access. The varying performance of marketing approaches can also be captured. At the functional level, measuring messaging dissemination and consistency will pinpoint collaboration across functions, a key success metric of SE strategy process components. For example, the effectiveness of the sales cadence and connection to prospects should improve with increasing cross-functional collaboration, resulting in improved interchanges with prospects. Understanding how much sales and marketing coordinate efforts through SE processes will require assessing the integration of SE process components across the organization.

Sales managers can integrate updates on progress within the SE processes during team meetings and annual performance evaluations. Progress updates involving SE mechanisms could allow sales managers to determine how much each salesperson is aligned or contributing to the corporate mission, along with how effectively each one enacts the corporate strategy through collaborating with other functions. Tracking SE strategy process components across teams accelerates understanding its impact across the organization (Weinstein and Mullins 2012).

Furthermore, performance indicators for individual level processes should measure the alignment between the corporate level strategy, customer needs, and sales processes. Enablement performance evaluation is among those stages comprising Peterson et al. (2021) process model for intrafirm activity integration. This stage of the model includes tracking new salesperson capabilities and the potential to assess previously unattainable sales process KPIs. Process assessment can happen at many key junctures of the sales process and salesperson development. For example, during onboarding, sales training assessments can gauge how clearly salespeople understand the expectations related to the organization’s SE processes. However, what is not measured is generally not tracked, which necessitates that firms evaluate SE strategy process components at multiple stages (Hughes, Le Bon, and Malshe 2012).

Sales enablement strategy system components

From a strategic perspective, SE systems include leveraging technology for performance (i.e., optimally using sales technology to move customers through the sales cycle more efficiently and effectively) and developing policies and systems to assure that technology is diffused and accessible. There are natural synergies between system components and peripheral lines of literature. Specifically, we find that SE strategy system components include the sales tech stack and technology diffusion (see Table 3).

Sales tech stack

The composition and effectiveness of sales tech stack development drives SE technology adoption. Relatedly, technology adoption leads to enhanced performance. While the development and capabilities of SE technology are striking, a coordinated system of SE technology is critical to optimizing sales. For the optimal gains and efficiencies to be realized from a sales tech stack, organizational leadership, sales managers, and salespeople must use it. Technology adoption literature examines how sales tech stack components contribute to the success of SE strategy.

Typically, investing in and utilizing technologies that enable sales are strategy component decisions made by top management. At the organizational level, this component is impacted by resource allocations, including those related to SE and technology support (Ahearne, Srinivasan, and Weinstein 2004). In addition to intrafirm coordination and SE ownership, top management strategy decisions related to resource allocation must consider budgeting for, acquiring, and repurposing technology systems that enable sales and the SE function when integrating systems. Prevailing wisdom emphasizes the criticality of senior-level support—e.g., top management backing of sales force automation to foster its effectiveness (Rivers and Dart 1999). While research has established the potential resistance to new technology implementation (e.g., Alavi and Habel 2021; Guenzi and Nijssen 2021; Pullins, Tarafdar, and Pham 2020), change management principles have the potential to design tech stack implementation that will be more readily acceptable and encounter less technostress.

Sales managers must translate the firm’s strategic decisions into implementation tasks and facilitate salesperson utilization of the sales tech stack (Schillewaert et al. 2005). Throughout the process, they must consider SE elements like ease of adoption, levels of access to customer information, and compatibility with various customer processes to successfully implement the sales tech stack. Simultaneously, salespeople must employ strategy components to leverage the technology that supports SE efforts. At the salesperson level, the sales tech stack involves both access to new tools and current technology solutions that support SE strategy. Salespeople adopt new technologies through prioritization and goal setting. They also strategize how to facilitate customer use when their sales tech stack requires customer change or shifting from channel partners downstream. The sales tech stack component of SE strategy generates overlapping implications for salespeople and sales managers alike (e.g., reductions in the size of the sales force support staff while maintaining overall output expectations).

Technology diffusion

Sales organizations must also determine how to use SE technology to align their goals with customers’ needs. SE systems strategy borrows from technology adoption literature to support the typology component of its technology diffusion. Leadership’s attitude toward change greatly influences how technology is diffused throughout an organization. While top management must consider how internal characteristics (e.g., complexity of the organization, interconnectedness, centrality of decision making) impact the widespread use of technology, its focus should not be limited to diffusion within the organization. They should also consider how technology is utilized among channel partners who engage with the sales team (Keeling, Cox, and de Ruyter 2020; Montecchi et al. 2022; Plangger et al. 2020). This spillover of technology diffusion into other organizations requires making considerations around information sharing between firms—e.g., firm-by-firm regulations regarding the data sharing. Sales managers serve as a lynchpin, customizing organizational strategies at different stages of technology usage to ensure that salespeople can achieve KPIs. Various aspects of the sales manager’s span of control impact how effectively such strategic components of SE manifest.

Due to the nature of this component that relies on the salesperson’s role, it is critical that salespeople encourage technology diffusion. Social influence from salespeople is effective in this regard and helps to achieve team-level goals (Schillewaert et al. 2005). In another aspect, salespeople directly interface with customers and thus impact both customer perceptions of technology usefulness, as well as their likely adoption of them. For example, salespeople with learning orientations are well-suited to influence diffusion across the organization (Jelinek et al. 2006). Technology use in sales teams can also be achieved via modeling and early adopter behaviors (Homburg, Wieseke, and Kuehnl 2010). Such links between the sales manager, salespeople, and technology are critical in a teaming context (Weinstein and Mullins 2012).

External contingency factors (technological readiness) and performance indicators (technology penetration)

Technological readiness involves the accessibility and regulation of technology. The components and application of performance analytics are affected by how much technological readiness limits or enhances a firm’s autonomy to implement technological changes or adjustments. They are also influenced by how much such readiness enhances the way technology can be used to facilitate interfirm collaboration and dictate the pathways used to connect the customer’s buying process with the mechanisms that support sales. As we reviewed the technology adoption literature stream, several important metrics that assess the success of SE strategy system components emerged (technology penetration).

The measures of technology adoption, diffusion, and usage throughout the organization indicate the tech stack and technology diffusion performance at the organizational level. The effectiveness of KPIs is impacted by how widely the relevant technology is used. Top management needs to measure the acceptance and usage of SE technology throughout the organization (Jelinek et al. 2006). Additionally, KPIs can assess the acceptance of corporate technologies and their impact on sales performance. Measuring the role that SE systems play in allowing cross-functional collaboration, particularly in work-from-home and hybrid work situations, can clearly indicate success (Jelinek et al. 2006). Greater collaboration in using the technology tools manifests adoption and diffusion across the organization. Further, sales managers must also translate technology diffusion metrics to their sales teams, which requires customization when acceptance is contextually bound (Phillips, Calantone, and Lee 1994).

Individual level performance indicators also assess systems strategy success by considering both individual usage rates and team goals achieved through technology systems. Tracking which enablement technologies are used as well as the frequency and duration of use provides insights on adoption and diffusion, and also impacts future organizational SE strategy decisions about which technologies to adopt, endorse, or remove. While other metrics may explore how customers react to SE technologies, the success of SE strategy system components hinges on both technology adoption by salespeople and customer’s acceptance of such technologies (Mangus et al. 2024).

Sales enablement strategy research agenda

Across the people, process, and system components involved in SE strategy, precisely how the sales organization interfaces with each typology component, remains unclear. As future research advances our typology, scholars should account for how variations within the sales organization impact firm initiatives, sales manager commitment, and salesperson adoption of SE strategy. Rangarajan et al. (2020) noted that scholarship should aim for sales performance metrics and structures ideal for incentivizing the behaviors necessary to SE success. There is also a need to evaluate how useful such metrics are for appraising SE performance, and how these assessments need to be adapted across contexts. Theory could thus be extended to account for how forces external to the sales organization interact with the internal forces of SE strategy components. In building from our emergent SE strategy typology, we develop a scholarship agenda that includes example research questions associated with each strategy component in Table 4.

Table 4. Exemplar research questions via sales enablement typology.

	Organizational strategy	Performance indicators	External contingency factors
Sales enablement people strategy components	What sales organization structures are most amenable to producing ongoing role adjustments and updating workforce technology capability? Under what conditions does training and development—driven by SE strategy—most narrow the performance gap? How do salespeople leverage SE learning systems to promote personal learning?	What measures are most predictive of adoption and usefulness of SE technologies presented as part of people development? How do the type and size of salesperson knowledge gaps impact the sales manager’s ability to optimize performance metric goals? Which salesperson orientations will most substantively impact a willingness to adopt stage-based performance evaluations and micro-KPIs critical to the assessment of enabled sales initiatives?	How should SE strategy people components be adapted for cross-regional and cultural differences? How can cross-regional knowledge inform sales organizations on how to map sales processes with customer journeys? How does cross-regional knowledge impact the extent to which role adjustments are made by salespeople?
Sales enablement process strategy components	What impacts top management’s ability to assure consistent collateral resource messaging throughout the firm? Which middle management cross-functional relationships most benefit from sales force empowerment? To what extent does access to buyer persona profiles and customer journey mapping impact how salespeople align strategy for different customer types?	What factors incentivize and impact process assessment of sales processes (inputs) and desired outcomes (outputs)? Which contextual elements affect whether process assessment adaptations support or detract from strategic alignment? What is the critical incidence point in which industry dynamics impact process assessment?	How do market adaptations impact the efficacy of consistent messaging in collateral resources throughout the firm? How do variations in market adaptations affect the sales manager’s ability to translate SE strategy into meaningful operational implementation? What aspects of market adaptation are most critical to strategy alignment by salespeople for individual customers?
Sales enablement system strategy components	How do organizational leaders determine, implement, audit, and update the appropriate sales tech stack? How can sales managers ensure that departmental goals align with organizational strategies to minimize technostress? How do salespeople identify technological tools to support their goal achievement?	What is the best way to translate technology penetration rates into adapting the content and utilizing the sales tech stack? How should sales managers track the desirable velocity of enabled sales initiatives that best translate into technology diffusion among their sales teams? How do patterns of SE technology diffusion impact sales manager abilities to establish goals for individual salespeople?	Under what local technology conditions are technological adjustments optimized in response to marketplace demands? What attributes of technological readiness most benefit sales force aims to increase customer engagement? How does technological readiness affect how sales representatives identify technological tools to support goal achievement?

Conclusion

This conceptual scholarship aims to advance SE research by developing a typology of SE strategy components, supplemented with performance indicators and external contingency factors. Following frameworks and suggestions to start with the phenomenon, topic, or problem (e.g., MacInnis 2011), we review the extant SE literature as well as subsets of related literature to integrate frameworks across disciplines and provide new insights. Sohi, Haas, and Davis (2022) posed the need for such conceptual sales research to enhance current sales theory. Top management and sales managers may also find the component typology to be valuable in practice. Specifically, our typology provides a background for creating, analyzing, updating, and assessing SE strategy within an organization. It further reveals the impact that various components have on the integration of SE initiatives throughout the firm as well as considerations and evaluations of the system. Taken together, this research makes several contributions to the emerging research area of SE.

We first provide a detailed review of current SE conceptualizations. We also expand extant knowledge by incorporating SE strategy stemming from GTM strategy, organizational learning, change management, and technology adoption. These results form the basis for a typology of SE strategy components. This typology inherently identifies the strategic components of SE, which helps to define the SE construct and illustrate the boundaries of what is and is not included within SE strategy. The typology fills scholarly knowledge gaps related to each subdomain and offers practical managerial guideposts.

Additionally, we contribute to the development of SE theory. We define SE strategy as a firmwide strategy directing resource allocation, integrating firm culture, and creating operations that empower the sales function. A successful SE strategy centers itself in the firm’s capabilities and allows salespeople to capitalize. Additionally, we consider external factors that may create contingency factors on the design of SE strategy components. Coupled with performance indicators, we can better consider how the firm continuously adapts SE strategy to meet changing conditions (Matthews and Schenk 2018). Further, in creating the typology, we integrate levels of analysis (top management, sales management, salesperson) to address gaps in the implementation of SE strategy. We also address the expressed need to delineate SE from CRM (Peterson et al. 2021) by demonstrating where ownership and leadership of the SE function exist within firms. The typology highlights scholarship gaps; identifies SE leadership, cross-functional coordination, and resource allocation considerations for managerial use; and provides a set of research questions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).