Learning Sales Enablement Without a Playbook| Irina Soriano

June 17, 2020·32 min·3 clips

Irina Soriano reveals why sales enablement is about building a strategy, not just being the fire department.

Enablement needs a charter first. Irina Soriano argues that sales enablement has to be built on purpose, or it turns into the fire department for whatever problem just landed. That difference is where ROI starts to get real. The conversation keeps circling one question: is enablement answering random requests, or building a system that helps sellers get better? New hires come first. She separates them from existing hires, then asks what people need the moment they arrive. Onboarding cannot be a loose pile of links and good intentions. She talks about bootcamps, methodology training, and later courses as service offerings that can run monthly or quarterly. The test is repeatability. Can the same program be delivered again, improved with feedback, and scaled without becoming a mystery every time? Existing hires need another lane. Their enablement work follows business changes: a new product, a new store, a new competitor, or a serious competitive threat. Some of that has to move quickly. Some of it is slower, building knowledge, skills, and confidence over six, twelve, or eighteen months. When the host asks where a multi-location retail business should begin, Irina brings it back to the split between new hires and existing hires. Look at when people are hired, trained, moved into other roles, and put under new business pressure. Motivation is still part of the job too. Near the end, she remembers community efforts that got people talking outside normal deal work and gave the team a bit more energy.

As heard by us

A practical case for treating sales enablement as a repeatable service, not a fire drill.

Sales enablement is presented as a deliberate service, not an emergency fix: a repeatable charter for helping the organization work better. Irina Soriano is strongest when she draws a line between baseline enablement and situational responses, then ties that work to onboarding,…

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You need a cleaner way to build enablement before you turn into the fire department.

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