Manager enablement: the revenue lever you forgot about
Why your sales managers need enablement as much as your reps do.
Most companies train their reps and hope managers will “just coach”.
Spoiler: they don’t - and your shiny new programs die in 3 weeks.
Even the best-designed enablement program will fail if your frontline revenue managers aren’t reinforcing the change. And when I say managers, I’m thinking Sales Managers, Customer Success Managers, Partner Managers - the people who own revenue outcomes.
The hidden adoption killer
Managers are the bridge between strategy and execution. They control what gets talked about in team meetings, what gets coached, and what gets rewarded. Without them, all your beautiful assets and training fade into “remember that one workshop we did"?” territory.
High-quality sales coaching can elevate quota attainment by up to 19% - but most companies still skip enabling their revenue managers entirely. (Source)
3 ways to involve revenue managers from day one
#1 Give them the toolkit first
Managers should see the assets, success metrics, and coaching guides before the reps do. If they don’t understand it, they can’t reinforce it.
#2 Get their buy-in before launch
Invite managers to help shape the rollout plan. People support what they help create.
#3 Clear their calendar
The best coaching toolkit is useless if they have zero time to use it. Identify their bandwidth before launch - and adjust the plan so reinforcement fits into their actual week.
What happens when you skip it vs. when you get it right
A few years ago, I rolled out a new product for the teams to sell, upsell, and cross-sell. We had everything: pitch deck, one-pagers, talk tracks, onboarding, checklists - all high quality, easy to follow.
What we didn’t have? Managers’ time. Their role wasn’t fully defined in the process, and we didn’t account for their bandwidth.
The result: great materials, but poor adoption.
Fast forward to another rollout. This time, we had less bandwidth for perfect assets. Instead, I focused on the managers:
Sitting in on their coaching sessions
Checking how much time they had each week to reinforce change
Ensuring they could explain and champion the new process themselves
The result? Better adoption and stronger performance - because instead of one enablement person driving change, we had dozens of managers multiplying the message across their teams.
Manager enablement is not optional
If you want adoption to stick, you have to enable the enablers.
Every Scaling Edge program builds manager enablement into the rollout - because nothing scales faster than the people who already lead your revenue teams.
I’ve seen teams waste months on enablement programs that never stick. The Enablement Handbook will get you started - and Scaling Edge will make it work to the real world.
Curious what this could look like for your team? Let’s set up a quick intro call.
