Product Management: Foundations to Practice · Go-to-Market Strategy
Sales and Marketing Enablement
A genuinely strong feature can underperform commercially simply because the team selling it couldn't explain its value. This chapter covers what enablement actually requires.
Enablement means equipping sales and customer-facing teams with the materials and knowledge they need to sell and support a product effectively, including talking points, competitive comparisons, common objection responses, and clear guidance on which customer segments the product or feature is genuinely well suited for, and just as importantly, which segments it is not a good fit for.
Key Takeaways
- Enablement includes talking points, competitive comparisons, objection handling, and clear guidance on ideal-fit and poor-fit segments.
- A PM's deep familiarity with a feature makes its value feel obvious, which is exactly why the enablement gap is invisible to them.
- Enablement should happen before launch, since early poorly handled sales conversations are hard to fully undo later.
- Enablement should be a two-way channel, since sales and customer success surface valuable market feedback the product team would otherwise miss.