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6 Helpful LinkedIn Groups for Sales Enablement Managers

Aug 03rd, 2018

Recent years have shown formal sales enablement functions quickly becoming more prevalent in sales organizations. In fact, 59.2% of companies reported having a dedicated sales enablement program or employee in 2017, according to CSO Insights – an increase of nearly 40% since 2013.

Yet with new leaders joining the profession’s ranks every year, many could stand to benefit from some good, old-fashioned peer learning. And one of the best tools for sales enablement managers to talk strategy, ask questions, exchange ideas and discuss key challenges is LinkedIn.

LinkedIn Groups are a particularly useful forum for sales enablement practitioners to connect with a large peer audience and build their networks. Some groups might be geared more towards content sharing, while others might be supported by a specific organization, but most of them are generally built for this exact purpose. Read on for a list of our favorites and join the conversation!

Sales Enablement Society

  • Members: 2,200
  • Group Owner: Scott Santucci, Chairman and President, Sales Enablement Society
  • Request to Join Here

Founded in 2016, the Sales Enablement Society is a non-profit volunteer organization that maintains chapters in several different countries and U.S. cities. The Society’s focus is “elevating the role of sales enablement in organizations worldwide through engagement, communication, research, and development.”

Among those community efforts is a 4-day sales enablement event: the 2018 Annual Conference, which will take place in Denver from Sept. 16-19. (Brainshark is a sponsor of this year’s event!)

In addition to the primary Sales Enablement Society LinkedIn group, there are several smaller Society groups for particular cities or countries, such as Boston, the U.K. and the Netherlands. The Society also supports a community web site that enables members to share expertise and advice without being self-promotional.

ATD Sales Enablement Community

The Association for Talent Development (ATD) is dedicated to supporting any professionals responsible for training and talent development at their companies. And while their scope is broad, sales enablement has recently become a key focus of ATD, with the organization even hosting a sales enablement-focused event this November (ATD Sell Conference).

While ATD regularly posts content and thought leadership on its Sales Enablement Community hub, this LinkedIn group is an active extension of that community. Content sharing and announcements make up a solid portion of the feed, but there are also members who will ask questions about specific topics, such as video editing software or other tools that can support sales enablement teams.

Front-Line Training and Enablement

This independent group bills itself as the “largest and most active” space for training and enablement professionals on LinkedIn, covering topics that apply to both sales and customer service teams.

Perhaps most notably, the forum has a handful of rules meant to promote better discussion and idea sharing, including a requirement that all new conversation posts be posed in the form of a question. Links to blogs, articles, promotions or other content are also not allowed when starting a new conversation.

Sales Enablement Leader Exchange

  • Members: 8,500
  • Group Owner: Brian Lambert, Senior Director of Enablement & Readiness, Charter Communications
  • Request to Join Here

Sales Enablement Leader Exchange is another independent LinkedIn group weighted more toward content-sharing than discussions or debate. The group’s stated intent is to foster collaboration among sales enablement leaders, with a focus on ideas around “sales operational excellence, sales team development, sales and marketing messaging, and sales technology effectiveness.

Sales Enablement Content

  • Members: 3,300
  • Group Manager: Eric Nitschke, Director of Sales Enablement and Product Marketing, Corporate Visions
  • Request to Join Here

The Sales Enablement Content LinkedIn group sets itself apart by specifically focusing on the creation of “meaningful content” that is used and distributed by the sales enablement function. In addition, the group description explicitly states that it is less concerned with the usage of sales enablement technology tools.

This group is (fittingly) mostly geared toward sharing content. However, given the narrow scope of the topic, it is generally less active than some other groups on this list.

Sales Management Association

  • Members: 41,800
  • Group Owner: Bob Kelly, Chairman, Sales Management Association
  • Request to Join Here

The Sales Management Association (SMA) is not specifically focused on sales enablement, but enablement is one of the many sales management-related topics the organization covers. The SMA works to promote “professional development, peer networking, best practice research, and thought leadership in an effort to help all professionals who support, manage, coach, and lead sales organizations.”

As for its LinkedIn group, there are a handful of rules designed to allow for meaningful conversation and insight-sharing. One requirement is that all new conversations should promote content related to sales ops, sales enablement, commercial effectiveness, sales leadership or another function that supports sales teams.

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