Sales enablement isn’t just a support function anymore; it’s a measurable, strategic driver of revenue growth. In this episode of Coach2Scale, Pam Dake, Senior Director of Go-To-Market Enablement at Menlo Security, shares how enablement must evolve from ad hoc product training into a disciplined, data-driven engine that shrinks sales cycles, improves pipeline velocity, and makes forecast calls more predictable. Pam challenges outdated views of enablement as an “art” form and shows why top organizations are treating it as a science rooted in customer outcomes, operational consistency, and frontline manager empowerment. Listeners will walk away with clear strategies for transforming enablement into a competitive advantage: focusing on buyer needs instead of product specs, creating scalable and repeatable coaching frameworks, driving real behavior change at the rep level, and equipping frontline managers to move beyond firefighting into true people development. If you’re a CRO or sales leader under pressure to deliver results faster and with fewer resources, this conversation is a must-listen.
Most sales leaders say coaching matters.
Most frontline managers say they’re coaching.
And yet, pipeline stages stall, forecasts wobble, and talent development remains a wish rather than a plan.
On a recent episode of Coach2Scale, I sat down with Pam Dake, Senior Director of Go-To-Market Enablement at Menlo Security, to talk about why enablement needs to stop being treated like an afterthought and start being treated like a hard revenue lever. Pam’s experience building enablement functions from scratch inside scaling tech companies gave us real-world insight into what’s working, and what’s not, for organizations that want consistent sales performance.
Here’s what every CRO needs to take away from the conversation.
Enablement Is a Science, Not an Art
If you still see enablement as a soft skill function or a quarterly training event, you’re already falling behind.
Pam laid it out plainly: Enablement today is a discipline. It’s grounded in measurable metrics, deal velocity, stage duration improvements, and first meeting-to-second meeting conversion rates. Companies that are winning are the ones using data to tie enablement directly to sales outcomes, not just activity.
Coaching isn’t a feel-good initiative. It’s a business-critical input to the forecast.
Product Training ≠ Sales Enablement
Pam was blunt about this. Product training might make a rep sound smart for 20 minutes. Real enablement prepares reps to understand buyer problems, tailor conversations to real-world challenges, and advance deals in a way that shortens sales cycles and grows customer value.
Organizations that treat enablement like a new hire checklist are wasting time. Modern enablement is about shifting behavior, not just sharing information.
Frontline Managers Are Drowning, and It’s Killing Performance
Pam nailed something every CRO knows but few fix: most managers aren’t coaching. They’re managing deals, updating Salesforce, and chasing down forecasts.
The result? Skill gaps grow wider, reps plateau, and the pipeline becomes a shallow puddle.
Managers need frameworks, tools, and time to coach consistently if you expect your reps to improve. If you want better revenue outcomes, you need to equip your managers to build people, not just manage numbers.
Consistency Beats Flavor-of-the-Month Programs
Random acts of enablement don’t scale.
Pam stressed the importance of predictability, having a consistent cadence for enablement programs, team communications, and coaching motions.
The companies that move fastest aren’t doing more; they’re doing less noise and more targeted execution.
Enablement should feel like a steady drumbeat inside your GTM organization, not like a series of surprise flash mobs.
Enablement Is the Hidden Competitive Advantage
Done right, enablement becomes the connective tissue between sales, marketing, product, customer success, and rev ops.
It shortens internal misalignments. It drives better external execution.
It arms reps with the exact insights they need at the right moment to win deals.
Pam shared how enablement plugged into product launch motions, forecast calls, and opportunity pursuits helped teams move from reactive to proactive, and from second place to closed-won.
Lessons for CROs
Here’s the hard truth:
If your managers aren’t coaching, your reps aren’t growing.
If your reps aren’t growing, your forecast is lying to you.
And if your forecast is lying to you, you’re playing defense every quarter.
Sales enablement isn’t overhead; it’s strategy execution at scale.
CoachEm exists to make that scalable, predictable, and data-driven.
Pam’s conversation is a must-listen for any CRO serious about creating a team that wins the right way and keeps winning.
Listen to the full episode of Coach to Scale: “The Science of Sales Enablement: How to Shrink Sales Cycles and Tighten Forecasts”www.coachem.io
