👋 Welcome to another issue of The Enablement Edge newsletter!
It’s packed full of great insights:
- 1 Piece of Tech – What can AI sales copilots REALLY do?
- 1 Best Practice – Building a feedback culture in enablement
- 1 Key Challenge – What do our stakeholders struggle with?
- 1 Reflective Insight – When enablement is reactive, look up
🧑💻 Piece of Tech
AI sales copilots are one of the most misunderstood (and under-used) categories in sales tech today.
Everyone’s heard the term.
But few really grasp what these tools can do or the level of impact they can have across the revenue organisation.
Some think they’re just glorified note-takers.
Others expect a magic button that’ll run their whole sales process.
In reality, both of these are equally off the mark.
In my latest article – wrote in partnership with Glyphic – I break down what a true AI sales copilot actually is (with 27 clear use cases) and why the right one can be a game-changer for your revenue team.
I’m not talking about basic call recording or another chatbot in your CRM.
I’m talking about an intelligent layer that supports your team before, during, and after every customer interaction.
Here’s a taste of what’s possible (and there’s plenty more in the full piece):
1. AI sales copilots listen to every customer conversation (QBRs, onboarding, renewal check-ins) and flag subtle churn-risk signals that most teams miss, like a champion quietly admitting, “We haven’t had time to roll this out.”
This results in fewer surprises at renewal time, more accounts saved, and a tighter feedback loop between customer success, product, and revenue teams.
2. No more guessing why deals are won or lost.
AI copilots track every objection, competitor mention, and feature request across all your sales calls, then surface clear patterns:
“Here’s the objection that derails most £50k+ deals.”
“These are the talk tracks top performers use to close.”
Instead of relying on patchy CRM notes or anecdotal feedback, you get actionable, data-backed insights that can shape messaging, guide coaching, and directly influence your go-to-market strategy.
3. How many times has a follow-up slipped through the cracks after a busy sales call?
AI copilots automatically capture every action item, such as: “Send proposal,” “Loop in CTO,” “Buyer to review contract”, and tie them to the right deal.
Reps get a clear, prioritised task list for each account, with no need to dig through notes or rely on memory.
The result is fewer dropped balls, smoother handoffs, and deals that keep moving forward without the admin headache.
And that’s just the start.
There are dozens more ways AI copilots are already making a difference for modern sales teams.
Curious about the rest?
Check out the full article for the complete list of use case and see how the right AI copilot could quietly become your team’s biggest competitive advantage.
✅ Best Practice
If you want your enablement team to genuinely drive performance, you need more than just open-door policies and occasional surveys.
You need a living, breathing feedback culture where feedback is actively expected and acted upon.
Make feedback the norm, not the exception
As Paz Petraglia shared for my article on enablement best practices:
“Encourage an environment where salespeople are expected and encouraged to provide feedback on the materials and support they receive.”
In other words, don’t just ask for feedback after a big launch. Build regular feedback loops into every programme, session, and asset you roll out.
Show that feedback leads to action.
In that same article, Woody Walker’s shared her approach that goes beyond collecting opinions:
“I’ve been focusing on ensuring our sellers feel appreciated and heard… and finally listening to their feedback on what makes serving our customers more difficult and removing those obstacles.”
When reps see their suggestions lead to real changes, such as simpler processes, better resources, and less “seller drag”, they’re far more likely to keep sharing.
Always follow up, even if you can’t implement every suggestion.
Be transparent about what’s changing, what isn’t, and why.
Empower managers as feedback conduits
Frontline managers are closest to the daily friction points and emerging opportunities in your sales org, but they often need structure to capture and escalate what matters.
Equip them with clear expectations, lightweight tools (like monthly feedback forms or recurring team debrief prompts), and a defined process to surface themes upwards.
Don’t just ask them to “gather feedback” – train them on how to spot patterns, facilitate open dialogue in 1:1s or retros, and frame insights in ways that drive cross-functional action.
When managers feel ownership in the feedback loop – not just as messengers but as co-designers of change – feedback becomes a natural, continuous part of team culture.
Use multiple channels to gather feedback
This one feels a bit basic as a tip, but too often, the simplest stuff is overlooked.
Namely, not everyone wants to fill out a survey or speak up in a group.
We need to make it easy for people to share their thoughts by offering a mix of options: quick polls, Slack threads, live Q&A sessions, call reviews, or simple one-to-ones.
The more accessible and varied our channels, the more likely we are to capture honest, useful insights from across the team.
🔑 Key Challenge
Usually, when I do a section on challenges here in the newsletter, I tend to focus on things that hamper us as enablement professionals.
However, for this issue, I wanted to do something different.
I wanted to share what I discovered to be the biggest challenges that our main stakeholders are dealing with on a daily basis.
After all, we are all in this together, and if we can make their lives easier, our lives become easier too 🙂
That’s why I reached out to a number of sales leaders, sales managers, and sales ops leaders and asked them to share their biggest challenges.
You can read what people who’ve led teams at companies like Google, Microsoft, Samsung, Forrester, NetSuite, and Confluent told me in the following articles:
Here are some quotes from the articles as a teaser:
“A key challenge is keeping the cost of customer acquisition at an acceptable level. It’s important to focus on sales fundamentals before investing in tools. Sales organizations often get caught up in trying to find the latest sales tools, but these tools will not be effective if the underlying sales processes and practices are not in place.”
“Leadership relies on accurate, real-time data to make informed business decisions, forecast revenue, and identify growth opportunities, but ensuring that data is both reliable and actionable without overburdening account executives or sales managers is a major challenge.”
“You must focus on all 3 of these aspects of being a leader. But not too much of one or the other. If you’re too positive, you become “toxic” or “overly” positive. If you’re too realistic, you’re negative. If you hold people accountable “too often”, you’re a micro-manager. You have to make sure you’re balancing these characteristics well at all times and playing the right cards at the right time.”
I’ve found that putting myself in the shoes of our stakeholders can do wonders for our collaboration and help position enablement as a strategic contributor to the entire GTM unit.
💭 Reflective Insight
If your enablement team is always reacting, it’s not an enablement problem. It’s a leadership problem.
We don’t talk about this enough.
When everything is last-minute, when there’s no time to plan, when priorities shift weekly...we blame ourselves.
“I should’ve seen this coming.”
“I need to be more agile.”
“If I were more strategic, this wouldn’t happen.”
But here’s the truth: I’ve spoken to hundreds of enablement leaders. And lived it firsthand.
This pattern almost always starts above us. At the CRO level.
In the absence of enablement leadership alignment.
In commercial strategies that treat enablement as execution, not strategic design.
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This doesn’t mean we give up responsibility.
We still have a job to do.
But it means we stop taking all the blame.
Knowing where the problem starts is what allows us to:
- Set clearer expectations
- Challenge unworkable timelines or demands
- Ask for what we actually need to drive impact
You can’t build a high-impact function on a foundation that keeps shifting.
Proactive enablement starts with proactive commercial leadership.
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What would change if more leaders understood this distinction?
Feel free to pass it on if this helps you support the conversation in your company or network.
These are my 5 article picks for this issue from The Enablement Insight:
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