WiSE: Tell us a little bit about your background and how you got into sales enablement. 
Daniela Echelmeyer: I am deeply passionate about personal and professional growth, always eager to learn and to facilitate others' success through a coaching approach. My career began by managing educational programs, where I quickly identified and addressed learning gaps. This proactive approach to enhancing development paths led me naturally into the field of Sales Enablement, where I continue to support and elevate teams by adapting strategies to meet evolving needs. 

W: Enablement means so many things to so many different people, what does it mean to you and your role?  
DE: Enablement refers to the process of providing individuals or groups with the knowledge, tools, resources, and support needed to perform their job more effectively and efficiently. Our focuses is on empowering employees to succeed in their roles. And as the way I look at Enablement includes Practices Sharing, Peer Learning etc. that’s the way we also offer Enablement. 

W: Tell us about one enablement program you are working on right now and what gets your excited.  

DE:   A cross functional learning program for Junior Sales to shadow a very Senior Job Role with specific Knowledge. It´s a framework that includes, shadowing, working on a project together, eLearning and ILT, so attendees can gain additional skills on specific topics, that benefit both: themselves and the part of the org they currently working in, as they can act as Subject Matter Experts on a Minor Level. In addition also the people in the Sr. Job Role have the possibility to act as a Mentor. (Retention support in addition) 

W: Enablement comes with lots of challenges.  What do you see some of those as and what is your advice to someone trying to overcome their own enablement challenges?

DE:   One downside of being in Sales Enablement is the challenge of aligning diverse teams and goals. Since it requires coordinating across various departments with different priorities and metrics of success, achieving consensus and demonstrating the direct impact of enablement efforts on sales outcomes can be difficult. Additionally, I also sometimes face resistance to change from sales teams accustomed to traditional methods, making it hard to implement new strategies and tools effectively.

Overcome it with:

• Great Stakeholder Alignment: to ensure goals are aligned and collaborative efforts are recognized.

• Practice Sharing Mechanisms: allow sales teams to share their experiences and insights.

• Adaptive Strategies/Open minded: Stay flexible and be willing to adapt strategies based on outcomes and changing market conditions

W: How do you see Enablement changing over the next 5-years?

DE:  Addition of AI tools will help and support us. But still the F2F approach, a lot of interactivity and practice sharing will be a huge part of it. More bite-size learning, adapted to individual needs/knowledge

If you're a woman in enablement and would like to be interviewed for the site,

 email WiSEGlobalContact@gmail.com with the subject line, 'Interview'