Sales training teaches skills to individuals, while sales enablement builds systems and processes that help your entire technical team engage commercially.
Why this is harder than it looks
- Most engineering leaders think they need to choose between training or enablement, when the real challenge is sequencing them correctly. Training without enablement creates frustrated engineers who know what to do but have no system to do it consistently.
- The natural tendency for many leaders is to want the magic wand. They often think that the reason their technical people aren’t selling is just that they don’t know how. And so they think “train them!” Unfortunately the system and culture these people operate within is more complex than that, and it’s the system that needs dealing with (and often changing slightly) first. Training and support can then align accordingly.
- Training works when people are motivated but lack skills, while enablement works when people have capability but lack systems. Most engineering leaders can’t diagnose which problem they actually have.
What good looks like in practice
- In firms that get this right, your engineers use simple, logical processes that feel more like project management than sales activities. The commercial conversations happen because the system makes them easy, not because people force themselves to do difficult things.
- In firms that combine training and enablement effectively, you see consistent commercial behaviours across all client-facing engineers. Everyone knows their role in the commercial process and executes it reliably.
- Your team generates qualified opportunities through systematic relationship building rather than hoping for referrals. The enablement infrastructure turns networking into a repeatable process that technical minds can follow.
Where most engineering firms go wrong
- Most firms send their engineers on generic sales training courses and expect them to figure out how to apply it to technical selling. Engineers return with skills they can’t use and frameworks that don’t fit their world, creating frustration rather than capability.
- Many firms mistake activity enablement for outcome enablement, building systems that help engineers do more commercial activities rather than do commercial activities more effectively. Busy doesn’t equal better when it comes to commercial results.
Where to start
Map out every touch point your technical team currently has with clients and prospects, from first enquiry through to project delivery. Identify which conversations already happen naturally and which ones get avoided or handled poorly. Look for the patterns where commercial opportunities are being missed not because of skill gaps, but because there’s no process to capture them. This audit will show you whether you need training to build capability or enablement to systemise existing capability.
The thing worth checking in your business
Most engineering leaders can’t tell you whether their commercial performance problems are caused by skill gaps, system gaps, or mindset gaps. You’re probably solving for the wrong layer of the problem, which is why your previous attempts at improvement haven’t stuck. Without diagnosing the root cause properly, you’ll keep investing in solutions that address symptoms rather than sources. Can you confidently say whether your engineers avoid commercial conversations because they don’t know how to have them, or because they know how but have no system to make them happen consistently?
Want to know where your team actually stands?
Use the free commercial diagnostic tools to find out exactly where the gaps are in your team’s sales effectiveness, and what to do about them. Takes 10 minutes. The report is specific and actionable.