The Ten Truthbombs of Sales Enablement
The budget for enablement, training, or new technology is approved, but will it improve the revenue number? Ten independent reasons it often doesn't.
Ten specific things get in the way of enablement spending turning into revenue. Training changes what a team knows, but it rarely changes what a team does on a live call, and knowing and doing get treated as the same thing far more often than they should. What enablement builds often impresses leadership but doesn't help reps close, so reps ignore it.
Enablement teams tend to measure their work by certifications completed, content viewed, or platform logins, none of which reliably connects to whether the number moves. Programs get built before anyone confirms what problem they're solving, and none of it is tied to a revenue number the way marketing's spending has been for fifteen years. A new tool doesn't fix execution that was never checked in the first place.
All ten reasons your enablement spend might be stuck are inside the free chapter below.
Download Chapter Five Free
"A bold and necessary rethink of modern sales enablement — and one of the more thoughtful books I've read on sales performance in a long time. CROs, CEOs, and boards will appreciate it."
— Mark Roberge, Co-founder @ Stage 2 Capital, Professor @ Harvard Business School, Founding CRO @ HubSpot
What's Inside
Ten truths, each one a specific, checkable reason sales enablement spending fails to move revenue.
Enablement Is About Performance, Not Training
Pronovost's ICU checklist that cut infections 66 percent in three months without teaching anyone anything new, and what it proves about why training alone doesn't move a number.
Your Customer Is the Salesperson
Why building for the CRO instead of the rep produces dashboards that impress and content nobody uses.
Reps Want to Close More Deals
Why reps build their own playbooks in Slack channels enablement doesn't know about, and what that shadow economy reveals.
No One Wants to Sit in Training
Why every other performance profession abandoned classroom-style training decades ago.
Activity Isn't the Goal
Why completion rates and logins don't answer the question the board actually asks.
You Have to Know the Numbers
The nine questions about your own team most leaders can't answer right now, without looking anything up.
Be a Profit Center, Not a Cost Center
Why enablement should own a revenue number the same way reps do, and what changes when it does.
Know What You're Solving For
The goalkeeper study on why teams build first and diagnose never, and what it's costing them.
People Are Complicated
The hidden forces working against every rep on every call, and why that's the real job.
Tools, Data, Architecture, Methodologies, Won't Save You
The CRO's own tool stack, and the reason the number doesn't move even after it's installed.
About A Sales Growth Company
A Sales Growth Company builds sales training and consulting programs on Gap Selling and the Problem-Centric™ Operating System, the same operating system Gap Revenue Performance lays out for enablement, sales ops, and frontline management.
The firm has worked with B2B sales organizations for 25 years across hundreds of companies. The ten truths in Chapter Five are drawn directly from that consulting practice. ASG is named a Representative Vendor in the 2025 Gartner Market Guide for Sales Training Service Providers.
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FAQ
What is Gap Revenue Performance about?
Gap Revenue Performance is a book by Keenan that argues sales enablement has been buying training when what it needed was a performance system. It lays out the Problem Centric Operating System, three connected layers for skills, opportunity, and forecast, built to close the gap between what reps are taught and what they do in a live deal.
Is Chapter Five useful on its own, without the rest of the book?
Yes. Chapter Five lays out ten specific, evidence-backed truths about why sales enablement functions fail to move revenue, each grounded in real research, so a reader can check their own team against every one of them before committing to the full book.
How is Gap Revenue Performance different from Gap Selling and Gap Prospecting?
Gap Selling and Gap Prospecting are methodology books, how a rep diagnoses a buyer's problem and earns the first conversation. Gap Revenue Performance is an operating system manual, written for the CRO and Head of Enablement who need the infrastructure that makes any methodology stick in the field.