The Sales Enablement Gurus We’re Thankful to Follow Into 2023

We work closely with sales enablement folks, and they’re the main people we have in mind for every feature we design. Their ideas keep making us better, so we’re thankful to have these gurus sharing their wisdom!

We’re always looking for the latest and greatest sales enablement rockstars so that we can learn from their expertise, experience, and general awesomeness.

Here are our 14 favorite sales enablement influencers. Who do you follow? If your top sales enablement trailblazer isn’t on the list, drop us a line, we’d love to discover new rising stars!

Jen Allen

There are many reasons why we love Jen – for her weekly conversations with sales leaders about vital selling skills and behaviors on the Winning the Challenger Sale Podcast; for starting a new community for sales evangelists; and for sharing her own experiences with such honesty. In one post, Jen admits that she subscribed to the “permission threshold” belief and shares how she overcame it. We’re all in for advice about building relationships delivered with simple openness.

Trish Bertuzzi

Trish is the author of “The Sales Development Playbook,” CEO at The Bridge Group, and possibly our favorite source of sales enablement wisdom. We love Trish for elevating insights from across the sales enablement community, and always being ready to share advice from her experience of years in sales, like “Voicemail is an “audition”. If you listened to your own message would you give you a callback?”

Hang Black

We love Hang for distilling big ideas and concepts into actionable key takeaways that sales enablement personnel can put into practice immediately, like “Create psychological safety by being receptive and grateful to listen.”

As VP of global revenue enablement at Juniper Networks, Hang understands the challenges and impact of building a successful sales team from every angle.

Jeb Blount

We’re Jeb fans because of his practical guidance about sales prospecting, leadership, and training, which he often delivers in short videos. Like one that referred to his recent hotel stay, when he asked for a late checkout, as a trigger to discuss the right way to say “no” to a customer. “She didn’t actually say no, she said “we’re committed to our checkout times today,” and she offered me some other options, and I left feeling pretty good,” Jeb observed.

Jeb is the CEO of Sales Gravy, which delivers sales enablement and sales training leadership, and the author of “Selling in a Crisis.”

Dan Gottlieb

We appreciate Dan’s takes on sales tech, the best ways to deploy it, and strategies for building top sales teams, like his advice about 3 ways to build a tech stack that sellers actually want to use, which includes the nugget “Question all assumptions about how the traditional sales meeting is run, and the role of content in between.”

Dan’s publications for Gartner are full of anecdotes and storylines as well as valuable insights into pipeline construction and go-to-market models. And we also love that he chose Second Nature as a Gartner Cool Vendor ;).

Doug Hutton

Doug is one of our favorite sales enablement gurus because of his science and data-based approach to sales. He’s always ready to explain “the necessity of science and data to determine the right conversation at the right time with prospects and customers,” and we’re always ready to listen! You’ve got to love someone who can pull such unexpectedly effective analogies (like why your typical hotel room is just like the B2B buying experience you’ll get from most organizations).

Doug is the EVP Customer Experience at Corporate Visions, a Revenue Advisor at B2B Decision Labs, and a highly in-demand speaker and podcast guest.

John Kaplan

We’re fans of John not just because he’s a sales coaching expert, but because he consistently shares impactful sales enablement guidance in straightforward, fluff-free style on his Revenue Builders podcast and LinkedIn posts.

Like his recent post advising sellers how to overcome prospects’ hesitancy about spending money, where he recommends that you “always dig deeper” when understanding the prospects’ pain points until “you can sit in the “moment of pain” with the customer.” John is the President and Managing Partner at Force Management.

Jacco Van Der Kooij

We love Jacco for his clear insight into sales challenges, his creativity in coming up with solutions, and his consistency in encouraging sellers to reach for the top, with posts like “Indecision is the most significant challenge sales professionals are dealing with today.” He’s a big-hearted sales expert who’s always willing to share his expertise, and the founder of Winning By Design, an international consultancy for sales training and leadership.

Felix Krueger

We put Felix on every list we write of sales enablement gurus because his The State of Sales Enablement podcast is a must-listen program for anyone who wants to keep their finger on the pulse of sales enablement.

Felix is responsible for educating thousands of business leaders about the truth of sales enablement, and helping even more sales enablement personnel to achieve sales enablement excellence with tips like “The secret sauce of leading sales enablement professionals is the ability to connect the dots. They are able to identify the tools, approaches, and ways of thinking outside of sales enablement’s core body of knowledge that can help them achieve their goals.”

Anita Nielsen

We love Anita because she’s an active sales leader, she’s always ready to help other female and diverse sales enablement personnel, and is the person to follow for psychology-based advice about sales excellence. Her posts mix inspiration with practical advice, like shortcuts to prepping for a big sales call “There are 3 questions you need to think through before you walk into or log onto a buyer meeting.  It will take you very little time and you can write down whatever you believe you need to.”

Anita founded her own sales advisory company in 2014 to advance her customized approach to sales enablement, and is frequently invited to share her insights as a conference speaker, podcast guest, and blog writer.

Peter Ostrow

We follow Peter because when you do, you’ll be the first to know about trends, changes, challenges, and solutions in the world of sales enablement, like this forward-looking guidance to sales enablement focal points.

Arguably Forrester’s top sales enablement guru, Peter is one of the most influential people in sales enablement today. Besides delivering useful sales enablement wisdom, Peter frequently shares valuable research-based insights.

Andy Paul

A sales enablement superstar, Andy Paul is the host of the Sales Enablement podcast (a podcast so valuable that it was acquired by Revenue.io), author of the best-selling “Sell Without Selling Out,” and guru to all of us as well as millions of other salespeople around the world.

We love Andy for his conversations with hundreds of sales leaders, advice on avoiding “salesy” sales tactics, and reminders about authenticity, mental health, and wellness, like “Your sales methods won’t lead to a sale. But your values will.”

George Pastidis

We’re big fans of George’s sales enablement insights, because they flow directly from his years of experience heading sales enablement programs and training sales teams around the world.

Currently the head of sales enablement for telecoms giant Ericsson, George frequently shares his thoughts about trends, solutions, and challenges in sales leadership, like “Life is a game for people who have a purpose and when they’re not given a purpose, they work harder to find and create one and then they stand up and fight for that. If you experience lousy and uninspiring leadership, have ownership. Demonstrate self-leadership.”

Georgia Watson

Last but definitely not least, Georgia is one of our favorite young sales enablement superstars because she’s all about making sales through genuine connection. We love Georgia for her openness to learning from others, and sharing and growing from her mistakes, like her #failFriday post about the time she fluffed a meeting with a key stakeholder “The lesson: Don’t monologue, screen switch, skip lunch, do important meetings late in the day + not pay attention to what you need for yourself.”

As well as working as the Sales Enablement Leader at IBM, Georgia co-hosts the weekly Social Saturday thread for live chat about sales and sales enablement with hundreds of other sales experts around the world.