Sales Enablement Health Check
A ten-question enablement readiness check. Output: a health score and the specific assets to build first.
Who it’s for: Sales enablement leads, RevOps, and CMOs underwriting a new sales hiring plan — anyone who needs to know whether the team is equipped or improvising.
- 01
Every rep has access to current battle cards for the top three competitors.
'Someone has a Google Doc' is not access.
- 02
Your discovery deck opens on the same value prop your homepage leads with.
Two stories, one company. Buyers pick up the seam instantly.
- 03
Reps can answer 'why you, why now' in a single sentence, the same way across the team.
If each rep improvises, the story the market hears is a blend of drafts.
- 04
You have objection handlers for your five most common objections — written and rehearsed.
Written handlers without rehearsal die in the first awkward pause.
- 05
Your pricing conversation has a named script, not a wing-it.
Pricing is the moment your positioning gets stress-tested. Improvisation costs margin.
- 06
Your case studies are segmented by buyer persona, not just by industry.
An enterprise case study on a mid-market deal is noise. Personas beat industries on relevance.
- 07
New reps reach full ramp in a published, measured timeframe — not 'whenever they figure it out'.
Unstated ramp expectations compound at hire four and break at hire ten.
- 08
Marketing and sales agree on the definition of a qualified lead, in writing.
Verbal alignment is drift that hasn't surfaced yet.
- 09
Lost deals feed back into your positioning and messaging work within thirty days.
Loss reasons that die in the CRM are audit data never used.
- 10
A new sales hire could run a first call credibly in their first month using only published materials.
If the answer depends on a tenured rep, the enablement is tribal.
Read it honestly, not charitably.
This is a field-readiness read, not a marketing-deliverables audit. A team with beautiful materials that nobody opens scores low here; a team with rough materials and a weekly refresh cadence scores high. The difference is whether the enablement is operating or sitting.
Watch the cluster of items 4, 7, and 10 — these are the rehearsal items. Most programs underweight rehearsal and over-invest in artifacts. Written assets are necessary but not sufficient; behavior follows from drill.
A common over-score: counting asset existence as enablement. If the asset hasn’t been opened this month by the rep who needs it, it isn’t doing work. Be honest about that.
Three moves you can make this week.
- Move 01
Start with the Battle Cards cluster for the operating-rhythm patterns, and the Win/Loss Analysis cluster to close the feedback loop.
- Move 02
The Building a sales playbook guide gives you a sequenced ten-step path from nothing to a shippable playbook.
- Move 03
For the competitive half of the program, Stratridge Battle Cards handles the refresh cadence so the program doesn’t decay between quarterly pushes.
Why these questions, in this order.
Sales enablement is the function that most often looks done from the outside and is actually one hire away from breaking. The failure mode is quiet: the top reps carry the knowledge, the middle reps approximate, new hires muddle through, and the win rate that looks stable is actually propped up by three individuals. This checklist is designed to surface that fragility before it costs a quarter.
Items are grouped by dependency. Items 1–3 are the baseline artifacts — without these, no program exists. Items 4–6 are the behaviors — whether the artifacts are practiced. Items 7–10 are the institutional memory — whether the system learns from itself or repeats.
What this can’t diagnose: whether the product and the positioning are sellable in the first place. Enablement can lift a sellable product but it cannot save an unsellable one. If the scores are good and deals still stall, the audit to run next is the Positioning Clarity Checklist.
Run the full Battle Cards.
Per-competitor rebuttal kits that auto-update when competitors move.
- Positioning Clarity ChecklistTen yes/no questions on whether your value prop is clear, distinct, and buyer-friendly.
- Competitive Defense ReadinessCan your team handle objections about your top three competitors on a live call?
- Website Strategic Hygiene ScanA self-check for discordant claims, missing proof, and weak CTAs above the fold.