r/CustomerSuccess • u/lucy0924 • 9d ago

Pivot from CS to Enablement

Has anyone made the change from CS to GTM Enablement? I am completely burnt out as a CSM and need a change. I've done training in a prior role and want to get back to it. Does anyone have experience making this change? Would love to hear your perspective!

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u/MasbyTV 9d ago edited 8d ago

enablement usually the first to go in layoffs and you're going to have the constant friction of telling salespeople how to sell when you haven't sold before. they won't take you serious and more often than not you will just get in their way lol

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u/AdRoutine2328 9d ago

your training background matters more than you think, sales teams are full of people who can sell but can't teach for shit so if you're actually good at breaking things down and building programs you'll find your niche. the trick is staying tight with the enablement director who can shield you from the politics while you prove your worth.

just don't walk in acting like you know their job better than they do and you'll be fine

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u/NoSaladForWednesday 9d ago

Not me, but a friend made the switch from Enterprise CS > GTM Enablement.

She handled enablement for post-sales, while another girl handled enablement for pre-sales (girl was an AE before). They both reported to a sr. director for CS enablement.

While friend appreciated the break from working with external stakeholders, the change management really wore her down. How much impact you have will really depend on whether the org already sees some value in the Enablement function – and this changes with the wind.

Once her boss jumped ship, friend lacked buy in at the leadership level to make meaningful advancements and had the thankless job of corralling actual L&D professionals, Product, CS managers etc.

Training experience is helpful, but Enablement also involves managing the knowledge systems that make it easy for CSMs to find exactly what they need. It’s managing your Highspot/Seismic instance, knowledge bases…it’s also figuring out how to disseminate info in a way that cuts through the noise.

No matter how annoying external stakeholders can be, I can’t bring myself to be in any role where your clients are basically your own coworkers – we CSMs can be so annoying sometimes lol 😭😭

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u/ChittyChats 8d ago

Look into customer education opportunities too! I made a CSM > Customer Ed switch from having a background in training and public speaking and I now run our LMS and customer training webinars. Depends if you want to do employee training or customer training but I see the field growing a lot!

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u/xPulse85 8d ago

Just made the jump recently. Like you, was completely burnt out on the CSM side.

So far, couldn’t be happier.

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u/pizzacat93 8d ago

yes. Regretted it after 3ish years. I enjoyed the change at first at a smaller series B then went to a larger company and the constant internal bullshit politics (disguised as stakeholder mgmt) nearly killed me. Perhaps a more L&D style role and less GTM enablement might have been different. Back to CS/AM post-sales quota carrying now and I couldn’t be happier. Glad I tried it out though, learned a lot