Why Enablement Is Harder Than Ever And What to Do About It

Why Enablement Is Harder Than EverAnd What to Do About It

Sales Enablement Pioneers | Episode1 ft. Hanna Tahvonen, Global Enablement Leader at M-Files

The pace of change in sales has neverbeen faster. AI is reshaping workflows, buyer expectations are shifting, andorganisations are rolling out new processes and go-to-market motions at arelentless pace. But human learning hasn't kept up and that gap is exactlywhere enablement breaks down.

In the first episode of Uhubs' SalesEnablement Pioneers series, global enablement leader Hanna Tahvonen joinsAsh Ali and Laura for an honest conversation about what it really takes tobuild effective sales enablement in 2025 and why most organisations are stillgetting it wrong.

Three tensions keeping enablementleaders up at night

Hanna identifies three core problemswith brutal clarity.

First, the speed mismatch. New changesarrive before previous ones have settled into habits. Learners sit at wildlydifferent points on the adoption curve, making it nearly impossible to deliverthe right message to the right person at the right time.

Second, declining retention. As AImakes it easier to retrieve information on demand, people are leaning on memoryless. The Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve has always been a challenge; humansforget roughly 80% of what they learn within seven days. If AI is quietlyaccelerating that decline, the implications for learning design are significant.

Third, a lack of perspective fromsubject matter experts. Specialists want to go deep. Enablement needs to stayrelevant. Getting SMEs to focus on what actually matters to reps  and cut everything else remains one of thehardest parts of the job.

The fix: discipline, not volume

M-Files' response wasn't moretraining. It was a tighter system.

A weekly enablement cadence, 11consecutive weeks per quarter, built around one non-negotiable goal: initiatingcustomer outreach and building a pipeline. Every module is 25 minutes oflearning, 25 minutes of task work. Every task connects to real sellingactivity. If a topic doesn't serve that goal, it doesn't make the cut.

The result is something rare inenablement: genuine trust from learners. Reps now rely on the programme tofilter the noise. As one M-Files sales rep put it, they've found "calmness"in the consistency knowing that as long as they stay on track, the mostrelevant information will reach them.

The underrated ingredient:executive sponsorship

Hanna meets with C-level go-to-marketleaders twice a week to align on priorities. That access sharpens the programmeand gives her the backing to protect its focus when stakeholders push for more.Most enablement professionals, she notes, don't have that relationship and itshows in their results.

Behaviour change isn't abouttelling people what to do

Perhaps the sharpest insight in theepisode: telling someone to do something doesn't mean they'll do it. Realbehaviour change happens when new actions are brought as close as possible toexisting habits and workflows. Hanna points to the principle behind AtomicHabits the easier you make a new behaviour to adopt, the more likely itsticks. The best enablement doesn't fight people's existing routines. It slotsinto them.

What future enablement leaders need

Hanna's top three skills for the nextgeneration: a natural instinct for automation and scalability, the ability tobuild trusted stakeholder relationships fast, and an unwavering focus onmeasuring impact not just completion rates, but pipeline and revenue outcomes.

Because at the end of the day,enablement that can't prove its impact won't survive.

Listen to the full episode on theSales Enablement Pioneer podcast.

‍