Field Enablement

Maintained by:

Overview

Field Enablement Vision

Motivate and inspire the field organization and partners to achieve high levels of success through the acquisition and application of knowledge, skills and behaviors that improve productivity and accelerate growth

Field Enablement Mission

Design and deliver effective enablement solutions that grow field team members' and partners' expertise and confidence to drive efficient, predictable, and scalable growth for GitLab

Objectives

Improve field efficiency (direct and indirect routes to market) with effective training solutions to address prioritized knowledge and skill gaps and build a culture of learning
Orchestrate people, process, information, and technology to evolve sales conversations and simplify the ecosystem within which field team members operate
Ensure that the GitLab field organization is regularly informed about relevant business and organizational updates

How We Do This

Collaborate with cross-functional stakeholders (including but not limited to Sales, Customer Success, Marketing, Sales/CS/Channel Ops, Product/Engineering, Sales Strategy & Analytics, and the People team) to address prioritized knowledge, behavior, and skill gaps in the GitLab field organization to achieve desired business outcomes
Define, coordinate, and/or lead the development and delivery of effective enablement solutions (training, technology, knowledge, content, process, and tools) for GitLab Sales, Customer Success, and Partners throughout all phases of the customer journey as well as different stages of each team member's tenure and/or experience at or with GitLab
Ensure field team members are regularly informed about relevant business and organizational updates and have access to enablement materials necessary for their day-to-day work to meet and exceed business objectives
Cultivate a culture of curiosity, iteration, and continuous learning & development across the GitLab field organization

Contact Us

Want to chat with us? Please Slack us at #field-enablement-team.
Have a Field Enablement request? Please use our quick request process below.

Key Programs

Field Manager Development Program
- Sales Manager Best Practices
Selling Excellence
- Field Functional Competencies
- Command of the Message (value-based sales messaging methodology) and MEDDPPICC (strategic opportunity qualification)
- Effective Discovery
- Continuous Learning
Partner Enablement
- Channel Partner Training, Accreditations and Enablement
Field Onboarding & Ramp
- Sales & Customer Success Onboarding
Revenue & Pipeline Acceleration Programs
Field Communications
CRO Development Day

Additional Resources

Strategy

Results

You can find a read-out of Field Enablement team results by quarter – including overall team achievements, progress against OKRs and program-specific key accomplishments and results – in the Field Enablement Quarterly Readout decks below:

FY23-Q2 Field Enablement Results Readout (GitLab internal only)
FY23-Q1 Field Enablement Results Readout (GitLab internal only)
FY22-Q4 Field Enablement Results Readout (GitLab internal only)
FY22-Q3 Field Enablement Results Readout (GitLab internal only)
FY22-Q2 Field Enablement Results Readout (GitLab internal only)
FY22-Q1 Field Enablement Results Readout (GitLab internal only)

Handbook-First Approach to GitLab Learning and Development Materials

Our Mission is that Everyone Can Contribute, and our most important value is Results. Like we've extended that to the Handbook, we want to extend it to our learning materials.
We want to leverage the best of an e-learning platform, with the benefits of reminders, interactivity, and more but make sure the materials we produce are also available to those who aren't using an e-learning platform, while fulfilling our mission.
There are benefits to keeping our e-learning material handbook-first:
- Folks who have already completed a formal training through an e-learning platform may want to return to the materials
- Those who never go through the formal platform may also benefit from the materials
- The handbook continues to be the SSOT, with the e-learning platform leveraging handbook materials through screenshots, embeds, and more

Learn how the GitLab Corporate Learning & Development team takes a Handbook-first approach to interactive learning.

Six Critical Questions

Inspired by The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business by Patrick Lencioni

1. Why does the GitLab Field Enablement team exist?

See our team mission in the Overview section.

2. How do we behave?

On our best day, we show up with a positive attitude while demonstrating GitLab’s values along with the following behaviors to overcome the Five Dysfunctions:

Trust: Extend trust, actively listen, and assume noble intent; give and receive feedback with respect and solicit feedback often
Embrace Healthy Conflict: Engage in constructive conflict for the purpose of achieving shared goals & objectives; resolve personal issues, quickly and directly
Commitment: Support decisions once decisions are made with a GitLab team-first approach
Accountability: Hold ourselves and each other accountable while encouraging each other & celebrating successes
Results: Strong drive for results and a focus on the customer; demonstrate passion for continuous learning & improvement

3. What does the Field Enablement team do?

See "How we do this" in the Overview section.

4. What does success look like?

The below is a work in progress as we define success measures across each stage of the customer journey:

Engage & Educate the Customer
- Increase # of rep-sourced opps
- Accelerate sales cycle time and improve conversion of MQLs to SAOs
- Accelerate and improve predictability of new rep ramp time
Progress the Opportunity & Close the Deal
- Increase # of closed deals per rep
- Accelerate sales cycle time and improve conversion of SAOs to Closed/Won deals
- Increase average sale price (inclusive of improved product mix to sell more Premium and Ultimate)
- Accelerate and improve predictability of new rep ramp time
- Improve forecasting accuracy
- Improve win rates
Retain & Expand
- Improve renewal rates (inclusive of up-sell and cross-sell)
- Accelerate customer time to value
- Increase breadth of stage adoption

Activity does not equal Performance Knowledge does not equal Capability

Activity x Capability = Performance Knowledge x Practice = Capability

5. What is most important right now (2HFY22)?

FY22-Q4 Field Enablement OKRs

6. Who must do what?

Sr. Director, Field Enablement
- TBH
Manager, Field Enablement
- Kelley Shirazi (Manager, Sales Enablement)
- Kris Reynolds (Sr. Manager, Customer Success Enablement)
Role-based Enablement Managers
- Emelie Rodriguez (Sr. Program Manager, Enterprise Sales Enablement)
- TBH (Sr. Program Manager, Enterprise Sales Enablement (EMEA & APAC))
- Misty Martin-Zimmerman (Sr. Program Manager, Commercial Sales Enablement (AMER))
- Cristian Enache (Program Manager, Commercial Sales Enablement (EMEA & APAC))
- Blair Fraser (Sr. Program Manager, Partner Enablement)
- Pallavi Daliparthi (Sr. Program Manager, Customer Success Manager Enablement)
- TBH (Sr. Program Manager, Solution Architect Enablement)
Director, Revenue Programs
- Allison Gleisner
Field Enablement Program Managers
- John Blevins (Program Manager, Field Onboarding and Continuous Education)
- David Hernandez (Sr. Program Manager, Field Manager Development)
Field Communications & Content
- Monica Gomez (Manager, Field Communications & Content)
- Shannon Thompson (Field Communications Specialist)
- Alexis Bryson (Senior Program Manager, Sales Content)

Making a Field Enablement Request

If you have a great training idea and/or enablement request, we'd love to hear it! Please make an enablement request by following this quick process:

Submit an issue using this issue template
- Please be descriptive in the issue in order to give our team the necessary context to review and prioritize your request. Note that ALL questions must be answered prior to Field Enablement triaging your request.
Upon submitting your request, the issue will be tagged as FE priority::new request and FE status::triage
Field Enablement will triage the request as quickly as possible. Upon examining the request, the team will assess the priority and status by labeling it with one of the following labels (please see label definitions in section below):
- Priority:
  - FE priority::1
  - FE priority::2
  - FE priority::3
- Status:
  - FE status::wip
  - FE status::backlog
Field Enablement will collaborate with the requester on the request details directly in the issue to clarify any missing information, set up a discovery call, and/or update on next steps.
Click here for a deeper look into the Field Enablement team's prioritization framework

If you have a Field Communications request (process change, announcement, etc.), please see the request process outlined here.

Field Enablement groups, projects, and labels

Groups
- Use the GitLab.com group for epics that may include issues within and outside the Sales Team group
- Use the GitLab Sales Team group for epics that may include issues within and outside the Field Operations group
Projects
- Create issues under the “Enablement” project
Labels
- Team labels
  - field enablement - issue initially created, used in templates, the starting point for any label that involved Field Enablement
  - FieldOps - label for issues that we want to expose to the VP of Field Operations; these will often mirror issues with the FE priority::1 label
- Stakeholder/Customer labels
  - FE:CS enablement - label for Field Enablement issues related to enabling Customer Success (CS) roles
  - FE:sales enablement - label for Field Enablement issues related to enabling Sales roles
  - FE:partner enablement - label for Field Enablement issues related to enabling Partners
- Initiative labels
  - field accreditation - label for issues related to /handbook/sales/training/field-certification/
  - field communications - label for items that include work by/with the Field Communications team within Field Enablement
  - field events - label for Field Enablement-supported events (e.g. QBRs, SKO, President's Club, etc.)
  - force management - label for issues related to Force Management engagement
    - vff - label for Value Framework Feedback
    - vff::new - starting point for Value Framework feedback
    - vff::accepted - Value Framework feedback that will be actioned on
    - vff::deferred - Value Framework feedback that will be deferred until more information is gathered
    - vff::declined - Value Framework feedback that is declined (no action will be taken)
  - lxp - label for GitLab Learning Experience Platform
  - sales onboarding - label for issues related to sales/field onboarding
  - QBR - requests from Sales QBRs
  - FE: Revenue Programs - label for issues related to Field Enablement-led pipeline growth & acceleration programs
  - sales enablement sessions - label for weekly virtual sales enablement series
  - sko - label for issues related to Sales Kickoff
  - status:plan - used in conjunction with sales enablement sessions to indicate when a session topic has been prioritized but not yet scheduled
  - status:scheduled - used in conjunction with sales enablement sessions to indicate when a session topic has been prioritized and scheduled
  - strategy - plans, methods, or series of maneuvers or stratagems for obtaining specific goals or results
- Status labels
  - FE status::triage - assigned to new requests before priority status is determined
  - FE status::wip - work in progress that has been accepted and assigned to a DRI
  - FE status::backlog - things in the queue not currently being worked
- Priority labels
  - FE priority::new request - label for new requests that have not yet been prioritized
  - FE priority::1 - work that directly supports an OKR
  - FE priority::2 - work that does not directly support an OKR but has a large impact on the field team
  - FE priority::3 - work that does not directly support an OKR and has a low to medium impact on the field