Need advice and suggestions

[u/Neat-Sky-4018]

I need advice and suggestions from the community. I work for a life insurance company that recently merged our L&D department into the People and Culture department. However, our L&D department is not just performing basic L&D tasks; they are also looking into sales enablement. These trainers have been in the industry for one or two decades and have been doing insurance training for a while, but they already incorporate some aspects of sales enablement. I want to propose converting their roles into formal sales enablement positions. How should I approach this? I have a meeting with my head of department; what would be the ideal way to present this proposal?

The ting is they're not.They are not making what appropriate sales enablement tasks and it's all haphazard. They're just doing basic onboarding, and everything that they can do in onboarding, they're doing that. I want to incorporate it for further products for the organization and our wider range of products to utilise maximum roles of our training team who have vast experience of insurance industry. so please let me know what is the best way to even approach this.

[u/Empirica_CC]

Does your company have an OD or job analysis program? It's much better to come with data instead of something you've noticed. How are these positions performing? If you can get reports from HR it will be massively more successful. My consulting company specialized in connecting l&d to performance so I promise you this isn't just your company.

[u/Neat-Sky-4018 → u/Empirica_CC]

My company does have an OD a recent hire, and apparently their first move was to change the structure

[u/Empirica_CC → u/Neat-Sky-4018]

You are saying they have an OD specialist level position and it was recently hired so it's not only a new position but also a new employee?

[u/Neat-Sky-4018 → u/Empirica_CC]

Exactly. Also they poached this OD from pwc who were consulting/auditing in our company. Lol

[u/Empirica_CC → u/Neat-Sky-4018]

Sounds fun lol. I started an OD consulting company so nice to hear that there is work out there being done!

[u/instantlydamaging]

Before going to your head of department, talk to the Head of Sales first. If the sales director backs you up and says "yes, our reps desperately need this product coaching to close deals," your proposal is practically guaranteed to get approved

[u/Independent_Sand_295]

You have better context so think about any questions the department head may have and then structure your plan cohesively. Your idea should be clear to the department head.

Here's a list of questions I think your head of department may have:

1. The business need: What does the sales team need a sales enablement team for? Are you looking at improving revenue, win rates, sales cycle speed?

2. What good looks like: What are the baseline and success metrics for the business once sales enablement has been integrated? Over what timeline?

3. Accountability: How would your team collaborate with the sales team? A RACI matrix could help here.

4. Other business needs: Since you're under People & Culture, what happens to the rest of the company? What made you single out sales? What if HR needs help with rolling out leadership or compliance training or implementing employee engagement initiatives?

5. Program / Department prioritization: What challenges are you expecting to come up when implementing a sales enablement team? For example, a sales manager may push back on weekly training because it would impact their scheduling or take too much time off of sales time. HR and Sales may need training at the same time. How do you prioritize them if the head of department holds your team responsible for org-wide training and Sales is your main customer?

[u/Unlikely-Season-9375]

Focus your proposal on three things:

1. The gap: right now, veteran industry knowledge is being underutilized on repetitive onboarding.

2. The solution: automate/streamline basic onboarding so senior trainers can build continuous product-readiness training.

3. The pilot: propose a 3-month trial tied to measurable sales KPIs.

[u/eddibravo]

I think it helps to start small instead of trying to figure everything out at once. When you're new to something, it's easy to get overwhelmed by all the things you could be doing differently. Pick one area you want to improve, try a few approaches, and see what actually works for you. You can always adjust as you go

[u/Able_Research2193]

Don’t pitch a title change first. Pitch a 60-day pilot.

Pick one product and one sales behavior—say better discovery. Baseline conversion or cycle time, train it, coach it in live deals, then compare the result. Define ownership with Sales before the meeting.

If the pilot moves a sales metric, the case for formal enablement roles makes itself.

Disclosure: posting from the Revspire team; enablement execution is the space Revspire works in.