140: Them importance of connecting training and enablement to professional development with GitLab’s David Somers

On this edition of The Predictable Revenue Podcast, co-host Collin Stewart welcomes David Somers, Director of Sales and Customer Enablement at GitLab.

David is a veteran sales enablement leader – before taking over sales and enablement at GitLab, he spent more than a decade leading enablement teams at Red Hat. Before that, he cut his teeth at Dell, growing from internet to a manager in just a few short years.

Throughout the pod, Collin and David discuss a critical, yet overlooked synergy: how to align training and enablement with individual professional development.

Highlights include: what does connecting training and enablement to professional development mean? (9:03), the impact of this specific alignment (14:32), what does levelling up look like in this environment? (17:31), how to connect training and professional development (25:50), GitLab’s sales learning framework (35:06), balancing the needs of the business with the needs of the individual (46:52), when is the right time to build a sales modelling framework? (1:00:27), and GitLab’s “command of the message” page (1:09:20).