Starting from the wrong problem wastes months, and buy-in on direction has to come before resources.

Days 0 to 30, listen:

• Agree 30, 60, and 90 day objectives with the CRO, and how I’ll be measured.

• Map stakeholders and hold about 20 first conversations using QUIC and CLAW (see Collaboration), across leaders, managers, reps, CSMs, and a few customers if possible.

• Learn the work: sit in on calls, kickoffs, and renewals, go through the existing onboarding as a participant, and read the product, positioning, and content.

• Gather baselines: ramp dates for recent hires, win rate and conversion by stage, a sample of recorded calls, and renewal history. Run a short survey of GTM teams on how they see enablement, and repeat it at year end.

• Check for a positioning problem before blaming reps. Ask a few new hires and prospects to describe what Meridian does, then compare with how the happiest customers describe it. A gap means unclear positioning may be feeding Problem 4, and reps repeating different versions is the symptom. Those customers, who bought quickly and refer others, are also the best source for the messaging work later.

• Open the front door for requests, offer help without asking (see Collaboration), and share a draft working agreement with the Heads of Sales and CS in the final week.

Days 31 to 45, diagnose and charter:

• Cross-check what was heard against the data and land on the real problem, not the loudest one. Test whether each problem is about knowledge, ability, desire, or reinforcement (see Training).

• Test the choice, not just the idea. Lafley and Martin suggest asking what would have to be true for each option to work. For each candidate, name the conditions and design the cheapest test, then let the evidence pick the charter:

  • Discovery standard: managers must review calls weekly, the scorecard must separate strong calls from weak ones, and RevOps must supply stage data. Test: score ten recorded calls against outcomes.

  • Onboarding plan: new hires must start before month 6, and managers must give time to shadowing and review live calls from week 7. Test: pull start and milestone dates for recent hires.

  • Health score: the CS leader must agree a definition, the data must exist, and renewals must be close enough to matter this year. Test: try scoring ten accounts from usage and renewal dates.

• Write the Enablement Strategy Report and share it before it’s final, with the leadership asks stated plainly, including the shared goal. Agree working agreements with the leaders who co-own the first program, typically the Heads of Sales and CS.

• Write the charter: the highest-leverage initiative scoped to one program, with boundaries, why it matters, and success criteria and metrics from day one. Get it signed off before work starts.

By day 90 the work has to be underway, and with quota pressure the first results need to be visible early.

• Start with the highest-leverage priority, sequenced the way a customer moves through the lifecycle. My working hypothesis is messaging and the discovery standard first, with a minimum viable onboarding plan in parallel because new hires are coming. The diagnosis can change this order.

• Ship small early wins from about day 45 on a real pain point, such as a stale or hard-to-find asset. Then one bigger first result by day 90: the one-page approved messaging reference, or version one of the discovery scorecard used on sample calls.

• Ship with a measure attached and the baseline recorded first. Pilot with a small group before any rollout, using the Adoption Loop on the Real Work page. Finish with a day-90 readout to leadership: what I found, the plan, and the first result.

How the approved messaging gets made. Positioning belongs to Product Marketing, and enablement facilitates and turns the result into training and call review. April Dunford’s approach fits a team this small:

1. Start with the happiest customers, and assemble Product Marketing, Sales, CS, Product, and an analyst.

2. Answer the components together: competitive alternatives (settled from customer interviews), unique attributes (on-demand analyst access at no extra charge), demonstrable value (a few value clusters backed by customer evidence), target customers (enterprises with a dedicated strategy, competitive intelligence, or product marketing function and a named budget owner, from the Case), market category (chosen in the session with Product Marketing), and a relevant trend only if a real one exists.

3. Capture it on one page and turn it into a short sales story: the problem, what customers use today, where those options fall short, and what to look for.

4. Enablement operationalizes it: the talk track, the one-page reference, the launch-readiness steps, and the drift check on reviewed calls.

This builds the “named owner and one approved set” milestone and turns the Case’s advantage statement into something reps can say.

• Keep three to five projects in flight, and say “not yet” to the rest.

• A likely sequence, confirmed by the diagnosis: the discovery standard and weekly call review with managers calibrated; the handoff brief on every deal, plus the joint AE and CSM session; the health-score definition and CSM track, with all accounts scored by month 6; launch readiness on the next launch, followed by its drift check; then the CS and account management onboarding tracks and the monthly skills workshop.

• Agree upon working agreements with the remaining partners, each ahead of the work that depends on it. Product Marketing’s and RevOps’s begin informally in days 46 to 90 and are written down by month 6.

• Ship every layer with a measure, roll it out through the Adoption Loop, and audit what’s stale, unused, or bypassed. Report on the cadence in Collaboration.

The one new tool is chosen at month 4, once the first baseline is in. The working hypothesis is call review and scoring, because the discovery standard depends on reviewing calls and manager time is the scarcest resource. Without it, managers score in a spreadsheet, which works for the first cohorts but costs about 15 minutes of prep per person per session. The content hub and learning delivery are “not yet”: a shared drive can carry one approved page, and live sessions with a certification spreadsheet work until manual delivery breaks. A tool would need to work with existing recordings, score against Meridian’s own scorecard, connect to the CRM without custom RevOps work, handle consent properly, and fit the budget. If the real bottleneck turns out to be finding content, the hub moves up, and if hiring outpaces live delivery, learning delivery moves up. The first 90 days of baseline decide. Illustrative design.

Months 10 to 12 close the year on evidence, not a list of what got built:

• Compare every cohort and measure with its baseline (see Metrics). Report honestly: leading indicators show first, full ramp proof needs a cohort that has completed six months, and with a team this small, counts go beside percentages.

• Run a retrospective on what worked, what didn’t, and what to sunset. Write the annual report: results against baseline, lessons, and next year’s priorities and asks.

• Re-check each relationship on the maturity model, and the five service-center signs.

After year one, the data decides what gets scaled, fixed, or sunset. Reporting shifts from activity to revenue impact: win rate, stage conversion, quota attainment, and retention, with sales velocity and average deal size as context. Enablement shifts from reacting to requests to being consulted early. Any drift goes back through Listen, Diagnose, Implement, and Monitor at the smallest scope that fits.

With a team of one, every choice about where to spend time is also a choice about what not to do. Lafley and Martin frame strategy as five connected choices, shown here for enablement and all illustrative:

• Winning aspiration: reps and CSMs ready sooner and consistent, with leaders seeing early movement in the three outcome numbers by the end of year one, and full proof of ramp and retention as the first cohorts reach six months and one year.

• Where to play: new hires and sales discovery first, then customer success and account management. The four Case problems, and the front of the lifecycle before the back.

• How to win: built from real calls and accounts, designed with the managers who’ll use it, and measured against baselines.

• Capabilities: shared definitions, scorecards and certification, a coaching cadence, launch readiness, and managers trained to coach.

• Management systems: the front door with weekly triage, the weekly and quarterly cadence, the leadership scorecard, and the change log.

Each choice constrains the others, which is why the “not yet” list matters.

What could derail the plan, and the counter:

• Activity over outcomes, or unclear measures: every initiative has an outcome and milestones, baselines are recorded first, and each metric has one definition.

• Too many priorities: three to five projects, the front door, and “not yet” as a valid answer.

• Waiting for perfect: a minimum viable first version, a pilot, then improvement.

• Skeptical reps and quota pressure: a quick win by day 90, small asks, and a pilot with respected reps.

• Leaders stop sponsoring it: a quarterly review, no surprises, and leaders who co-own the objectives.

• Stale content, or too many changes at once: a governance review, paced launches, and one change at a time.

• Coaches are also players: a peer mentor in the first 60 days, protected calendar time, and the player-coach signal.