Unlocking Sales Success: How Amber Watts Bridges Strategy and Execution

The Strategy-Execution Challenge

Most sales organizations face a critical problem: brilliant strategies often fall flat during execution. In this episode of The GAP, Amber Watts reveals the missing pieces that connect vision to reality.

Now serving as Chief Revenue Officer at Magnet Medical, Amber brings a unique perspective from her journey through sales enablement to leadership. She shares practical approaches for empowering managers, building responsive playbooks, and fostering the honest feedback needed for sustained success.

Insights You Can Apply Today

Breaking the Mold: Amber's Path to Leadership

Starting from small-town Ohio as the first woman in her family to pursue higher education, Amber applied her psychology background to sales before discovering her talent for enablement. Her defining moment came during the pandemic when she simultaneously built an enablement function while managing 17 account executives with a $1.4 million monthly quota.

"That crucible experience taught me real empathy for the people I serve today," Amber explains. "You can't lead what you don't understand."

Why Frontline Managers Make or Break Your Strategy

Amber identifies managers as the critical connection point in any sales organization. With unique visibility both up and down the hierarchy, they translate executive vision into daily action.

"Your managers are like mountain goats navigating difficult terrain. They have feedback coming from below and direction pushing down from above. Without their buy-in, everything falls flat."

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Try This: Train your managers separately before rolling out initiatives to their teams. When reps have questions about new processes, managers must project confidence rather than confusion. Otherwise, teams quickly revert to comfortable habits.

The Two Leadership Skills Nobody Teaches

Most organizations overlook two crucial capabilities that transform management effectiveness:

1. Conversational Intelligence: Moving beyond "show up and throw up" to clear communication that enables action.
2. Motivational Intelligence: Understanding that motivation comes from demonstrating resilience, not just talking about it.

"Great managers act as guides, not commanders," Amber notes. "Nobody can motivate you except yourself. Managers inspire their teams by modeling how to overcome challenges."

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Combined with emotional awareness, these skills create safety for teams to take risks and provide honest feedback.

Playbooks That Actually Get Used

Forget static documents that collect digital dust. Amber reframes playbooks as "your organization's recipe for success." Effective playbooks capture both process and culture, ensuring everyone speaks the same language across departments.

"Your playbook should breathe and evolve with your organization," Amber insists. "It needs regular updates based on what's happening in the field."

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Simple Framework: Adopt a tiered approach to communicate updates without overwhelming your team:

• Small tweaks: Quick Slack or email notifications
• Moderate changes: In-app notifications with context
• Major shifts: Focused training sessions with follow-up

This helps teams prioritize changes without disrupting their workflow.

Finding Gold in Overlooked Data

Smart leaders look beyond conventional metrics. Amber champions data sources that many executives ignore:

"Check your internal ticketing system. That's where your FAQs live in real time. When you can tell executives, 'We received a hundred tickets this month on this one issue,' you've found something worth fixing."

Creating Safe Spaces for Real Feedback

As a leader who rose through enablement, Amber maintains direct connections with her frontline teams through multiple channels:

1. Regular "open office hours" for unfiltered conversation
2. Structured focus groups centered on key challenges
3. Creative scenarios that remove typical constraints

"People share feedback differently based on their comfort level," Amber explains. "Some need privacy, others prefer group settings, and some open up when you make it hypothetical."

This approach yields insights that would never surface in formal settings.

Advice for Leaders Without Enablement Experience

Having sat on both sides of the table, Amber offers perspective to revenue leaders:

"Your people aren't there primarily to learn - they're there to perform. But performance depends on giving them space to develop skills that match evolving business needs."

Many leaders expect overnight behavior change after a single training. Human adaptation takes time, especially for team members with different learning styles or in hybrid environments.

Guidance for Enablement Pros Eyeing Leadership Roles

For enablement professionals with executive ambitions:

"Speak the language of the business, not enablement jargon. Connect your work directly to revenue outcomes. Find data insights others miss. Show exactly how your initiatives drive performance."

Amber's own journey proves that enablement expertise provides excellent preparation for revenue leadership—when properly translated.

The Path Forward

Closing the gap between strategy and execution becomes possible when organizations empower their frontline managers, create adaptable processes, and foster environments where truth flows freely. When data-driven decisions meet psychological safety, strategic plans transform into consistent results.

Common Questions About Strategy Execution

How can we bridge the gap between planning and results?

Start with your frontline managers. Equip them with both strategic understanding and practical tools before initiatives reach their teams. Train managers first, ensure they grasp the "why" behind changes, and give them resources to reinforce new behaviors.

What makes a playbook worth using?

Effective playbook goes beyond documenting processes. They should include your sales methodology, customer insights, competitive positioning, objection handling, and successful conversation patterns. The key is evolution: use a tiered approach to regularly update content based on field feedback and market shifts.

How do we actually motivate our sales teams?

Forget the inspirational speeches. Motivation flourishes when people feel safe taking risks and speaking honestly. Focus on demonstrating resilience during challenges, creating psychological safety for feedback, and aligning compensation with desired behaviors.

Which data should enablement teams track?

Look beyond standard sales metrics. Explore internal ticketing systems to spot recurring challenges, analyze conversation patterns from calls, track how often playbooks get used, and measure how quickly new hires become productive. Present these insights in business terms that connect directly to revenue results.

How long should implementing new processes take?

One of the biggest leadership mistakes is expecting instant behavior change. Human adaptation happens gradually. Most sales processes require 30-90 days to become habits. Set realistic timelines with clear adoption milestones, and implement reinforcement strategies from day one.

How can enablement professionals move into revenue leadership?

Speak executive language rather than enablement terminology. Present data connecting directly to business outcomes, identify metrics others overlook, and demonstrate how your initiatives impact revenue performance. Build relationships across departments to understand the complete revenue picture.