SA21M4 Director Commercial Enablement

CAS uses intuitive technology, unparalleled scientific content, and unmatched human expertise to help companies create groundbreaking innovations that benefit the world. As the scientific information solutions division of the American Chemical Society, CAS manages the largest curated reservoir of scientific knowledge and, for 119 years, has helped innovators mine, assess, and apply that information to keep businesses thriving. The CAS team is global, diverse, and endlessly curious, and it strives to make scientific insights accessible to innovators worldwide.

CAS is currently seeking a Director Commercial Enablement for our Sales team. This position will be located in Columbus, Ohio.

Position Summary

This role leads a dual-focused,: 1. Arm the commercial organization to sell the full CAS solution portfolio, from established products such as CAS SciFinder®; STN; CAS BioFinder®; CAS IP Finder™, Powered by STN; and CAS Custom Services℠, to newer AI-oriented solutions such as CAS Newton℠, CAS Connections℠, the MCP connector, and future agentic AI capabilities. 2. Teaching the broader commercial organization, not just sales but also services, marketing, and support, how to use AI tools such as Claude in day-to-day work, including account research, prospecting, orchestration, call preparation, internal business process consulting, drafting, and administrative tasks.

This is a leadership role, not an individual-contributor build role. The Director leads a team of enablement specialists who design, build, and deliver this work day to day, sets direction, builds the team's capability, and remains accountable for outcomes. The role carries three to four direct reports, no indirect reports, and budget responsibility for enablement programs and systems, and it is classified as exempt under the Fair Labor Standards Act.

The Director leads the current enablement team and is accountable for shifting the function from a traditional learning-and-development model to a change-management model: work is measured by field adoption and behavior change, not course completions or content shipped. This role requires real product, customer, and market knowledge in CAS markets, not training craft alone, and is expected to build that same depth across the team.

This role also owns how enablement content is built for an AI-native commercial organization: designing the curriculum and process for structuring, indexing, and refining enablement knowledge inside large language model-based tools such as Claude, and curating the resulting library of AI skills as CAS moves toward a future state where Sales, Marketing, Services, and Support all draw on that knowledge layer directly. Sales Enablement is expected to curate that library, not simply consume it.

Position Responsibilities

Product and Solution Enablement

• Lead the team accountable for the enablement roadmap across the full CAS solution portfolio, including CAS SciFinder, STN, CAS BioFinder, CAS IP Finder, CAS Custom Services, CAS Newton, CAS Connections, the MCP connector, and future agentic AI capabilities, ensuring Sales and Customer Success teams lead with customer outcomes rather than product access or feature lists.
• Maintain direct, current fluency across the full portfolio, with particular depth on AI-oriented solutions, , along with competitive positioning and the buyer set each product reaches: chemists, life scientists, IP professionals, and non-scientific enterprise buyers reached through MCP.
• Partner directly with Product Management on all new releases, AI and non-AI alike, so enablement content ships in sync with launches.

Consultative and Challenger Selling Methodologies

• Lead the team that designs and scales training in consultative and Challenger selling methodologies for both Sales and Customer Success teams, including discovery and needs assessment, value-based selling and ROI articulation, and customer-centric messaging and solution positioning.
• Build the team's capability to teach the Challenger-specific skill of inserting constructive tension into conversations with senior-level prospects: teaching them something new about their own business, reframing the problem, and creating urgency, rather than simply confirming what the buyer already believes.
• Partner with sales leadership to reinforce these methodologies through frontline coaching and ongoing reinforcement, not one-time training, so the behavior change sticks in the field.

AI-Enabled Ways of Working

• Lead the team that builds and owns the enablement program teaching commercial roles, including sales, services, marketing, and support, how to use AI tools such as Claude in day-to-day work: account research, call preparation, prospecting, drafting, and administrative tasks.
• Direct the team's work identifying and rolling out specific AI-enabled workflows, in partnership with IT and RevOps, that measurably reduce administrative time and free up more selling and customer time.
• Track and report adoption of AI tools inside the commercial organization as its own enablement metric, separate from customer-facing product and solution enablement.

AI-Native Enablement Architecture and Curation

• Lead the team that designs and owns the curriculum and process for structuring enablement content so it can be indexed, traversed, and refined inside large language model-based tools such as Claude Skills, rather than delivered only as static decks, courses, or PDFs.
• Lead the team that builds and curates a living library of AI skills that encode CAS product, customer, and process knowledge for direct use inside commercial workflows, with Sales Enablement as the single point of ownership and quality control for that library.
• Own the governance model for the skills library: version control, an accuracy-review cadence, and a clear process for retiring outdated content as products, positioning, and pricing evolve.
• Direct cross-functional work with IT, Product, and RevOps to build toward a future state where reps, managers, and other commercial functions can query enablement knowledge directly through AI tools rather than searching static content, positioning Sales Enablement as curator of that knowledge layer for the broader commercial organization, not just the sales team.

Team Leadership and Talent

• Lead and develop the Sales Enablement team, raising the bar so every trainer carries real product, customer, and market knowledge in their coverage area, not adult-learning skill alone.
• Reset how the team's success is measured: move from activity reporting, such as sessions delivered and content shipped, to adoption and behavior-change metrics, such as tool usage, pipeline hygiene, deal velocity, and win-rate lift, consistent with the strongest examples already on the team.
• Identify and close skill gaps on the team, with AI-solution fluency as the top current gap, and build a consistent upskilling path for new and existing trainers.

Program Design and Delivery

• Lead the team that designs and delivers enablement programs and materials, including sales playbooks, customer conversation frameworks, new-hire onboarding, product and AI launches, and skills training, with consistent quality and cadence across the global Sales and Customer Success organization.
• Direct enablement content and delivery systems, such as Seismic or an equivalent platform and the learning management system, end to end, working through the team's existing systems ownership.
• Direct the sales training events calendar (GSM, regional meetings, SE calls) and the sales recognition and awards process, continuing the team's existing ownership of these programs.

Cross-Functional Partnership

• Partner with Sales Leadership, Customer Success Leadership, Marketing, Product, and RevOps to keep enablement content and cadence aligned to go-to-market priorities and new sales KPIs.
• Represent enablement's voice in go-to-market planning for new launches, flagging where sellers will need AI-fluency support before a launch, not after.

Explicitly Out of Scope

• Enterprise sales strategy, market segmentation, and account prioritization are owned elsewhere. This role partners with, but does not lead, that work.
• Pricing strategy and customer agreement and annual-contract-value analytics are owned elsewhere. This role partners with, but does not lead, that work.

Background Experience

Suitable candidate background includes:

• 8 or more years in sales enablement, sales training, or a customer-facing commercial role, with direct experience in a scientific, technical, or information-services market. Real product and customer knowledge in the CAS market, such as chemistry, life sciences, intellectual property, or adjacent scientific information services, is required; general learning-and-development experience alone does not meet this bar.
• Bachelor's degree in a science, business, or related field. An advanced degree is a plus but not required.
• 3 or more years of direct sales experience in scientific/technical markets.
• Demonstrated working knowledge of the CAS core solution portfolio, including CAS SciFinder, STN, CAS BioFinder, CAS IP Finder, and CAS Custom Services, or a demonstrated ability to build that breadth quickly in a comparable competitor or adjacent market.
• Experience designing or scaling structured sales methodology programs, such as consultative selling or Challenger-style approaches, that build real frontline coaching capability rather than one-time training.
• Demonstrated experience enabling a sales force on AI-enabled or other complex technical products, with the ability to translate technical capability into a customer-outcomes narrative.
• 3 or more years of people leadership, directly leading a team of trainers, content specialists, or enablement specialists who design, build, and deliver the work.
• Experience shifting a team from an activity-based training model to a measured change-management model tied to business outcomes such as adoption, pipeline health, and revenue impact.
• Strong cross-functional collaboration skills with Product, Marketing, Sales Leadership, and RevOps.
• Experience with enablement and content systems such as Seismic, customer relationship management systems such as Salesforce.com, and learning management system platforms.
• Familiarity with how large language model-based tools consume and retrieve structured content, such as skills, retrieval-based knowledge bases, and prompt and context design, and the ability to translate enablement curriculum into that format; this is a new, differentiating requirement beyond a traditional enablement leadership background.
• Personal, hands-on fluency using AI assistants such as Claude for research, drafting, and daily workflow tasks, with the ability to teach that fluency to others across the commercial organization.
• Comfort operating as an early adopter and builder with emerging AI tooling such as Claude or comparable platforms; this role is expected to help define AI-native enablement at CAS, not simply administer an existing program.
• Travel is expected to be less than 15%.

CAS offers a competitive salary and comprehensive benefits package, including a generous vacation plan, medical, dental, vision insurance plans, and employee savings and retirement plans. Candidates for this position must be authorized to work in the United States and not require work authorization sponsorship by our company for this position now or in the future. EEO/Disabled/Veteran