Effectively Enabling SDRs Without Hurting Your Brand

A question I get asked more and more is: How do we effectively enable SDRs (sales development reps), and is the enablement of SDRs even our job as sales enablement leaders?
Effectively enabling SDRs is a specific challenge, slightly different than engaging, equipping and empowering other customer-facing audiences. And yes, it should always be a sales enablement leader’s responsibility as, ideally, they serve all customer-facing roles and their managers along the entire customer’s path.
However, the challenge begins way earlier. In many organizations, the responsibility for SDRs is moved from marketing to sales and back to marketing and back to sales again. That happens more often than you might think – and not because there’s an outcome-based thought process behind it. It happens because headcounts are moved around from one leader to another and because the role is, apparently, not perceived as mission critical regarding sales results.
This assumption is wrong and