What if there was a secret ingredient that could turn a standard sales enablement strategy into a recipe for quota-crushing reps?
Director of Sales Development Jennifer Glover may have found that ingredient for her reps at the apartment-hunting website Zumper: data.
Glover said her enablement team relies on tools like LevelJump — a metrics-driven, outcome-based training and coaching tool that lives in Salesforce — to give them insight into the effectiveness of the new hire’s training. With clear metrics on how onboarding is going, Zumper’s enablement specialists can start hands-on work with new account execs.
“The enablement team works with each AE and their manager to explore and research their book of business,” Glover said. “We design a call, visit and email strategy so they get comfortable prospecting and doing discovery by the end of their second week.”
Data also empowered Glover and her team to reset their expectations and revamp their onboarding program by analyzing and revitalizing content that wasn’t as effective in helping new AEs reach their goals. Read on to find out more about the success Glover’s team cooked up with data as their special sauce.
What sales enablement data do you measure and how do you measure it?
For new hires, we utilize LevelJump to deliver and measure completion of a 10-day onboarding program that takes new AEs through every facet of the selling process. We have interactive activities to help set them up for success around areas like the following: strategizing accounts, call list planning and campaign set-up for their first 30, 60 and 90 days.
LevelJump measures these training and enablement tools against activity and sales metrics to see the impact of training on KPIs. For all AEs, we utilize Salesforce to capture and measure sales activities like calls, emails and sales meetings against pipeline creation and revenue won. We look at time to first deal and time to first sales meeting as a gauge for success. We also use time to the third deal as a way to measure their consistency in sales.
Analysis helped us figure out where our expectations were unrealistic so we could adjust and plan accordingly.”
What’s one way this data helped you fine-tune your sales enablement strategies?
Data played a role in two major sales enablement changes we made in the past six months. The first was implementing outcome-based enablement solutions to deliver, track and report on tons of metrics. We’ve always tracked activities and sales but had little to no insight into which training materials were being viewed or what was effective. Once we started tracking these materials, we could see the content that was not being watched or was cut short and what was driving the most impact. We’ve been able to iterate on our onboarding program to improve completion time as well as increase the time to the first deal and overall attainment of new hires.
The other change was managing expectations. We had some expectations we realized were not achievable after tracking activities and metrics more closely. This analysis helped us figure out where our expectations were unrealistic so we could adjust and plan accordingly.
What targets are tied to these metrics and what are some ways you support your sales team in reaching them?
Our goal is to have new AEs ramped up to full quota attainment in three months. This goal means we want their time to the first sale to be within 30 days and we’d like them scheduling around six weekly sales meetings by their fourth week. The enablement team works with each AE and their manager to explore and research their book of business. We design a call, visit and email strategy so they get comfortable prospecting and doing discovery by the end of their second week.
And to stay connected to new hires after their initial onboarding, we deliver new training videos and exercises every month to help them level up their skills for booking meetings, closing deals and generating new pipeline.
