Sales Enablement Practitioners have almost certainly attended a meeting in which someone in leadership has questioned the value of an Enablement initiative. For many seasoned sales leaders and executives, this department didn’t exist ten years ago, and they are going to question how success is measured. You know the value of your staff yet nothing speaks louder than simple and valid data to back up your claims. Below are a few ideas successfully used at Fortune 500 companies.
Enablement “Opportunity” Tagging in SFDC
I once had a boss that loved to say that we need to “eat our own dog food.” While I would laugh every time she said it – the concept is so very important in Sales Enablement. How many meetings have you attended where someone says “If it’s not in SFDC it doesn’t exist?” When your Sales Enablement team engages a sales team, conducts a facilitated session, or even works 1:1 with a salesperson – do you document the interaction in your system of record?
- Create a new field in SFDC or use a previously unused one dedicated to Sales Enablement.
- Create discrete drop-downs that are well thought out for valid reporting.
- You may need a second field to identify the Sales Enablement staff who engaged.
- Instruct team to ONLY tag opportunities they touch and not in bulk. A good rule of thumb is 1:1 engagement, facilitated sessions including real opportunities, etc. Ask the team to tag the opportunities the same day of engagement.
- Use drop downs like War Room, Account Planning Session, Stalled Deals, etc.
- Create or ask the SFDC team to generate a report that shows 30/60/90 Day report which shows Sales stages as of a specific date and current status (Closed Won, Closed Lost ).
- The suggestion is to tag on the “Opportunity” level versus “Account” based on past experiences.
- Run reports monthly and track the percent of deals that advanced sales stage, won or lost. Seeing an increase in Closed Lost isn’t necessarily a bad thing if Enablement’s work includes keeping a realistic pipeline.
Net promoter (SurveyMonkey or similar)
- Create a short survey for each significant Enablement engagement (in-person facilitation, 1:1, virtual group training, etc.
- All sessions should receive the same survey questions (#2 and #3).
- 3 Questions make it simple
- “Name of Session” (pre-populated) – training, account planning, territory planning, etc.)
- “How likely would you recommend this session to a friend?” 1-10 score
- “What did you love about the session and how could we improve.”
- Only 9 and 10 counts as a Net Promoter. Anything 8 and below is not considered a positive result.
Monthly Scorecard
- Includes Net Promoter results, SFDC Tagging Reports, and other items agreed by leadership.
- Interview sales leaders and executives to find out what “they” would like to see.
- Share with entire Enablement, Marketing, Sales Operations, Sales Leaders, and Executive team.
- Ask 1-2 members to report out on all hands monthly or quarterly call.
Your sales leaders and executives will appreciate the effort, transparency and might even reward additional headcount or resources if you can prove the ROI. Always make sure you report all data, not simply the best results. Even if an initiative doesn’t return as high of a return as you would like; consistent candor will build trust with the sales organization. Contact me to discuss best practices and how to deploy a repeatable process for validating ROI in Sales Enablement. steve.buergey@clientwon.com 224-210-9191
Written by: Steve Buergey, Owner ClientWon
