Hey sales leaders: You’re probably measuring the effectiveness of your enablement efforts in the wrong way.
Enablement programs are generally measured in two ways, and they’re both problematic:
Common approach 1: Participation and Reaction — measuring whether sellers participated in training, liked it, or learned anything.
Why is it problematic? Leaders don’t care.
Does it really make a difference to you or the business that 73% of reps participated in the training, and 81% of them answered the multiple choice questions correctly?
Common approach 2: Business Outcomes — measuring the impact of those efforts on metrics that are super important to the business, like win rates, ACV, sales cycle length, etc.
Why is it problematic? Leaders don’t believe the numbers.
I’m sure you’re pleased to see the ACV go up by 21% and the sales cycle length go down by 12%. That’s awesome. But how likely are you and your executive team to believe that the enablement team’s training program on discovery and business insights had anything to do with it? Aren’t you more likely to believe that the new territories or the new product launch were the real reasons for the improvements?
So what’s the alternative?
Measure tactical changes in behavior.
Let’s say you’re working on an initiative for sellers to be better about arriving at discovery calls with a point of view about the problems the prospect may face and how your solution may address them. Measure the percent of discovery calls in which reps state a pain hypothesis (using trackers in your conversation intelligence tool), and measure the conversion rate from discovery to the next stage.
Working on an initiative for sellers to be better about multi-threading opportunities? Measure the average number of contact roles associated with the opportunity, and measure the mix of personas in those contact roles, and measure the percent of calls in which reps recommend that other stakeholders be included in the next call.
Working on an initiative for sellers to stop discounting so heavily? Measure average discount rates, and measure the average number of decreases in the TCV on the opportunity, and measure the percent of calls in which the rep discusses the business impact of the status quo.
Is any of these important enough to report to the board? Probably not.
But each of them IS important to sales managers and sales leaders.
And it’s very easy to make the case that the enablement initiative had a direct impact on them.
AND once you stack up a bunch of these little victories, it becomes much easier to make the case that the enablement program as a whole has had a meaningful impact on win rates, ACV, sales cycle length, etc.
Happy selling.