A current survey by Gartner discovered that 47% of digital employees wrestle to search out data or knowledge wanted to successfully carry out their jobs, which may negatively affect rep productiveness. So how will you drive gross sales productiveness by means of enablement?
Shawnna Sumaoang: Hello and welcome to the Win Win Podcast. I’m your host, Shawnna Sumaoang. Be part of us as we dive into altering tendencies within the office and how one can navigate them efficiently. Right here to debate this matter is Kara Huff, the senior international advertising supervisor of providers, assist & coaching at Hexagon Asset Lifecycle Intelligence. Thanks for becoming a member of, Kara! I’d love so that you can inform us about your self, your background, and your position.
Kara Huff: Thanks a lot for having me. I’m the worldwide advertising supervisor for Hexagon. I’ve been within the advertising trade for 25 years. All through product growth, portfolio administration, and naturally, how we allow our gross sales fields to achieve success with our merchandise and options.
SS: Thanks a lot for becoming a member of us, Kara. Now, I’d wish to return to that query within the intro. Out of your perspective, how does enablement assist drive gross sales productiveness and what are a few of your greatest practices to take action?
KH: Nice query. Gross sales productiveness has modified a lot over the previous couple of years with the entire completely different know-how that’s on the market, and particularly with the know-how stack that you simply present to your discipline sellers. It’s form of been a studying recreation to determine how we make the most of all of these to return collectively. What we’ve realized is that the extra instruments that we’ve which can be built-in, that present a seamless expertise for our discipline sellers, not solely helps them to be productive but in addition helps them on their journey to help potential prospects with their digital transformation. It’s essential in every part that we do from a Hexagon perspective.
SS: I like that. A key piece of productiveness is effectivity. We give it some thought when it comes to effectivity and effectiveness. Previous to implementing Highspot, this was a ache level of yours on account of having a number of siloed platforms. Are you able to inform us extra concerning the effectivity challenges you have been dealing with and the way you form of overcame these with Highspot?
KH: Completely. So pre-COVID, we had a whole lot of completely different platforms and we’re seeking to evolve our know-how stack. We had a DAM, so we had a knowledge asset administration platform, however we couldn’t see the entire analytics of how content material was utilized, and what was hitting all marks with our discipline sellers. What have been our potential prospects and current prospects participating with? We wanted one thing that would give us some analytics and stroll us by means of that purchasing journey to see what good content material appears like and the way it’s utilized.
We had over 14,000 items of content material and once we seemed for any CMS and selected Highspot, we have been capable of slim that all the way down to about 7,000 property then during the last couple of years we have been capable of make the most of these analytics to essentially refine what was good content material the place we may spend extra of our time producing efficient items of content material. Proper now we’ve gone from 14,000 to about 3,500 representing over 78 merchandise and options in our portfolio. It’s helped us to change into considerably extra environment friendly in our productiveness from a advertising perspective.
SS: It sounds prefer it sounds such as you guys have been actually capable of slim it all the way down to these key items of content material that resonate along with your consumers. Now, your governance technique clearly has performed a key position in serving to you enhance that effectivity. The truth is, I used to be wanting on the stats to your Highspot occasion, and also you guys are at 55 p.c of your content material being properly ruled, which is incredible. What does your governance technique appear to be?
KH: That can be an incredible query. We labored with our Highspot workforce to know precisely what good governance of a CMS appears like, and whereas 55 p.c is nice, we might love to extend that to round 70 to 75%. How we’re doing that’s we set up a governance information for our admins of the platform, for our spot homeowners, in order that they will perceive precisely what good content material appears like. We arrange some matrix for them to repeatedly monitor. We now have month-to-month duties that they need to carry out quarterly and yearly. Doing that, permits them to essentially dive in and do a few issues, like a content material refresh to know what’s working and what’s not, what’s being utilized, and possibly issues that aren’t getting as a lot visibility as they might have anticipated that it will.
It permits them to evaluation issues like tagging accessibility or spot location to know how we will refine it for it to change into more practical. It additionally permits us to essentially take a look at the noise. As entrepreneurs, typically you could have stakeholders that suppose extra is best, extra content material, extra rationalization. With our analytics going by means of these as a part of our governance technique permits us to make use of knowledge to say, hey, that is actually what’s resonating and never, and as a part of our governance, if we’ve content material that hasn’t been considered in 90 plus days, then that enables us to do a set off to say, okay, it’s not working. You both must retag or reassess the content material in it, or we have to archive that in order that we will permit worthwhile content material to rise to the floor.
SS: I like that. How has your governance technique helped you enhance gross sales effectivity? Do you could have just a few knowledge factors you’ll be able to share?
KH: Yeah, completely. Within our scorecards that we use for all of our spots, the governance that we’ve established that claims, earlier than while you’ve bought a whole lot of completely different merchandise and also you’ve bought a whole lot of completely different content material varieties, we thought that it was nice to have depth extra so than breadth. Our governance technique has allowed us to have a look at it to say, that we thought that answer sheets have been helpful for discipline sellers, however we’ve come to search out out that issues that we would have simply supplied as just a little cherry on prime, if you’ll, really resonate extra with our discipline sellers and has increased engagement with our prospects. It’s actually allowed us to refine that to say, here’s what efficient content material is and the place you ought to be spending your effort first which could take much less time to create and implement than what we initially had in our scope.
SS: That’s incredible. Now, along with effectivity, as I discussed, effectiveness can be a key piece of the productiveness components. One among your large initiatives lately was targeted on boosting effectiveness by offering greater than 25 performs in your completely different merchandise. What was the impetus for this initiative?
KH: Gross sales performs is one thing that we began going into our second yr of getting Highspot. We had all of the content material in there, and we wished to allow our discipline to have the ability to promote it from a scientific strategy by means of content material. We arrange these gross sales performs, we did a whole lot of checks and balances on what good seemed like, after which we had a shift in our portfolio of how we have been going to place ourselves within the market.
We decided that we would have liked to have enablement packages geared round these new initiatives. If we had an enablement bundle, we would have liked to have a gross sales play that supported these initiatives. We did an extra 25 gross sales performs for our gross sales kickoff that will allow our discipline to not solely hear concerning the new enablement packages that have been developed for them but in addition to have a gross sales mess around every a kind of that included issues like what to know, what to say, what to point out, and what to pitch.
We supplied that constant strategy with a refined asset checklist for all of these gross sales performs in order that it didn’t matter which strategy our discipline sellers or our account growth reps have been coming into the method with, that they had a constant technique wherein to allow themselves. Additionally they share related content material with our prospects and prospects.
SS: I like that. You already touched on a whole lot of greatest practices there, however do you could have any further greatest practices you’ll share round constructing efficient performs?
KH: Completely. It’s nice to have a template that simply establishes some guardrails. In fact, with all merchandise, you’re going to have just a little little bit of variance on what’s relative and what’s wanted. Generally the depth can increase, however by offering a template and saying, hey, guys, right here’s the minimal of what you must have in right here, and right here is the utmost of what you’ll be able to have in right here, and here’s what each play ought to embrace. Having pitch templates with pitch kinds has been vastly profitable for us as a result of finally it delivers a plug-and-play technique for gross sales, which is actually what they want.
We would like them to have the ability to are available in and see the gross sales play, get the instruments that they want to have the ability to achieve success, after which actually simply have that pitch template that they will use over and over and over to essentially gauge the engagement from their prospects.
With all of our gross sales performs, one other requirement that we did is constructing within the obligatory integration with our Salesforce alternatives. As a stuffed vendor, regardless of in the event that they have been within our Highspot occasion, or in the event that they have been in GoSell, or in the event that they have been of their Outlook or electronic mail consumer, anytime that they have been speaking round a particular product of curiosity or answer of curiosity, that after that was decided, that it mechanically populated these performs for them and included these pitch templates in order that it created this nearly automated conduct for them to all the time make the most of these performs and all the time make the most of the content material in it, which then allowed us to always measure the engagement and perceive what was successful and hitting and additional refine these as, as we go alongside our course of after which constructing that total governance. It’s actually a full-circle course of.
SS: I like that. Now you’ve achieved 71% adoption of your performs, which can be wonderful. How do you drive the adoption of your performs?
KH: That’s an incredible query, and I might like to say that I’ve the reply to it. It comes with a whole lot of trial and error. I feel that a part of the success attributed to the adoption of performs is the arrogance that we’ve simply put within the platform. It comes with well-governed content material. It comes with well-organized content material and spots. Understanding that you’ve got assets which can be devoted to refining it and creating that consistency and collaboration with a number of groups.
We even have groups that come collectively and do our performs that span a number of completely different departments inside our group. We now have product homeowners who’re in that course of, we’ve our portfolio technique and enablement workforce, our advertising workforce, and our campaigns workforce. We now have a whole lot of completely different key gamers on the desk once we’re growing these performs. In fact, we put them up in that constant method, be certain they’re checked off and so they meet our requirements.
Then, we talk that to our discipline sellers to allow them to know that they’re accessible to them. After we be sure that it’s working with the entire completely different techniques that we’ve it built-in with, whether or not or not it’s Salesforce or we make the most of Salesloft for our account growth workforce, it’s additionally built-in there. We get all of that setup and enabled, after which we talk that in a technique to the entire finish customers for these performs to know that they’re accessible.
Then we simply drive that house with persevering with coaching and consciousness of letting them know the place they’re and having them within the forefront within our platform. It’s a whole lot of various things that we’re attempting. We now have seen nice success and now we simply need to proceed to refine that course of whereas we proceed to replace the extra 50-plus gross sales performs that we have already got in our Highspot occasion at present.
SS: Now, to investigate the affect of performs, since you talked about how necessary it’s to have a look at how issues are performing, I do know play scorecards are a key useful resource for you. What are your greatest practices for leveraging scorecards to observe the success of your applications and actually optimize the affect?
KH: Scorecards are one thing which can be comparatively new for us. They have been in beta, I consider, earlier this yr whereas we have been engaged on getting all of our gross sales performs up and launched. Once they began popping out, it was actually serving to us to know not simply from the analytics. It’s actually similar to that particular play or that particular spot, what was working and by coming in, it allowed us to have a look at the scorecards and say, hey, we will take a look at this by consumer position, or we will take a look at this from a content material effectiveness perspective, or we will take a look at this from a pitch engagement perspective. These are some issues that it’s actually helped us dive into to know.
As you had talked about earlier, our gross sales play adoption, but in addition our pitch adoption. By having these scorecards once we set our targets for 2023, we had initially set a 25% enhance in pitch adoption, which we thought was a lofty however attainable aim. But with these scorecards, we’ve seen 125% pitch adoption. It’s form of blown our thoughts just a little bit, however the analytics is the place it permits us to have a look at not solely what’s working, but in addition to ship that knowledge again to our stakeholders which can be spending so many assets and time devoted to growing these performs for them to know that they’re resonating and that they’re working.
The scorecards, whereas we do make the most of these to assist us, we’re simply on the tip of the floor on gross sales performs and having the ability to refine these and We’re going to make the most of a few of these metrics and people scorecards to assist us outline what our 2024 targets are to permit us to dig even deeper into that and enhance pitch engagement from an outdoor perspective.
SS: Spectacular pitch stats there, by the best way. Kudos to you and the workforce for that. That’s wonderful. Now, Kara, to shut, what are among the key enterprise outcomes that you simply’ve seen because it pertains to gross sales productiveness since implementing Highspot?
KH: There’s been a whole lot of advantages that we’ve seen, really. A variety of the factors that we’ve talked about at present, like offering a single supply for our discipline sellers have been enormous. Not just one space that they will come to however one which they know is built-in with our platforms. It’s up to date constantly. They know that it’s the most recent and biggest content material. They know that our greatest initiatives from a gross sales perspective are on the forefront. They know that we will see how they’re participating with that content material or not, which I feel performs into the adoption half.
Additionally, them having the ability to see the analytics and the engagement behind their pitches to know what’s working and what’s not. I feel that it’s necessary and our initiatives to state whereas we do have guardrails proper contained in the platform, right here’s all of this completely different materials and other ways which you could put it to use, that we permit them to do it and what works greatest for them. If that’s a pitch hyperlink or an electronic mail pitch or a reside pitch, or if it’s by means of Salesforce or their electronic mail consumer, we don’t care how they use the content material and the way they pitch the content material. We simply need them to have the ability to do it the place they want it, how they want it, and assist them see what productive content material and engagement appears like.
They’re our greatest customers of the platform, so we use them and their suggestions to repeatedly refine it. That helps us be extra profitable, and the extra that we hearken to them and the extra we refine it the extra confidence they’ve and every part that’s deployed inside our Highspot. As I stated, it’s positively a workforce initiative and a workforce aim, and a whole lot of completely different contributors to it, however Highspot has allowed us to repeatedly develop and achieve success in that. It’s developed a successful collaboration, so we enormously admire our Highspot reps and every part they do to assist us achieve success.
SS: Properly, Kara, thanks. I enormously admire you taking the time to do that podcast. Thanks a lot for becoming a member of us.
KH: Completely. Thanks a lot, Shawnna.
SS: To our viewers, thanks for listening to this episode of the Win Win Podcast. You’ll want to tune in subsequent time for extra insights on how one can maximize enablement success with Highspot.
