A latest 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 easy methods to navigate them efficiently. Right here to debate this subject is Kara Huff, the senior world advertising and marketing 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 function.
Kara Huff: Thanks a lot for having me. I’m the worldwide advertising and marketing supervisor for Hexagon. I’ve been within the advertising and marketing business for 25 years. All through product improvement, 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 all the completely different know-how that’s on the market, and particularly with the know-how stack that you simply present to your area sellers. It’s type of been a studying sport 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 now have which can be built-in, that present a seamless expertise for our area sellers, not solely helps them to be productive but additionally helps them on their journey to help potential prospects with their digital transformation. It’s essential in all the pieces that we do from a Hexagon perspective.
SS: I really like that. A key piece of productiveness is effectivity. We give it some thought by way of effectivity and effectiveness. Previous to implementing Highspot, this was a ache level of yours attributable to having a number of siloed platforms. Are you able to inform us extra concerning the effectivity challenges you had been dealing with and the way you type of overcame these with Highspot?
KH: Completely. So pre-COVID, we had plenty of completely different platforms and we’re trying to evolve our know-how stack. We had a DAM, so we had a knowledge asset administration platform, however we couldn’t see all the analytics of how content material was utilized, and what was hitting all marks with our area sellers. What had been our potential prospects and current prospects participating with? We would have liked 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 regarded for any CMS and selected Highspot, we had been capable of slim that right down to about 7,000 belongings then over the past couple of years we had been capable of make the most of these analytics to actually refine what was good content material the place we might spend extra of our time producing efficient items of content material. Proper now we now have 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 and marketing perspective.
SS: It sounds prefer it sounds such as you guys had been actually capable of slim it right down to these key items of content material that resonate along with your patrons. Now, your governance technique clearly has performed a key function in serving to you enhance that effectivity. Actually, 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 nicely ruled, which is implausible. What does your governance technique appear to be?
KH: That can be a fantastic query. We labored with our Highspot crew 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 house owners, in order that they’ll perceive precisely what good content material appears like. We arrange some matrix for them to constantly monitor. Now we have month-to-month duties that they need to carry out quarterly and yearly. Doing that, permits them to actually 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 could.
It permits them to evaluation issues like tagging accessibility or spot location to know how we are able to refine it for it to change into simpler. It additionally permits us to actually take a look at the noise. As entrepreneurs, generally you’ve gotten stakeholders that assume 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 now have content material that hasn’t been considered in 90 plus days, then that permits 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 are able to enable priceless content material to rise to the floor.
SS: I really like that. How has your governance technique helped you enhance gross sales effectivity? Do you’ve gotten a couple of knowledge factors you’ll be able to share?
KH: Yeah, completely. Inside our scorecards that we use for all of our spots, the governance that we now have established that claims, earlier than if you’ve obtained plenty of completely different merchandise and also you’ve obtained plenty of completely different content material sorts, we thought that it was nice to have depth extra so than breadth. Our governance technique has allowed us to take a look at it to say, that we thought that resolution sheets had been helpful for area sellers, however we’ve come to search out out that issues that we would have simply offered as a bit of cherry on high, if you’ll, really resonate extra with our area sellers and has greater 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 have 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 implausible. Now, along with effectivity, as I discussed, effectiveness can be a key piece of the productiveness system. One in every of your large initiatives just 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 12 months of getting Highspot. We had all of the content material in there, and we needed to allow our area to have the ability to promote it from a scientific strategy by means of content material. We arrange these gross sales performs, we did plenty of checks and balances on what good regarded like, after which we had a shift in our portfolio of how we had been going to place ourselves within the market.
We decided that we wanted to have enablement packages geared round these new initiatives. If we had an enablement bundle, we wanted to have a gross sales play that supported these initiatives. We did an extra 25 gross sales performs for our gross sales kickoff that may allow our area to not solely hear concerning the new enablement packages that had been developed for them but additionally to have a gross sales mess around every a kind of that included issues like what to know, what to say, what to indicate, and what to pitch.
We offered that constant strategy with a refined asset record for all of these gross sales performs in order that it didn’t matter which strategy our area sellers or our account improvement reps had been coming into the method with, that they had a constant methodology by which to allow themselves. In addition they share related content material with our prospects and prospects.
SS: I really like that. You already touched on plenty of greatest practices there, however do you’ve gotten any further greatest practices you’d share round constructing efficient performs?
KH: Completely. It’s nice to have a template that simply establishes some guardrails. After all, with all merchandise, you’re going to have a bit of little bit of variance on what’s relative and what’s wanted. Typically the depth can broaden, however by offering a template and saying, hey, guys, right here’s the minimal of what it’s important to 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 embody. Having pitch templates with pitch kinds has been vastly profitable for us as a result of in the end it delivers a plug-and-play methodology for gross sales, which is actually what they want.
We would like them to have the ability to are available 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’ll use over and time and again to actually 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, irrespective of in the event that they had been inside our Highspot occasion, or in the event that they had been in GoSell, or in the event that they had been of their Outlook or e mail shopper, anytime that they had been speaking round a particular product of curiosity or resolution 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 habits for them to at all times make the most of these performs and at all times make the most of the content material in it, which then allowed us to consistently measure the engagement and perceive what was profitable 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 really like that. Now you’ve achieved 71% adoption of your performs, which can be superb. How do you drive the adoption of your performs?
KH: That’s a fantastic query, and I’d like to say that I’ve the reply to it. It comes with plenty 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. Figuring out that you’ve got sources 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. Now we have product house owners who’re in that course of, we now have our portfolio technique and enablement crew, our advertising and marketing crew, and our campaigns crew. Now we have plenty of completely different key gamers on the desk once we’re growing these performs. After all, we put them up in that constant method, ensure that they’re checked off and so they meet our requirements.
Then, we talk that to our area sellers to allow them to know that they’re out there to them. After we be sure that it’s working with all the completely different programs that we now have it built-in with, whether or not it’s Salesforce or we make the most of Salesloft for our account improvement crew, it’s additionally built-in there. We get all of that setup and enabled, after which we talk that in a way to all the finish customers for these performs to know that they’re out there.
Then we simply drive that residence with persevering with coaching and consciousness of letting them know the place they’re and having them within the forefront inside our platform. It’s plenty of various things that we’re attempting. Now we 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 in the present day.
SS: Now, to investigate the affect of performs, since you talked about how necessary it’s to take 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 watch the success of your applications and actually optimize the affect?
KH: Scorecards are one thing which can be comparatively new for us. They had been in beta, I imagine, earlier this 12 months whereas we had 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 identical to that particular play or that particular spot, what was working and by coming in, it allowed us to take a look at the scorecards and say, hey, we are able to take a look at this by person function, or we are able to take a look at this from a content material effectiveness perspective, or we are able to 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 additionally 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 type of blown our thoughts a bit of bit, however the analytics is the place it permits us to take a look at not solely what’s working, but additionally to ship that knowledge again to our stakeholders which can be spending so many sources 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 crew for that. That’s superb. Now, Kara, to shut, what are a number of the key enterprise outcomes that you simply’ve seen because it pertains to gross sales productiveness since implementing Highspot?
KH: There’s been plenty of advantages that we’ve seen, really. A whole lot of the factors that we’ve talked about in the present day, like offering a single supply for our area sellers have been enormous. Not just one space that they’ll come to however one which they know is built-in with our platforms. It’s up to date persistently. 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 are able to 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 enable them to do it and what works greatest for them. If that’s a pitch hyperlink or an e mail pitch or a reside pitch, or if it’s by means of Salesforce or their e mail shopper, 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 constantly 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 all the pieces that’s deployed inside our Highspot. As I mentioned, it’s positively a crew initiative and a crew aim, and plenty of completely different contributors to it, however Highspot has allowed us to constantly develop and achieve success in that. It’s developed a profitable collaboration, so we vastly respect our Highspot reps and all the pieces they do to assist us achieve success.
SS: Properly, Kara, thanks. I vastly respect 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.
