Adopting sales enablement is an impactful business strategy yet how do we effectively measure the program?
In the modern business era, sales enablement has become an integral part of almost every business. Executives and leaders see it as a transformative strategy to help their teams make more sales and stay ahead of their competitors.
If you ask 10 different leaders to define enablement, you’ll likely receive 10 different answers but for the sake of discussion let’s try to put some guardrails on a definition. The way we here at Enable.us, simply put see sales enablement is an iterative process where businesses provide their sales teams with the essential resources needed to make more sales. Such resources include market information, technological tools, coaching, learning, and compelling content to use with prospective customers. Really anything that helps sellers to improve their results.
Sales enablement comes as a strategic investment that requires a substantial injection of funds. And for this reason, just like any other investment, you need to measure your Return on Investment (ROI). But, how do you measure sales enablement success? Let's find out.
In this article, we'll explore 7 key metrics you can use to measure your sales enablement success.
Here are a few key metrics you can use to measure sales enablement success:
One key deliverable of a sales enablement plan is bringing your sales reps to peak performance. And one way of gauging the attainment of this deliverable is by measuring your sales reps' performance through quota attainment, especially the number of sellers that participate in hitting or exceeding their quota.
As you’re well aware, quota attainment is the measure of a salesperson's total sales relative to their quota for that period. To get this, take a salesperson's total sales for the period, divide by their quota, then multiply by 100. When we look at participation, we look across the entire sales force and look to see what percentage of sellers are at or above their quota, a key metric in the overall health of the sales org and the enablement strategy.
The higher the quota attainment and participation, the more successful the sales enablement plan. Looking at comparing data points such as pre enablement strategy and post enablement strategy is an easy way to measure participation and attainment against a new enablement strategy.
Lead-to-consumer conversion is another metric vital in measuring the impact of sales enablement activities. Typically, sales teams use sales enablement tools to identify hot leads, provide fast responses, and communicate more with the prospects in a bid to increase conversion rates.
So, to measure your lead-to-consumer conversion rate, take the total number of customers, divide by the total leads, then multiply by 100. This gives you a percentage rate. A high conversion rate shows that your sales enablement efforts are bearing fruits.
Once you have the win rate, you can understand where in the funnel your sales team needs assistance in converting prospects into actual customers. You can either introduce complementary products or revamp sales enablement tools, among other strategic plans to provide course correction before it’s too late.
Generally, a sales rep has approximately 50 hours per week to perform sales. However, a report by Forbes revealed that sales reps spend only less than 36% of their time on actual sales. Surprising and shocking at the same time, right?
So, this is how it happens. Most sales reps channel much of their time to activities such as creating expense reports, building their own presentations, looking for case studies, searching internally for the right people resources, getting approvals, scheduling, you name it. And, as much as these activities are related to sales, they sometimes eat into the time a salesperson would have spent making actual sales.
Such activities hinder the sales team from performing optimally, thus affecting the overall sales goals.
To gauge the success of your sales enablement efforts through this metric, measure each sales rep's time spent on actual sales relative to the standard operating hours. A time in motion survey is a good way to understand baseline time being spent on certain tasks and asking the team where the bottlenecks lie.
If the figures are low, you can try improving the metric gradually by reducing interruptions. To reduce interruptions, make sure you provide your sales team with all the resources they need to close more deals when they need them.
Sales enablement content includes PDFs, videos, articles, and brochures. However, you don't need to avail just any sales-related content; you need compelling content that'll make the implementation of your sales enablement plan easy.
Therefore, it's essential to know which content is more compelling or extremely important than the other. And luckily, there are numerous ways you can use to determine the relevance and usage of the content, depending on the available materials.
For example, you can use analytical tools such as enable.us to better understand views on content materials such as videos and blog posts. You can also tell how content is performing by looking at its shares, views, completion percentage, and total time spent.
Another metric you can adopt when measuring the success of your sales enablement plan is the sales cycle length.
Sales cycle length refers to the total time between when one becomes a lead to when a sales deal is finally closed.
A sales cycle length may vary from one customer to another based on factors such as the availability of funds and the urgency of a product or service. However, other factors remaining constant, it's every sales rep's dream to shorten a sales cycle as much as they can, and this's where sales enablement comes in.
To measure the length of a sales cycle, analyze the time between the first contact with a prospect and the day the deal is closed.
Average all your company's sales deals to find out how long an average sales cycle lasts.
Typically, shorter sales cycles are good for businesses because they help teams make more sales at a high rate.
However, achieving a short sales cycle isn't easy. But with the figures on the length of your sales cycle and the key variables affecting your sales, you can adjust your sales enablement plan to help your team make more sales faster.
Another key metric for measuring sales enablement success, but one that's often overlooked is a survey score.
It's advisable to conduct a survey on the progress of your sales enablement among your sales team.
A well-crafted survey helps you gather all the relevant information and insights on the implementation of the sales enablement program. Here you get both qualitative and quantitative feedback that helps you point out the weak areas in your enablement plan and the missing points.
A sales rep lifetime value (LTV) is the total revenue they bring in during the time they're working for you.
For example, if a rep has a tenure of 24 months and a quota of $1.5 million, theoretically, they are expected to generate a revenue of about $3 million by the end of their tenure if the sales enablement works perfectly.
So, by analyzing this metric, you can gauge the efficiency of your sales enablement plan.
Over the years, sales enablement has evolved from a mere buzzword into an integral part of business operations.
When properly addressed, sales enablement can boost your sales, which positively impacts your business. However, measuring sales enablement success doesn't have to be overwhelming, as many entrepreneurs put it; the 7 metrics discussed above will guide you in doing it like a pro.
Roll up your sleeves and get into the habit of measuring your sales enablement success regularly because the more you measure, the more the chances of improvements.
