Unveiling the Urgency: Sales Enablement Measurement & ROI Explained

Why are sales enablement measurement and ROI becoming such hot topics right now?

Following the growth and success of the sales enablement movement in recent years, a reckoning has happened where enablement has been caught in the boom-bust cycle of rapid hiring followed by the great layoff.

It’s been sad to see so many talented sales enablement folks be caught in this. But what can we learn from it?

Whilst in the boom, sales enablement teams were focused on rapid onboarding programs and fast scaling, attention has now, rightly in our opinion, turned to efficiency, focus, and value.

But the issue goes deeper than the onboarding boom and the race to scale. Much of sales enablement has its roots in L&D so it has potentially suffered from an alignment more to training than to sales.

Common, but Ineffective Sales Enablement Measurement Metrics

When you look at Sales Enablement Pro’s Latest Analytics report, whilst progress in measuring the ROI of sales enablement efforts has been made, the profession's ongoing measurement challenges are clear when you look at how teams are measuring training.

In the report, the top 5 measurement metrics used were:

• Completed Lessons / Courses
• Post-training evaluations on training quality
• Behavior change
• Number of training sessions delivered
• Post-training quizzes to assess knowledge

Arguably, other than ‘Behavior change’, all the others are simply vanity metrics and not measures at all.

Example of an Effective Sales Enablement Measurement Strategy

To better understand why the metrics listed above don't work, and gain insight into a more effective set of sales enablement effectiveness measurement metrics consider the following example.

When Senior Sales Leadership requests that every sales rep needs to go through negotiation training, they are not doing it for fun or to see how many people have completed it, they are doing it for a reason.

So the reason for the training should be the north star, the goal. What are we looking to impact by doing this training? This should be mapped to a measurable sales KPI in every instance, otherwise, why invest in training in the first place?

Once that North Star has been established, the job of enablement should be to challenge and baseline it using data to ensure they are really applying the right training in the right place.

Let’s take that request for ‘Negotiation Training’ for example.

Step 1: Confirm the cause of performance gaps using meaningful metrics.

In this step the team is trying to answer the questions: "Other than a gut feeling, what’s telling us that we have a problem with negotiation?" "What performance metrics do we want to impact?"

To investigate the answers to these questions the team could look at metrics like:

• Conversion ratios of opportunities to Closed won
• Average discount rates
• The number of deals stuck in the equivalent negotiation stage

These metrics help to confirm leadership's suspicion that the team is lacking the required negotiation capabilities to pull deals over the line.

Step 2: Compare top and bottom performers to define what good looks like.

Dig deeper into performance data by comparing individual rep performance against the identified metrics.

In this step, try to answer the question: "What differences exist between the top 50% of reps and the bottom 50% of reps across these metrics in terms of skills and behaviors?"

The example below shows the sales enablement dashboard included in Richardson's Accelerate Sales Performance System. This dashboard provides a high-level view of individual performance against different selling metrics and competencies.

This dashboard reveals negotiation capabilities are not the cause of the biggest gaps between top and bottom performers, rather, it shows a larger gap in deal qualification skills between top and bottom performers against the selected metrics.

Step 3: Measure baseline performance and present the case for ROI.

Now that the enablement team has the answers to the important questions: "What skill were we looking to improve with our training?" "What sales metric are we looking to impact?"

With the answers to these questions, the enablement team has a much clearer picture of where to focus training and what they're measuring they also have the baseline to work to and the right measurement metrics that matter to sales.

This makes measuring outcomes much easier and automated. Layer in a provable correlation and the enablement team has a much more reliable measure that all stakeholders buy into and importantly a data-backed plan to deliver material impact on the performance of the sales team.

Expert Insights into Measuring the ROI of Sales Enablement

Don't just take our word for it, Gartner is clear on how leaders can prove the ROI of sales enablement:

To effectively demonstrate sales enablement ROI and, in turn, protect associated budget increases, CSOs should focus on:

• Drawing a stronger connection between revenue goals and enablement activities by consulting with sales leaders on the seller behaviors needed to hit their most important sales goals (e.g., better articulating competitive differentiation to win more deals).
• Building and implementing a variety of enablement activities, such as coaching, training and creating tools, to achieve the desired behaviors.
• Measuring those behaviors and gauge enablement impact by comparing changed sales behaviors and enablement activity to the baseline.
• Promoting a complete view of enablement’s impact by building a compelling narrative of the behavior change driven by enablement that ties back to the sales goals.

Forrester is also clear on the need for clearly defined competencies mapped to outcomes:

“It’s going to be extremely difficult to measure sales effectiveness if we haven’t clearly defined and articulated what skills and knowledge are needed to be successful in a particular role…

• Define seller competencies.
• Competencies should be mapped to business goals.
• Identify and define competency proficiency levels.
• Assess seller competencies.

…By taking the time to map the required competencies for each sales role, you’re ensuring that reps who have those defined competencies are more productive, efficient, and, as a result, more successful.”