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Which Sales Enablement Metrics Should You Be Measuring?

Nov 15th, 2018

When it comes to monitoring program performance, sales enablement leaders need the right metrics to properly demonstrate ROI.

However, many traditional sales metrics (e.g. quota) don’t provide enablement teams with enough insight to put sales results into context, leading organizations to merely focus on the symptoms of underperformance – rather than the root cause.

For example, if an organization’s win rate is down, a chief sales officer might conclude that reps need better training on key skills. Although win rate is a crucial benchmark for sales enablement, it doesn’t explain whether falling win rates are caused by poor negotiation skills or an inconsistent sales process that sends poorly-qualified prospects into your funnel.

So how, exactly, should you approach this common sales enablement challenge? While the answer varies from organization to organization, our exclusive brief – “3 Big Questions to Measure Sales Enablement Success” – will help you devise metrics that highlight how reps actually perform.

But before you start asking the “big questions,” you’ll also want to ensure the sales force has everything it needs in order to track results effectively. Below, we share key points to consider when getting started, from your organization’s broader goals to common metrics and useful measurement tools.

What Will Measuring Sales Enablement Help You Accomplish?

First, determine which KPIs and sales skills matter most to leadership. You should also have a clear sense of how your sales organization defines success, both from a sales and sales enablement perspective.

CSO Insights recommends that all sales enablement functions develop a charter that documents a formal strategy and establishes executive sponsorship. Organizations with a sales enablement charter saw double-digit improvements in win rates, the research firm found.

Identify Which Metrics Sales Enablement Affects

Here are 8 metrics that sales enablement can directly or indirectly influence:

  • Time to first deal (indirect)
  • Time to quota (indirect)
  • Time to revenue and pipeline milestones (indirect)
  • Time reps spend selling (direct)
  • Time managers spend coaching (direct) 
  • Training content consumption (direct)
  • Voluntary turnover rate (direct)
  • Time to productivity (direct)
  • Time needed to find content (direct)

Sales enablement leaders should ensure that all these metrics tie back into revenue and rep productivity – and that they align with the organization’s strategic vision.

However, if you over-rely on any one metric, such as learning consumption or time spent selling, you run the risk of overlooking other valuable benchmarks – such as mastery of training concepts, or whether reps are performing the right sales activities (e.g. prospecting).

Determine How Sales Enablement Will Track the Metrics that Matter

Sales readiness platforms can help you measure KPIs such as training content consumption and learning progress with features like Team Dashboards, which provide managers with a visual representation of their team’s readiness progress. These tools also allow managers to assess and track sales messaging mastery through video coaching activities.

As your “system of record,” the CRM can track other important metrics such as time spent selling, time to productivity, time to first deal, sales cycle length, quota attainment and win rates.

In addition, you’ll want to gather qualitative feedback from sales leadership, managers and reps for greater insight into areas such as time spent searching for content, time spent coaching, sales onboarding and training content quality, and sales force retention. Your clients can even be a valuable resource here, with Net Promoter Score being a potential benchmark for sales effectiveness.

The video above explores how to track and assess the readiness of your entire sales team with Brainshark.

Reevaluate and Refine Your Sales Enablement Metrics

Lastly, sales enablement leaders need to compare actual performance to their KPIs, and then make improvements and revisions as necessary.

Also, it’s important to understand that there is no “one-size-fits-all” approach to measuring sales enablement. As businesses and market realities change, so too should your performance indicators.

For more information on measuring your sales enablement efforts, download our exclusive brief: 3 Big Questions to Measure Sales Enablement Success.