The Metrics for Measuring Your Sales Enablement Program

If you’re using content views as the primary measure of success for your sales enablement program, you’re missing out on valuable insights. You’re correlating content views with engagement — assuming that reps are using that content or learning from it and that the content has a meaningful impact on your reps’ skills and knowledge.

6 metrics that measure the real impact of sales enablement

Forward-thinking sales enablement teams understand that the true measure of sales enablement is how it affects your sales reps’ performance and drives revenue. Instead of looking at asset views, sales enablement leaders can track key sales metrics to see how asset usage impacts rep performance. Here are some vital sales metrics that will help you understand your sales enablement program’s impact on your team:

1. Content adoption

Content adoption looks at how often your salespeople use your sales enablement content in interactions with prospects to help move deals forward. You can measure content adoption in three different ways:

• The number of times each content asset has been used in the sales process (such as shared in an automated nurture campaign or sent in a personalized follow-up to a prospect.
• The percentage of your sellers who have used each content asset. 
• The number of times each content asset has been shared in closed/won deals. 

Whichever of these methods you choose, you’ll be tracking how different pieces of content your sales team uses rather than assuming that views mean engagement.

Content adoption is a useful metric because you can see how often sellers use different types of sales enablement content. Content that makes it easier to engage with prospects (and, in the long run, close more deals) will be used frequently by your sellers. But content that doesn’t engage or resonate with prospects will quickly be ignored by your sales team in favor of higher-impact content.

Tracking content adoption helps you understand:

• Whether your sales enablement content is a helpful resource for your sellers.
• Which content formats (such as sales scripts, product sheets, battlecards, or email templates) are used most. 
• Which product features or common pain points resonate most with potential customers and lead to closed deals. 

You can use these insights to inform your sales enablement content strategy. Your team can focus on creating more assets that positively impact the customer journey and get used frequently by your sales team.

2. Sales cycle length

Your sales cycle length measures how long (on average) your team takes to close a deal. Your sales team does a lot of work to nurture a lead into a customer, from product demos to high-value calls with C-level decision-makers. The more steps in your sales process, the longer your sales cycle will likely be.

On a more granular level, you can look at interactions at every step of the sales cycle to understand how sales enablement activities might impact a deal’s progress (or lack thereof.)

Overall, you should see your sales cycle get shorter as reps are better equipped with content and coaching to nurture leads and are enabled with the skills and knowledge they need to move deals forward.

But, as well as looking at the length of your sales cycle as a whole, you could measure:

• The average length of time for prospects to move from lead to opportunity. 
• The average length of time for prospects to move from opportunity to close. 

Then, look at the content used to engage and nurture prospects. Do some deals progress quicker than others? If so, it’s a good indicator that you’re producing content aligned to each stage of the sales process. As a result, your sellers have the knowledge and resources they need to sell prospects on the value of your products — and the content for prospects to convince the decision-makers in their organization.

3. Lead-to-opportunity conversion rate

The lead-to-opportunity conversion rate tracks the percentage of qualified leads that your sales reps judge as a good fit and have a high likelihood of closing. While the definition of an opportunity varies between companies, it generally refers to a prospect demonstrating a genuine interest in your product. Often, they have committed to initial discovery calls with your reps — possibly even an initial product demo or free trial.

This conversion rate is a good way to measure the impact of your sales enablement program. Your lead-to-opportunity conversion rate may improve when:

• You produce new sales enablement content because you provide new tools for reps to use in the sales nurture process. 
• Your sellers complete sales enablement training because they’re building skills and knowledge to sell more effectively. 
• You reorganize your sales enablement content library to make it easier for reps to find the right content and materials they need at every stage of thes sales process. 

You should track which pieces of content your reps use in deals that convert from lead to opportunity. Doing so will help you understand what resonates with prospects, enabling you to create more impactful content to enable your sellers even better.

4. Quota attainment

Quota attainment is the percentage of sales reps who achieve their sales goals. This metric provides insight into whether sales reps are properly enabled to engage customers and close deals.

In addition to looking at quota attainment as a whole, you can also zero in further to look for trends based on factors such as:

• Geography
• Industry
• Sales rep tenure

For example, you may find that quota attainment for reps who work with prospects in a specific industry is much lower than average. Here, there may be opportunities to deliver targeted content that sellers can use to engage buyers in this industry.

5. Call scores

A sales rep might attend every training and complete every assigned enablement activity with flying colors. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re putting their learning into practice when interacting with customers.

The thing is, sales managers don’t have time to sit in on every sales call with every one of their reps to see how (or whether) sellers are actually applying what they’ve learned. There simply isn’t enough time in the day.

Today, winning revenue organizations are tapping into conversation intelligence to better understand what’s happening in the field. Conversation intelligence provides a score after each sales call – along with feedback about how to do better next time. Sales managers and enablement teams can use call scores to understand:

• Whether certain enablement initiatives are improving in-field performance
• Where there are opportunities to deliver additional enablement and coaching to strengthen specific skills or behaviors

6. Customer satisfaction, retention rates, and customer lifetime value

Revenue enablement ensures every seller has the tools, training, and information to deliver outstanding experiences throughout the customer lifecycle. When customers’ expectations are consistently met, their satisfaction grows and they’re more likely to stick with your business long-term. Satisfied customers are also more open to purchasing new product options from your business in the future.

Measuring customer satisfaction, retention, and lifetime value is an important way to determine whether your revenue enablement efforts are properly equipping customer-facing teams with what they need to effectively engage with buyers throughout the customer lifecycle.

Some ways to boost customer satisfaction, retention, and customer lifetime value include:

• Providing revenue teams with the right content to engage with buyers throughout the purchase journey – even after they’ve signed on the dotted line
• Delivering training and enablement that helps revenue teams stay up-to-date on B2B customer expectation trends
  Ensuring sales reps are properly trained on how to hand off new customers to the implementation or customer success team
• Providing training and coaching on upselling and cross-selling current customers

Go beyond asset views to understand when reps are ready to sell

Tracking asset views and attendance is one way of measuring sales enablement. But on their own, these sales enablement metrics don’t provide insight into how (or whether) your sales enablement program impacts sales performance.

Revenue organizations must also track sales enablement metrics that prove impact. With continuous measurement, you can understand where your sales enablement program is making an impact and where there are opportunities to make data-based optimizations. Then, you can fine-tune your sales enablement strategy and program to drive an even larger impact on sales performance.