MetricStream’s Journey to Smarter Enablement

HEADQUARTERS:

CALIFORNIA

INDUSTRY:

SOFTWARE

COMPANY SIZE:

1001-5000

My name is Theresa DeLong. I'm the director of sales enablement, at Metric Stream, and our company specializes in governance, risk, and compliance GRC software. From a, enablement perspective, we enable all of our sales field sales reps, inside sales reps, and our customer service folks as well. So our situation was a little bit different when I got started at MetricStream because I inherited MindTipple. But what I inherited was the bare bones you could possibly get with MindTipple. When I did further research into MindTipple of its actual functionality and true benefits, that could happen with our company, that's when I started looking at the different pieces of functionality of missions, of how it would work with certifications, and those types of things. And it was a no brainer for me to go and try and pitch getting higher yielding licenses that we could do all these types of thing with, which is what we did. And now we're happily using most of the things that MindTickle has to offer. What we've been using MindTickle for is not only to assess our sellers on the how well they're doing with concepts and competencies and things like that, but also to hear, like, can they apply what they just learned through using missions? And it has been hands down a game changer for us. We're able to tell, are they ready to actually talk to a customer before the you know, as they're getting onboarded? Are they ready to, you know, go to the next step in the sales process? Do they have a gap in a specific area? Not only does the scoring tell us that, but also just listening and hearing, oh, wow. They really they really need help there, or they knocked this out of the park, and I need to use this as an example, for other reps to model. So it's definitely been a game changer on how we enable. The enablement strategy is set up around three parts currently, which is our onboarding program, so the the new hire experience. We have a continuous learning area, where we have ongoing microlearnings, instructor led courses, things like that that help, reinforce and continue to build, that continuous learning culture. And then we have our certifications, that we have for both, new and existing reps, where we baselined our existing reps. So you know those reps that have been around for twenty years, they're also getting certified. Right? So that's, been a game changer for us as well. We changed the way we do ever boarding, and continuous learning based on mind tickles. So when I got with MetricStream, I inherited, like I said, mind tickle, but I also inherited a every Thursday at noon mentality of enablement. Whether you needed it or not, topics were based on gut instinct of stakeholders. So it it completely turned that upside down. Now we have, you know, ten to twelve different sessions available per month for our reps to choose from. They get to choose their own adventure. We ask that they do two hours of of enablement per month as part of their development plan, and it's also a part of their goals. And it has definitely changed how we enable, and the culture that we have now in our company is way different than when I started. We're moving towards more of a learning culture. Things are more accessible to them. They actually like what's being produced, which, I mean, I know that's a smile sheet with a survey, but it's really nice feeling when somebody says, I really like that, and it helped me a lot. For, you know, some of the things that we've experienced with the missions is that we're not only able to just assess how they did, like, and what they retained and what they can apply, but it also gives the managers an idea of where they might struggle. And so they're not necessarily grading the missions a hundred percent of the time. Sometimes they do. It depends on what the mission is. Right? We'll have the leader grade it. And sometimes we do it as an enablement team, and sometimes we have AI do it. So we have a nice mix of of ways to evaluate. But what we're moving into now is providing our leaders with some reporting, directly from MindTable. So Samiak created a quick tutorial on how to pull, reports and to look at the team's data, to see where they're at, how are they progressing inside the certification, are they falling behind, or are they, you know, keeping on track? How are they doing on those certifications? What are their grades? And they can drill down into each person. So we're now trying to teach our leaders how to self serve information from MindTickle rather than spoon feeding that information to our managers. So missions have given us a real good stronghold on what people wanna see. Like, they wanna see how they did on those because they're like, oh, yeah. That's where they're really applying what they learned. When we look at that early stage certification, what we have seen is a twenty percent plus increase on, conversion to appointments, so conversion to the next call. And so that was a big, data piece that we were able to leverage to say, hey. Like, those that are doing well on these certifications are getting a higher percentage in this area. We also look at, consumption. So you can look there's a direct correlation between what people are consuming versus performance. And we realized that the people that are consuming our enablement content through MindTickle are doing better across the board, ACV all the way, than those that are not consuming the enablement content. And so that makes a huge difference too, and we can actually see that that is a clear indicator that everything else stands the same. Marketing's the same. Product's the same. Everything's the same. The only difference is those that are consuming and those that aren't. One of the pieces when it comes to saving time by moving tasks away from managers, like that's it is really hard to get a manager to engage, when they have when they're pulled in so many directions. Right? So having the ability to include them in a task or not include them and being specific about what we want to include them in and what we want AI to do for us has been really, really helpful. It reduces so much time, and I wish I would track the time because I would love to give you a number, a ******** fact. But what I can tell you is that the amount of chasing that we had to do before for getting managers to do what we needed them to do, it was off the charts. And now it's so much less. One, because of MindTickle, and we're able to remind them what they have to do through MindTickle. And we can also avoid having them do something when they don't have the time or bandwidth to do it through using AI, and they get perfect results as if they were evaluating it themselves. That's the part is that we've tested and tested and tested the AI grading to make sure it was gonna act like them. Otherwise, it won't, you know, do its job. And and it sure does every time. We'll have something great. I'm like, Samiak, how do you think that graded? And we're like, that's exactly how I would have graded it. I'm like, okay. Great. Moving on. So that's a thumbs up for that. We have lots of great things to say about the MindTickle team, particularly, and I'm gonna call them out because Naresh is our number one person. We absolutely adore him. They're good people trying to do good things in the enablement space. And, yeah, obviously, they're a vendor. They're there to make money too, but they're also there to make you successful. And I I truly believe that is the underlying mission from from everybody that I've come in contact with MindTickle is just they're in it to make me successful. So how can I not like them? And even the product team has been great. We've worked directly with product on on particularly the role play with with AI. They've been super helpful. And then adding AI help as well in addition to your normal support, like, that's game changing. Like, all these things make it so that I can work any time of any day and get to someone, who or an AI that can help me figure out what I'm missing. And so that's just very well done on how support works within the MindTickle company, which is really helpful because, you know, if you're starting something new and you're gonna be adding this to, you know, your enablement strategy, there's a learning curve. There's a learning curve with every new tool. But I will tell you, this has been the easiest learning curve because the interface is really super easy to kinda follow along. You know? So it's it's intuitive in nature. The people are great. So if you're stuck, they're gonna answer your questions. So you just have to give yourself time to adapt to it. But I'm telling you, it's it's a game changer.