AMA: Eventbrite Head of Creator Marketplace Product Marketing, Yify Zhang on Sales Enablement

Measuring sales enablement effectiveness requires a combination of business metrics and internal metrics. Ultimately, you need to ensure that enablement is making an impact in Sales teams' ability to win deals and retain customers, while making sure that the process to do so is efficient and effective. * Business metrics should be mostly include ratios, not just the absolute number of deals or revenue. Classic metrics include - win rate, renewal rate * Time to close deals * Sales team readiness feedback collected through a survey or one on one internal interviews.

I would map out the customer journey and identify stages where either there are leakage in leads, or the conversion process is not as efficient as it can be. To do this, I would listen to recorded sales calls if they're available, or ask to sit in on a few calls. Ensure that the calls cover a variety of customer types. Then, I would identify priority stages in the journey where enablement would be most helpful. Then, you can identify the assets or processes that could make the biggest difference in each stage, and sequence them by level of priority based on effort required vs. impact.

Measuring sales enablement effectiveness requires a combination of business metrics and internal metrics. Ultimately, you need to ensure that enablement is making an impact in Sales teams' ability to win deals and retain customers, while making sure that the process to do so is efficient and effective. * Business metrics should be mostly include ratios, not just the absolute number of deals or revenue. Classic metrics include - win rate, renewal rate * Time to close deals * Sales team readiness feedback collected through a survey or one on one internal interviews.

Ultimately, prioritization should be based on business outcomes. One-sheets on a feature could be just as impactful on win rate as a pitch deck, if it's an unmet need that customers care deeply about and is currently not offered by other competitors. I would ensure that you're clear on the impact each asset can have, then assess through that lens.

Internal surveys are a good way to crowdsource feedback quickly. You can set one up quickly and share it in your company's chat forum, or send it to your sales team's list serv. Once your collateral is ready, I would limit the sources of feedback more strategically, so that you're not overwhelmed with too many voices. Having a clear DACI structure (driver, approver, contributor, informed) can help you ensure that you don't have more than one approver on any given collateral. And are sourcing feedback from a handful of contributors.

* I would prioritize based on business outcomes. Across the various product lines with sales enablement needs, which one is the most impactful in terms of getting customers to choose you as their provider? * Are there also ways that you can combine the various product lines into themes of value props, so that your enablement assets are speaking to a need customers have, as opposed to single features. This also allows you to tie together needs across different product lines.

The most effective way is through a combination of live trainings, async video shares, and regular check-ins with select sales individuals (and or sales leaders) to gather any feedback about what's working well versus not. Also, enablement materials should evolve. There needs to be a structure to regularly assess the effectiveness of enablement materials (through sales teams' feedback, as well as through customer research).

* Collect insights through customer research. Research should be done regularly to get feedback from prospects or existing customers to find out what their needs are, and how to best position yourself during each point in their discovery journey (sales being a touchpoint in that journey). You can also ask them to evaluate the various types of materials and give feedback on which ones are compelling in their decision journey * Set up any new enablement materials as a test - with clear metrics to measure and audiences / other enablement materials to compare against. For example, you can compare that one pager you're launching versus another asset by setting up an A/B email test, and measuring engagement

* Gamify the session as much as possible - ask questions to recap each part of the session, and reward points * Make it really clear at the start of session what's in it for the sales person. You're here to help them succeed. And that it's in their best interest to be fully present so that they get the most out of the session * Lastly but most importantly, make sure your content is actually engaging. You can do this by getting feedback from sales leaders before the session, and a few sales people you have a safe relationship with.

* Gamify your enablement trainings, whether during trainings or over chat forums like Slack or Google Meet. Ask questions that reinforce the most important takeaways from an enablement training, and reward those who answer correctly with points. * Familiarize yourself with Sales teams' current capabilities - strengths / weaknesses by listening to recent calls with customers. Then, share live examples of ways they could have improved the conversation by using the strategies you are training them on. You'd want to get with them 1:1 to deliver the feedback, then ask if they're comfortable with you sharing with a larger forum for purpose of training. * Focus on a smaller inner crowd of evangelizers, who will evangelize your message to the wider Sales team. You can also rely on them to give you feedback of what is sticking vs. not.