ClearView Reports: Sales Skills Development Solutions, KPIs, and Stakeholders
Sales Skills Development Solutions
As I’ve mentioned in the ClearView Reports: Sales Enablement/Content Management, KPIs, and Stakeholders blog post. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) is one of those acronyms that always strikes me oddly. I keep breaking it down into pieces for some reason. PI always makes me think of Private Investigator – some hard-bitten, grizzled detective digging hard to find the truth – and let’s investigate just what the KPIs are that Sales Skills Development vendors reveal.
KPIs are one of the best ways to identify the value and benefits of a solution. As part of Vendor Neutral’s ClearView Reports, we categorize those KPIs across vendors and then map them to their value to various stakeholders:
| KPI/ROI | Marketing | Sellers | Sales Enable-ment | Sales Mgmt | Sales Ops | ||||
| Engagement/Retention | 2 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 3 | ||||
| Faster Quota | 4 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 3 | ||||
| Product Launch | 4 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 3 | ||||
| Reduced Costs | 4 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 3 | ||||
| Ramp Time | 3 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 3 | ||||
| Reduced Risk | 4 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 3 | ||||
| Sales Cycle | 3 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 3 | ||||
| Selling Time | 3 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 3 | ||||
| Revenue/Win Rates | 3 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 3 | ||||
| Average Value of KPI/ROI for Stakeholder | 3 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 3 | ||||
| Value to | 0 = Limited | 2 = Good | 4 = Essential | ||||||
| Stakeholder: | 1 = Some | 3 = Strong | |||||||
Across stakeholders, SE/Content solutions deliver broad and deep value.
From one perspective, the benefits, KPIs, and value of Sales Skill solutions benefit all stakeholders. But the degree varies (Figure 6: KPI/ROI by Stakeholder). Across the board, all stakeholders receive significant value:
- Marketing gains the greatest from faster quota attainment, product launches, and reduced risk.
- Sellers benefit from longer engagement and retention, faster quota and product launches, shorter ramp time, reduced risk, sales cycles and more time to sell and higher win rates.
- Sales Enablement has to the most to gain for reduced costs, ramp time, sales cycle, and selling time.
- Sales Management gains across the board, for every category. One value not measured here, but implicit in the capabilities of Sales Skill solutions is improved coaching guided by the solution and trackable results from that coaching.
- Sales Operations also receives broad value across all categories.
While everyone wins – sales management is slightly ahead of the rest. That’s mostly due to how a well-implemented sales skill solution can point to coaching needs and track results.
That’s just a preview of some of the valuable information in the sales skills development report. Other topics include:
- What is it? A high-level view of the sales tech category.
- What challenges are addressed by the solutions? Covers the top 10 challenges addressed by solution as chosen by vendors and defined in terms of Sales Enablement/Content Management.
- What does it do?
- Capabilities: Based on a set of common capabilities and functions. Vendors’ top 10 capabilities.
- Functions: A detailed review of common functions across the solution category.
- Measuring Success: This section looks at the Key Performance Indicators provided by vendors that demonstrate the benefits of the solution.
- What do you need to do? A discussion on what users need to think about in order to succeed with the solution.
- Do you need it? Ideas to consider when deciding if you need this type of solution.
- Parting Thoughts – A few Concluding thoughts on the category, the marketplace, and the future direction of the category.
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About Steven Wright
Steven is Vendor Neutral’s Chief Certification Analyst and has years of experience in sales enablement and sales tech. As both a practitioner, and as a former Forrester Analyst, he brings a breadth of experience and insight into how to get the most out of your sales tech investments.