6 Sales Enablement Metrics to Enhance Partner Teams

Introduction

Are the results of your partner program not meeting your sales objectives?

Or perhaps your sales efforts are not aligning with that of your partners’? 

Well, you have come to the right place.

We know that an effective sales enablement strategy will not only address these issues but will help in enhancing training, increasing wins, improving sales productivity, and supporting all types of partner program KPIs. 

But how do you evaluate the success of your sales enablement strategy and what metrics should you focus on most?

In this article, you will find some key sales enablement metrics that can be used not only to boost your internal sales teams, but also your partnerships.

What is Sales Enablement?

Selling your product and services is more than just having a sales team; it's about removing the roadblocks that the team will face.

And that's where sales enablement comes in. 

Sales enablement is the process of providing the sales team with the information, content, and technology that will help them execute sales more efficiently.

What are Sales Enablement Metrics?

Sales enablement metrics are measurements of your sales enablement strategy that provide your company with data that you can use to improve your operations and launch more effective sales campaigns.

It's important that these metrics are constructed based on your company's unique goals. Your company may lose out on valuable opportunities for growth and revenue if the sales enablement metrics are inaccurate.

How Does Measuring Sales Enablement Impact Partner Programs?

Here’s a little secret.

At the heart of successful partner programs is a well-executed sales enablement strategy.

Sales enablement can help your partner program engagement because partners are essentially an extension of your sales team. Your partners are talking about your business and selling your products and services to the world. To do this accurately and successfully, they need to be properly trained. 

On the flip side, your sales teams must also be enabled to close the leads that your partners send.

While not all partner types will be doing direct selling, there are programs that require an in-depth knowledge of your company's sales strategy. In this instance, measuring the sales enablement of your partners can help you determine the areas where additional training or enablement is needed, and where their strengths lie.

6 Sales Enablement Metrics for Partner Program Success

“Prepare, test, train, and repeat”
_{Gopkiran Rao, Chief Strategy Officer at Mindtickle}

Remember that you want your sales enablement strategy to be as effective as possible to increase the profitability and growth of your company. But how do you evaluate the success of your company's sales enablement strategy? And which sales enablement metrics should be carefully monitored?

Here are some of the top ways to assess the success of your sales enablement strategy.

Sales Cycle Length

The sales cycle length tracks the time from a lead's first contact to the point of sale. Each company's sales cycle is different and should be explored in detail to understand the touchpoints and unwanted roadblocks that can cause deals to slow down.

Your sales representatives can ensure a positive partner experience by looking into these roadblocks and developing adjusted training materials on how to avoid them. By doing so, you'll be able to alleviate any of the same roadblocks that your partners may experience in their operations.

Lead-to-Opportunity Conversion Rate

Imagine you are selling produce at a farmer's market.

People come by and slow down to look (Lead) at your colorful vegetables and freshly baked bread, but no one buys.

So, you start putting out free samples of your produce. Suddenly, people start stopping to taste the produce (opportunity) and speak with you. This opportunity will give you more of a chance to close the deal.

And while less tasty in the technology and SaaS space, Lead-to-Opportunity Conversion Rate works in the same way.

Though the definitions vary by company, a lead is a sales prospect, and an opportunity is a possible deal — with a dollar amount attached — that has a strong chance of closing.
_{‍Sales Assembly}

Lead-to-opportunity conversion is considered a highly effective metric for assessing the success of sales enablement because it directly measures how well your sales representatives are warming leads that are delivered to them—either by direct channels or your partners.

To gain valuable insight into how effective your sales representatives are in closing deals, look at how the lead-to-opportunity conversion rate responds depending on where the lead comes from, the type of lead, certain tactics used in the touchpoint, etc.

Win/Loss Rate

A company's win rate is the percentage of deals it has successfully closed over a specific period. The win rate rises when the sales team is equipped with the tools and solid training necessary to close deals. 

The loss rate measures the percentage of deals lost over a specific period. The loss rate increases if your company experiences an unexpected crisis, your product or service doesn't perform as well as a new competitor, or if your partners aren't accurate in delivering information about your products or services.

Content Performance 

Measuring content performance can be a great way to engage partners because it allows you to see where and how a piece of content is helping your respective companies convert more leads into prospective customers. In partnerships, this is especially important with co-marketing content, which might include case studies, feature comparisons, blog posts, and social media posts.

How are co-branded and co-marketed materials being received by your respective audiences? If they aren’t performing well, consider revisiting your joint ICP and adjusting how you are speaking to the audience. You might also make adjustments to the channels through which the content is being delivered. 

Content Adoption  

Content adoption can be used to describe either the percentage of sellers who have leveraged a particular asset or the frequency at which a particular asset has been used.

Content adoption is a good way to measure the success of your enablement strategy because it proves if the assets you're producing have a positive influence on the day-to-day activities of your partners. 

Onboarding Time

Creating a comprehensive sales onboarding program from the beginning of your partnership not only demonstrates the effectiveness of your sales enablement strategies but can help empower your partners to best represent your company and sell your products.

This onboarding program will deliver valuable training information about the products and services you offer. It also equips your them with the right questions to ask and the objections they’ll likely face. 

Keep an eye on how fast partners grasp the onboarding content during this phase so that you can adjust your process/materials and accelerate the transition as needed.

Pro-tip: Create a Joint Sales Packet 

One thing that is often overlooked in sale enablement that boosts partner success is building a Joint Sales Pack. 

In this comprehensive document built collaboratively with your partners, you’ll include: 

• Value Proposition: Define the value that both you and your partner will bring to mutual customers. You might also include how this partnership brings value to your respective sales and customer success reps. 
• Data: Use the Joint Sales Packet to share what data will be tracked, how it will be measured, and any KPIs mutually set from the metrics. 
• Use Cases: Give concrete examples of situations in which your partnership will solve problems or amplify customer operations. 
• Co-marketing Assets: Create a list of published materials you and your partner have accomplished together. 

This tool should be built, accessed, and improved by both your and your partner’s sales teams. 

Conclusion

Remember that there is no "one size fits all" when it comes to sales enablement metrics.

To support the expansion of both your sales team and partner program, you must understand the efficacy of their collaboration.

You also need to be aware that your objectives and performance indicators will change over time.

It is important to note that when developing a sales enablement program, one should consider the tools and software used. You need a comprehensive solution that enables seamless content sharing and onboarding pipelines if you want to boost productivity and performance.

And that's where Kiflo PRM steps in.