How do you measure ROI of sales enablement?

This is a tricky one because ultimately you want everything to tie back to revenue (usually in the form of new versus growth versus retention), but you can never fully hold PMM accountable for those top-line numbers since there are so many other forces at play. This is why you need a set of secondary metrics you can use to measure your efforts a little more directly. For starters, measure the attendance rate of your sales enablement sessions, measure the views/downloads of the content from it afterward, and run quick surveys to measure the effectiveness of the session (even a one-question 1-10 satisfaction survey will do). Next, look at the metrics that you have more (maybe not full) control over that should ladder up to revenue. Are win rates increasing against a certain competitor? Are there more in-quarter sales-stage progression of deals? I love this one because a deal may not close for a number of reasons out of your control, but if you can say “we moved X% more deals from discovery to solution validation” (or whatever your sales stages are), this is a powerful metric to hang your hat on.

Sales enablement effectiveness should have quantitative as well as qualitative measurements.

Quantitative measurements should have lead and lag metrics. Lead metrics help you ensure you are on the right track early on in any enablement project and allow you to course correct as needed. Examples of lead metrics are - sales usage KPIs, training completion, opp open rate, sales stage movement, talk time on calls, etc.

Lag metrics indicate how effective the project was and helps plan for the next enablement initiative. Examples - revenue, quota attainment, opp close rate, time to close, contract value, etc.

Qualitative measures can be:

• How confident do they feel about a topic/process/demo?
• How prepared do they feel with materials necessary?
• How willing are they to share feedback and collaborate with you on improvements?

A huge advantage we have today is using call recordings from tools like Gong or Chorus - where you can create playlists for mentions of keywords, pitch analysis, follow-ups, etc.

In the end, it has to come down to revenue generated as the ultimate effectiveness metric. Otherwise, nothing else you measure matters.

This depends on what needle you are looking to move with enablement - are you hoping to shorten your sales cycles or are you hoping to help sales win more competitive deals? Define your KPIs first. The end goal of sales enablement is to move the needle on an actual sales metric - which your team should already be tracking.

A secondary measure is measuring sales confidence. If your sales team is enabled well, they should have higher confidence in things like pitching the value of your product. I have run quarterly sales confidence surveys that really help you understand if your efforts are making a difference.

Love this question. This will differ at every org, but for me the gold standard is win/loss ratio and booked revenue associated with a sales play, along with qualitative/sentiment data on whether it's resonating with customers (pitch recordings, feedback from sales, etc).

These are not always easy to gather (and the first two might be outside of your official PMM remit), but they will really point your enablement efforts toward ROI.

Other traditional measurements are more internal adoption- or checkbox-focused (passing a certification, attending a training, downloading or using an asset), but it can be harder to glean whether your enablement efforts are effective from those measures.

Great question! First thing you want to answer is “what is the goal of your sales enablement”? Is it increasing sales productivity, reducing sales cycle length, improving win rates, and enhancing rep onboarding, etc..

A couple of things we typically look into today to see how effective our sales enablement has been and the ROI of it. One thing to note is that it can be difficult to know for sure, but these are all indications of ROI of sales enablement. 

• Win rates: Percentage of deals won versus deals lost

• Average deal size: Value of closed deals

• Content usage and effectiveness: # of downloads, # of shares with customers

• Qualitative feedback from reps in different regions, CSAT and completion of trainings