What’s the best way to measure ramp effectiveness?

Begin by baselining critical metrics for new seller success. It could be things like: time to first deal, deal velocity, time to pipeline, etc.

Then:

• Divide new sellers into 'cohorts'
• Measure their metrics against more tenured seller cohorts
• Understand trends that support or refute your hypotheses
• Draw correlation where you see it to infer if your programs are working

Causation is near impossible but with large enough data-sets, you can find correlations & trends that will help explain and direct future learning.

It's essential to first understand the expectations of your sales leadership, common denominators between successful reps who achieve those expectations, and availability of data to your enablement program. Here are a couple of questions to ask before you get started in creating a measurement plan:

• What types of habits do they need to be able to do their everyday work by Day 30-60-90 days?
• What are the expectations of your leads? Compare this to enablement insights on what can reasonably be achieved based on historical benchmarks.
• Which reps have the most successful ramp numbers? What's the common denominator between all of them?
• How long is your onboarding program, including reinforcement training after boot camp?
• Do YOU have the data and reports that can show comparative data between reps?

A lot of these questions really focus on setting benchmarks on four factors which I've seen are generally performable by many teams:

1. Confidence levels (Subjective): What are your reps' confidence levels around knowing and selling your products increasing over your ramp period? Is there improvement over time? Are you asking this based on various categories such as product, sales skills, and tool usage?
2. Lead Assessment (Subjective): Have their leads fill out a scorecard with guided skill categories based on your sales methodology following your reporting cadence. Make sure that there is guidance on what each category means to minimize the need for calibration.
3. Tool usage (Subjective and Objective): Do your reps know how to use their tools? Do they know where they can access the supporting documentation and guidance after their onboarding program? Are they accessing these tools and using them in the first place? How do they measure up to usage benchmarks - focus on effectiveness later after ramp as I recommend that these should be measured after reinforcement training past onboarding/ramp.
4. Activity, Deal Velocity and Attainment Benchmarks (Objective): How many calls are they making? How many prospects are they sourcing and reaching out to? How many deals are at various stages by 30-60-90 days - are they building and moving deals through their pipeline? Are they achieving the benchmarks/objectives your team has set for win rate and ramp attainment numbers? 

Hopefully, these categories help to start somewhere. Curious to hear what other enablement leaders have used as well.