Driving Rep Adoption with Rippling
New tech stack? Join this webinar to learn what you should do before, during, and after implementation to help drive rep adoption.
All right, welcome everyone.
Thank you so much for joining us.
Today we're going to be talking about
driving rep adoption for new technology.
So kind of mention this in the registration page,
but when you are signing on a new piece of your tech stack,
the negotiation part is really hard,
but really I think where the work comes in
and the harder part comes in is getting your team
to actually start using that tool.
So as you're looking at either signing on new pieces
of your tech stack or optimizing what's already
in your tech stack, today we're going to be focused
on how can you get your team to better utilize that tool.
So quick introductions, my name is Sarah McConnell.
I'm the VP of demand generation here at qualified.
And today I'm joined by Nicole.
Nicole, thank you so much for joining.
- Of course, so excited to be here.
Thank you Sarah and hello everybody.
I am Nicole Darnell and I am our global director
of inbound sales development at Ripley.
- Perfect, okay, quick agenda.
So mentioned earlier, we're going to be talking
about strategies, what worked for rep adoption
and more importantly, what didn't work
from a rep adoption standpoint.
And then for any of our sales leaders
that are on the call today, what can you do
as a leader of your team to help drive internal
championing of your product?
So when you get time for renewal,
which will be the third part,
how can you prove out the ROI of that tool?
If it's something that's really important to your tech stack,
obviously when you come up onto that renewal point
and you're going to your leadership team,
how can you communicate ROI and quantify that rep adoption
to make sure your team gets to keep using this tool
and your tech stack that you've spent time and money
investing into?
So with that, Nicole, I want to start with the first question,
which is you've signed on a new piece of tech stack,
everyone's really excited.
What is the first thing that you want to start doing
for like quick wins, the fast things that you can do
to make sure the tool starts getting utilized internally?
- Absolutely, I think the first thing that comes to mind
is especially with qualified, but really any platform
as well is leaning on the resources
that the platform provides
and that the products provides.
I know with qualified specifically,
we have an amazing support system built in
with the customer success team, with the sales team,
everybody there, I could sing Britney's praises for days
because there are so many resources provided off the bat
and I know that's something I've learned
in my leadership journey where you try to implement something
and think, hey, I've got this, I can do it on my own.
Guess what, every platform is going to be different
and there are resources already created.
And so I found that really relying on those resources
from the platform and the company itself
really helped me set myself up for success with that adoption.
It gives reps more insight into what to expect.
It gives them their own quick wins as well.
I find the best thing to do truly just comes down
to finding success quickly.
And so if those pieces of advice
are already living somewhere, utilize them.
I would also add those reps that find that quick success
really create them as internal champions on the team,
especially coming from a sales development organization.
These are going to be people that have a really tight knit
team culture.
And so when one rep hits quota and says it's 100%
because of qualified, guess what, the rep next to them,
the rep on the other side of Zoom,
they're going to want to use that as well.
And so encouraging the team to tell the stories
of when they use the platform and how they use it,
I know we have a Slack channel just for qualified wins
that we utilize.
So people say, hey, I had this great conversation.
I had this great meeting.
It's also a great place for questions,
just really opening that conversation for folks
to make it not as intimidating right off the bat
as sometimes platform pieces can be.
- Absolutely.
And I will echo especially your first two
of one leaning on a customer success team.
So as someone who's bought a lot of tech stack
and used a lot of tech stack, I know I will go to my CSM first
for anything, even much to their dismay.
When they're like, Sarah, this is in our university,
just go look at our university.
I'm like, yeah, but I trust you
and I want to ask you the question.
So I do think from a quick wins perspective,
making sure whoever your customer success manager is
for the tool, making sure the team knows that they exist
and what the processes are to get in touch with them.
So like if our inside sales team has a question
on a tool that we've implemented
and I don't have the answers to it,
they know which channels to go through
to get that question answered with your CSM,
whether it's direct access or it's through someone internally,
like myself, if I'm the buyer of the tool
or whatever it might be.
But then I think to that point, university,
I think it's really undervalued on pushing your team
to go find that information.
Like we all can Google things.
We know how to look stuff up.
So making sure, but if they don't know where it is,
they can't do it.
So making sure they've got access to the universities
who as a end user, they know where to go look for those answers
and then can lean on their customer success team
if they can't find those answers.
- Absolutely.
And I think to that point of having that intention
to go and find this information,
one thing that we've found a lot of success with
is not inundating reps with a ton of new platforms
right when they onboard.
We unqualified, have seats for our more 10-year reps
and our folks that already have our basic processes down
instead of adding which qualified is extremely intuitive,
it would be an additional training that somebody has
during their first two, three weeks of onboarding.
And so instead making sure, okay,
you understand your company's processes,
you understand the products you're selling.
At that point, we can add additional platforms
onto your tech stack.
It makes it easier instead of trying to get that adoption
with people that can't even wrap their heads around
the product they're selling or something like that.
- That is such good advice.
I'm actually gonna use that as a segue to our next question,
which is a long term because I think to your point,
starting to work it into your onboarding process.
So if you signed it on, obviously,
then the people that are immediately on your team,
you've got to figure out how to get them to use it.
But long term, if you keep this tool in your tech stack,
how is it getting worked into your onboarding process
for future reps, how do you not overwhelm them
with tech stack fatigue and trying to learn new tools?
- Absolutely.
And so that's to the tech stack fatigue,
especially in onboarding,
one of the reasons that we don't introduce it
right off the bat when we hire.
So we do, as I mentioned, save it for those more
10 year reps when they have that ability
to really fully grasp all of the expectations
that are needed for their role.
And I also have found that a big part of it
is truly just talking about the platform as it goes on.
I think in today's universe, especially working remote,
we use so many different parts of a tech stack
that it's almost impossible for me to name
all the different areas of tech stack that I utilize
on a day to day basis, if not month to month.
And so being super intentional of talking about something
like qualified every day, if not every week
and just making sure I'm checking in with the reps
on the platform and keeping them excited.
I think with that as well, just setting those
daily expectations for a platform.
If we're going to pay for their seat,
I want them to use it.
I don't want them to just be sitting there
and like, maybe I'll grab this chat,
maybe I'll grab this meeting, we'll see.
But really tying, hey, if you're not going to use it,
we can give the seat to somebody else.
Not in a threatening way, but truly,
if somebody bore well and they do not have the room
in their tech stack, we can find another rep
who can work it with them.
But ensuring that there is the intention in their usage,
I think really aids in that long-term adoption
because they know there is a reason they're using this.
It is a reason why people are hitting quota.
It's also, it's something a little different
for people to utilize.
It really makes their day exciting.
And so being able to have that investment long-term
and have that excitement, I think,
allows people to want to keep adopting it
and want to keep bringing new reps on
versus just kind of sitting stagnant
with a platform that you forget you even have.
- Absolutely.
I think there was a few really great things in there.
One of the first ones I wanted to dig into a little bit more
is specifically around that initial process.
And if people don't use it,
and I think one of the things I've learned,
again, from buying a lot of pieces of tech stack,
is not thinking long enough terms.
So it's one thing to get ever really excited
to use it in the short term,
but if you can't find repeatable ways
to keep bringing that tool into your everyday vernacular
and how you're communicating,
it's so easy to see this spike of engagement and excitement.
And it just, if it's not consistent,
it just peters off and people don't talk about it.
So one of my pieces of advice to anyone listening here is,
you never know, you don't know what you know
until you know it.
So plan ahead though, try to think of the best ways,
like what the Slack channel was a great example,
or how am I gonna keep putting this piece of tech stack
into your everyday, but then also being willing
to change quickly if something's not working.
So if you're six months in new contract,
seven months in new contract,
and you see where maybe the team is losing interest
or like losing steam, being willing to shift the way
that you're talking about something
and taking things out or adding stuff in
as far as how you communicate,
because I think just sticking with the status quo
the whole time, if it's not working
and just kind of rinsing your hands of it
and being like, well, I don't know what to do,
that could be a really quick way to hit that year mark
when the renewal comes up
and realizing that initial excitement
that happened in the short-term strategies,
you couldn't keep that excitement long-term
with the team, the utilization standpoint.
- Absolutely.
And I think to that long-term
and just making sure it's ongoing,
even time back to the short-term adoption
is leaning on university and leaning on customer success.
I know that was something, I think it was two or three weeks ago,
I asked Brittany, we were thinking of doing a SPF
specifically for our team on Qualified
and I've been racking my brain for the best way to utilize it.
And so I went to her, I said, hey,
we're having great adoption, we're having usage,
but that doesn't mean we can't improve.
And she had great resources just ready to go for us.
And it was something where I'm not on the Qualified team.
I'm on a customer side of the team,
so I don't know the ins and outs
and she immediately had that idea
and it just drove great activity that week.
And then once you see that spike,
it then levels out again
and even higher point it was before.
- Absolutely.
I do think, I'll use another example,
like we use Sixth Sense internally,
we've had the platform for two plus years now
and a lot's changed in two years,
like not only from their product side,
but also our team has changed and our strategy has changed.
And I think one of the mistakes,
which I'm jumping ahead to mistakes,
but like I'll use this maybe to see
which to the mistake is,
I didn't ask my customer success manager enough
to do any sort of retraining.
So I think the said it and forget it of like,
you just signed, you did a training,
a year, even seven months,
a year or two years, however long your contract is,
if the team has changed or the strategy has changed,
I realized I should have asked sooner
for them to do another training with the team
because they were more than willing to,
but I had to ask.
And if I didn't ask, it kind of got stagnant,
like no one knew what to do.
And reps had changed and our ABM strategy had changed.
So I think going back to that customer success manager,
they're gonna be imperative in the short term,
obviously with like onboarding and quick wins,
but don't forget to utilize them long term.
If they probably have more resources
than you could ever imagine or find on their website.
So make sure you're saying like,
hey, we've run into issues here.
The reps aren't really, I have 80% new reps
and they're not using the tool, what can we do?
And they'll probably have something ready
to get a shoot quicker than if you just sat
and dug through their website for hours.
- Exactly.
And that's even as a lot of sales development teams are,
we have a lot of movement.
A lot of people are constantly being promoted
into our sales org off of our team.
And so with that, we're always back filling their seats.
And so as I mentioned,
I could literally spend this entire time
just talking about how great Brittany is.
And part of that is she leads a new training
for SDRs every time we onboard more.
And I find A, it gets them ramped,
but then I always find the newest SDRs
have these best practices that maybe weren't around
when somebody else onboarded to the platform six months ago.
And so they can bring that to the conversation
and it almost rebuilds the excitement
for the 10-eared ones as well.
Like, hey, these new hires cannot be showing me up like this.
I've been here for almost a year now.
It's a bit of internal competition in a healthy way.
- I really like that.
And I think for those of you listening in,
if you are close to your product team,
like maybe you have an inside sales team,
but also you're thinking about how can you make
your product stickier long-term?
Nicole talked about it a lot, obviously at Qualified,
we have a really heavy focus on our customer success team.
But there's a reason for that.
I think if you're listening in on this,
like checking in with your customer success strategy,
like how is your CSM team being utilized?
Are they being utilized enough?
Does your vendors actually view them as a resource
or a strategic partner to them?
Or is it sort of just like a one-off like,
I'm only gonna go to them if something is absolutely broken
and I need them to fix it,
as opposed to like, hey, I'm adopting a new strategy.
I've totally shifted the way I'm thinking about marketing
or my BDR team is completely changed,
making sure you're looping in that customer success team early.
I think if you're on the product side right now
and you're thinking about making your product stickier,
start with your customer success team.
Like I think that is the first place you can go
to make sure your product is getting utilized.
On that note, Nicole, we've talked about short-term,
long-term, you've been doing this for a while.
What has it worked?
Like what have you done in the past
that you just realized you wouldn't do again in the future
'cause it just did not get the success you were thinking?
Definitely.
I think, I mean, to go to the exact opposite
of what we've talked about is just not building
that excitement, not leaning on the resources you have.
I think right now, especially just in the larger macro,
economic world, people aren't buying as many platforms
as they were before.
And so when you are purchasing something,
make sure you're hyping it up,
getting the team really excited.
I've had organizations in the past,
we've purchased something and as an SDR,
I wouldn't even know when my leadership team
was adding a new platform.
All of a sudden I would have a new login,
but it's okay, what do I do with this?
So making an exciting, do a whole kickoff call,
really show those best practices.
I know I'm foreshadowing a little bit to future questions,
but really let the team know what ROI
is gonna be coming from this.
Like how does this platform really influence
their day to day?
I think especially from a sales development perspective
and people that are very quota minded,
how can this impact my quota for the better?
And just not saying that upfront,
you're not gonna have that excitement,
you're not going to have that adoption right off the bat.
I think that has definitely been the biggest thing
that I have seen as a miss in my past.
- I couldn't agree more, I think tying it back
to something that the end user is gonna care about,
which in this case, if you're gonna provide sales reps
and it's quota, there's just no other way around it,
like they care about it.
And I think not bringing that in early enough,
it feels like a nice to have not a need to have
if it's not tied to that thing they need most.
I was saying from my perspective,
one of the things I've tried that didn't work
and I've learned this a hard way is one,
not heating the advice of a sales rep
during the sales process of what you need to think
about strategically, so thinking I could just bring
the tool on and it was just going to sort of like magically
make a difference and not planning for the full strategy
behind it, so I've learned now during an evaluation process,
I need to really understand like what is the work
that's gonna go behind this and what do I need to change
on my day to day to make this successful?
I think not realizing that until five months in
or six months in where I haven't really worked the tool
into my strategy in the right way, I've realized,
oh shoot, I need to go change quickly to make sure
this is a key part in my different pieces
of my marketing strategy in our inside sales team
and getting pipeline brought in and them hitting quota
and doing that too late in the process
makes the renewal much harder because I don't have enough data,
I only am working with six months of data versus a year of data,
so I've learned the hard way that if you're in the sales process
and the sales rep is telling you,
these are the things you're gonna need
or you're on an onboarding call,
it's not heating that advice early enough
and starting to work that in strategically
before you've even signed on the tool, honestly.
- Absolutely, I think looking at it
from the entirety of the process,
exactly like you said, once it's in their labs,
once they're ready to use it,
if they haven't had that excitement,
if they don't have the direction to go,
it's not going to be adopted, it's not going to be used,
you're just playing catch up from that point forward
and as anybody from a sales perspective
or a buyer's perspective knows,
a year comes up very quickly when it comes
to renewal timelines and so just knowing
right off the bat, day one,
at day one is very important
and so not playing catch up the whole time
makes it a lot easier, so definitely,
I think that intentionality becomes very important.
- Yeah, I will add on one of the things,
this is just my own personal opinion,
I know not everyone does this,
but I think leading like an inbound sales team
or a team that's gonna be using the tech stack,
I like to be in the tool sometimes,
like if I know when I've signed on new tech stack,
if my team is going to be using it,
I also wanna understand how to use it.
So I think even as a leader, I know it's hard,
you're in a ton of meetings,
there's a lot of time commitment to it,
but having the basic knowledge of like,
how does the tool work, where can I go in it
to see adoption?
Like I know there are most any SaaS tool
that's gonna have somewhere in the platform
where you can go look and say,
who that has seats is using this
and who isn't using this?
And I think me knowing how to use the tool
to a basic extent and then knowing where to find
that usage data is super valuable
'cause I can ask questions,
I can go in there, I can ask a rep and say,
like, here are you using this,
well, one, they're gonna go,
uh-huh, they're not gonna tell me no.
Like they don't wanna get in trouble,
which they wouldn't be,
but if I can look at usage data
and know how to use the tool
and go find where that is,
I can go to the reps on an individual level
and ask them, like, hey,
I noticed you haven't been using the tool,
like what's going on, like is something happening?
Is it your workload?
Is it usability?
And if it's a usability problem
and they don't know how to use it properly,
then I'm like, oh, I can go ask for training,
I can bring stuff on, it helps guide me.
So I think being a part as a leader
of the onboarding process and the learning
and the education, I find super valuable,
but I just think that's because it helps me
lead the team in a better way.
- I agree with that.
And I think it builds your sense of knowledge too
when they know they can always come to you.
And I think especially when it's brand new reps coming on,
that's always a question that comes up
during interviews for me.
As people will ask, okay, what is your leadership style?
How often are we actually going to be talking?
And when a rep knows I can come to Sarah with a question
because you know exactly what you're doing
instead of sitting in meetings
and fully not understanding this platform,
which I think everybody at some point
has had a manager like that.
And it just, you don't feel invested in the platform
because your manager's not invested in the platform.
And that's one of the things in addition
to the qualified customer success team,
we have all of our managers on the platform as well
to be able to see that data,
but also to be able to answer questions.
Maybe if somebody's out sick,
we'll sometimes have managers jump in
and cover their chats because it is so much more
when your manager knows what's going on.
It just makes the entire employee experience better,
but digressing to employee experience versus adoption.
It just definitely, they do tie hand in hand though.
- Yep, yeah, because if they can see
that it's getting utilized and there's value in it,
I think that that point is going to drive adoption,
which leads me to, you are a sales leader on your team.
And I know when we've chatted about this before,
you talked about internal champions
and you kind of talked about that
in the short term success as well.
So how do you as a leader beyond obviously
using the tool, understanding it?
How do you get internal champions?
Like how do you identify them?
How do you encourage them?
And then most importantly,
how do you then champion them internally
to get more adoption of that platform?
- Absolutely.
Kind of going back even before purchase,
I think the number one thing that I do and have done
is created that open dialogue with all of my reps.
Hey, what platforms do you want to see?
There are so many, especially in the sales development world,
different platforms that we have reps
reaching out to us as leaders,
but we're also visible on Twitter, on LinkedIn.
There are all of these different ads
that SDRs are seeing as well.
And so if they bring something to me,
I'm going to evaluate it and see,
"Hey, I trust my team.
"Is this something that we should be bringing
"into our tech stack?"
And so especially listening to that,
you have reps right off the bat
that are super excited to use this product
because they're who brought it into the org.
- I really love that.
'Cause I feel like there's so much debate,
just in general in sales of like,
"Are you above the line?
"Do you have the decision maker, like the signer?"
But to your point,
the end users are going to make and break it
a year down the road when the renewal comes up.
So if just as a marketer, I love hearing that
because it just speaks to like a wider buying committee.
And you can spend a ton of time and money on the signer,
but if you don't spend time and effort on the end user,
it's you're not like your churn's going to be higher.
- Exactly.
And so finding that excitement and even asking reps,
like if we're doing an evaluation of multiple platforms,
what have you guys heard of before?
Is it qualified?
Is it another platform that might also do chat capabilities
or do meeting capabilities?
What else are you seeing?
And if you hear qualified after qualified after qualified,
obviously I'm going to pursue that one a bit more
because they're the ones on it.
They have that excitement.
They're ready to go.
So that once they are on it,
going back before they're going to be using it every day,
we're not worried about them just kind of sitting there
and saying they're utilizing it,
but they actually are not in real time.
And so I'd say that's definitely number one.
I think number two is just finding the people
that are really good at it and cheering them on.
I think any platform, it's going to come naturally
to some people.
I know there is one person on our team
who every single month he exceeds quota.
We always ask him how he does it.
He just says, I love qualified.
I love chatting with people.
I love the meetings on my calendar
when I come in in the mornings.
It is just so much fun to hear.
And so I find that one person I lean on them
and it's calling them out and slack like,
hey, what great stories do you have today?
Hey, can you mentor new hires?
Can you create videos of how you utilize it
so that we can then share with others?
And I think from there, that excitement just spreads.
And so you find that one internal champion,
whether it's off of obviously the start of the process
or off of their performance
and just have them help others and that excitement
is just contagious.
I think especially we're a primarily remote team.
And so when you see somebody across the country
just absolutely loving this platform,
it's, hey, I need to check that out too.
Like they're hitting quota month after month after month.
We need to be able to do that as well.
And so it just builds that act of camaraderie a little bit.
- I could not agree more.
One of the things we've done here internally
that I have never done in a previous company
and I will take with me wherever I go
is when we do something called Pipeline Council,
which is a weekly meeting on like,
what's all the new deals that have kept,
not all the new deals,
but we look over like where are we at against
our pipeline targets, all of these.
It's very data driven, but at the end,
we do our plays of the week.
And I love these because one,
it highlights our inbound and our outbound team,
which we all know is such a grind right now.
It's so hard.
And I feel like giving them a chance to speak
to the larger team, the sales, the marketing team,
the leadership team is on this call
and showcasing the people that are working really hard
and the deals that they've brought in.
But every play of the week will feature
like three or four a week,
usually depending on the week.
It's they'll talk about like, how did they bring them in?
And that includes the tech stack.
Like what did they use to bring in this new deal?
And it gets the other people excited
and it helps us drive up adoption of all of our tech stack
because if someone's like, hey,
I used the intent coming from this platform
and then I used our outbound platform to do this.
And then they came to our website
and I use qualified to chat with them.
And then like there's all these things
and they talk about each step of their process,
it gets other reps thinking, well, I'm not,
maybe I'm not using our outbound enough.
I'm not using that hot from enough or like, hey,
I'm not jumping in to have conversations with anyone
and I'm not seeing these plays of the week.
Like I'm not getting as many deals.
And so we bring them in not only to like those weekly calls
but everyone saw we featured them on like a company,
all hands.
And one, it does, it gets other reps excited.
It gets notoriety to some of the reps
who I know deserve it who are working really, really hard
and just do not get enough.
They never do because they grind all the time.
And three, if we do it in an all company call,
it starts to get our leadership team
to hear these platforms mentioned multiple times.
And then when it comes time for renewal,
they're like, well, I can't get rid of that
because I've heard this in Mount Sails reps say that 14 times
he's used this product to help drive pipeline.
I don't even need to bring them numbers.
They just heard it enough and it's just been repetition
that they're not gonna get rid of that tool.
- I definitely need to seal that and copy that.
I love that and it's so true.
It's not, as you said, only recognition with the executives
but I think other reps as well.
It's perfect.
You know, okay, this person's finding success because of it
and especially in a world where multi-threading is so important,
you hear it qualified after qualified after qualified.
You know that it's impactful and you know
that it's going to not only create champions
but also create that long-term commitment and excitement
for the platform they've adopted.
- Totally.
And I think you mentioned earlier remote work.
One of the things I found that leaning on someone
that's a champion internally,
having them share what's worked for them,
we, I mean, it's almost hard to imagine what it was like
being back in the office five days a week
but they talk about with sales teams,
like they used to sit in one part of the office
and they would share with each other all the time
but like, we're not really gonna go back to that.
I don't think people necessarily have the desire
always to go back to that.
So it's finding ways to bring that camaraderie
that they may be used to have on the floor
all the time together in a remote world
and I do find that sharing wins on a more consistent basis
is something that does.
It helps disseminate that information
throughout the entire team, it helps to get them excited
and helps the reps feel a little more noticed
in a virtual world.
- Absolutely, absolutely.
I think as you said, it's something it will never be
exactly what it was three and a half years ago
but that gives us the opportunity to pull
the good parts of the office
and really bring in remote work.
I know we have two offices,
I'm clearly a remote employee now.
And so you can really find the good stuff about it.
I no longer have to do a 45 minute commute each way
so I love being part of the remote.
But there are things like being in the sales pen
that I really do miss
and so you just have to find other ways to get creative
and bring that to the day to day.
- Absolutely.
Anything else from an internal champions standpoint?
- I think the only other thing I would do
is also give the reps themselves that autonomy
to really talk about it even without my involvement.
I think that's one thing that when adopting a new platform
sometimes people feel like their manager
has to be involved in the conversation.
But when something's brought to me like,
hey, go share this with the rest of the team
not that they need my permission
but almost a reminder like going back
to the in office conversation,
in an office managers were not in every conversation.
Now it feels like oftentimes we are in every Slack channel.
And so creating those reps only Slack channels
or whatever teams channels, whatever people utilize
to share those wins but also share those stories
where maybe they have a difficult customer
they're trying to work with.
And just having that more chat type conversation
versus a formal coaching conversation,
just I think integrates it more into the day to day
and allows everybody to be lifted up to a champion standpoint.
- Yeah, that's so true.
I think sharing that, feeling the ability
to share those wins without some sort of oversight
I think is really important.
We have, we use Slack and we have a ton of Slack channels.
We have like our sales channel and our marketing channel
and they do get really noisy
but one of the things I loved that our AEs,
some of our AEs have started doing
is they will share like a shout out to their inbound rep
or their outbound rep and they'll say like,
"Hey, I just wanted to call it this win."
Like this person really grinded to get this call.
Here's all the things that they did to drive it.
So it's almost like that play of the week
but it's coming from their AE
that they're driving business for.
And it just makes the reps feel so much better.
And again, like it's when it's public in the Slack channel
leadership starts to see these things
and they start to notice those reps.
They start to notice the tools that they're using.
Like it is just a really good feedback loop
and just I think honestly positive reinforcement
to keep doing this good behavior
that we want them to keep doing of using these tools
so we don't lose them.
- Absolutely.
And that makes my like sales development manager heart.
So happy that people are doing that
because it is, I don't wanna say people ever get tired
of praise and congratulations
but if it's only ever coming from your manager
it's just a different feeling when it's coming from that AE,
when it's coming from somebody more senior
than the company and just seeing,
okay, I'm doing something right here.
I'm using this platform correctly.
This and it's not just my manager seeing it.
- Absolutely.
Okay, so now to the point of we're up on a renewal
whether it's a year or two years,
however long the contract is.
Beyond the things that we've talked about
what is one way that you communicate ROI
specifically when it comes to rep adoption
'cause it's not necessarily tied to a number
but do you bring in rep adoption
and their feelings of using the platform
when you have renewal discussions
with your leadership team?
- What we do bring into it or what we plan to,
we have an upcoming renewal conversation
in a couple of weeks, I believe, or a couple of months
but what I do bring into it is just the overall usage.
I think there's obviously the numeric point of an ROI
where it's where X percentage over our payment,
obviously we have that ROI,
it's worth your numbers perspective
but we can also break it down by of all of the reps
is every single rep a part of this ROI
because I think going back to the champions part
I have seen instances where there is one maybe two reps
that they just love this platform so it's a high ROI
but it's only coming from two people
but so instead breaking it down to an average,
breaking it down to see okay, how many different deals
were sourced by how many different people
which led to how many different AEs hitting their quota
and thankfully we have a really fantastic partnership
obviously as I've mentioned with the customer success team
but also our internal operations team,
they work together to build all of this out
and so we do monthly KPI reviews
and then in addition we'll do our annual
obviously renewal discussions
and having this month to month also allows us
to just be set up when the renewal discussions do arise
because we already know okay of X number of reps
on the platform, every single one has sourced at least
10X number pulled out of thin air
but ROI for this platform, something like that.
- I, the monthly KPI review, I love that.
I think if you're listening to this,
if you are using a vendor that's not doing
quarterly monthly KPI reviews, push for it
because it's gonna make your job easier in a year.
It's a lot easier to hear every quarter, every month.
How are we doing?
Not only from just your point,
like a pure numbers perspective of like
we've sourced X amount of money
or it's influenced X amount of deals, like that's great
but what's the adoption?
Are reps using it?
Are they not using it?
And you can stay ahead of that versus,
oh no, a renewal is coming up in a week
and I have no idea if anyone's been using it
or now I have all of a sudden I have to go back
and look I'm like, oh here's 50% of our reps
only logged in four times.
That becomes a much harder problem to speak to
with your leadership team.
So I think those quarterly or monthly reviews
is so important in long term.
- Absolutely and I actually have my monthly one
coming up right after this.
So it's great, I didn't for that.
But I think it also, at least for me,
when it comes to a renewal discussion
or comes to something more formal like that,
you do have the foresight to be able to plan for it.
I think what the KPI discussions have helped me with
are to what we were speaking about earlier
when deal cycles come up, when a name like qualified
comes up time and time again
and all of a sudden our sales team catches wind
and the head of sales is like, hey, what's this platform?
What are we doing with this?
I've never heard of it before and thankfully
that has not happened because everybody knows what qualified
is at our company.
But if that were to happen, you can just immediately say,
oh well this is what they do, this is our adoption,
this is our ROI to this point.
We are renewing in X month and you don't have to scramble
as if there's absolutely no information
you're slacking your CSM like,
hey, help, I need this right now.
- We throw together some slides.
- Yeah.
- I do think to the point of adoption
and we kind of mentioned it earlier
about those internal champions and people who love using
the tool, one of the things I also have found really useful
from an ROI perspective is I'm never going to get around
having to prove monetary value of the platform.
Like you spend money on it, you're going to have to prove
that it's influencing at some point,
but I don't think it's a missed to discount rep adoption
and I've kind of mentioned earlier,
the more throughout if you're on a new platform
or you have a platform that you as a sales leader
or someone who leads an SDR team,
you really want to keep, start communicating now,
however you can, start slipping it into Slack channels,
into conversations, the benefit that it's bringing you
and how much the reps love it.
I've found even if the ROI numbers aren't not necessarily there
but like maybe they're not as great as you thought,
but if I go to my leadership team and say,
like our sales team can't live without this tool,
like they, their jobs will become exponentially harder
in a time right now where it's already harder to drive deals,
it's harder to hit quota.
I found that leadership is much more amenable
to keeping something if I can prove
that the reps just cannot live without it.
And I think that comes from early
and frequent communication of the value of it
and having it come from both me as a leader
and from our reps, starting that early
because they're not going to take away a tool
that someone on the team is like,
"I use this every single day.
"If you take this away, I'm going to miss half my deals."
They're never going to take that away.
- Exactly.
And it's almost even creating it as like a household name
within the company.
Like in a sales org, everybody knows what CRM use.
Everybody knows what phone you use,
what chat platform are you using,
what are you using to set your meetings with?
Just making sure that it's naturally in the conversation
to that point where people are going to miss it.
If you're using that,
and as you are the name of your CRM,
it's going to immediately be a little weird
when all of a sudden it's not there anymore.
- Totally. People will notice that.
- Yes.
- Okay.
I think that is it anything else, Nicole,
that you want to add about rep adoption.
Otherwise, I think this has been fantastic.
I really appreciate you coming on.
- Oh my gosh. Of course. No.
I think we covered a lot on my end,
but absolutely loved being here.
So thank you again for the opportunity.
- Absolutely.
If you have any questions, obviously,
we're going to be answering questions.
Otherwise, Nicole, thank you so much for joining us.
This is super valuable.
And we will talk to you soon.
Sounds great. Thanks, Sarah.
- Right.
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