Buyer enablement is all about guiding your customers. That does not end with the initial purchase. Buyers need your guidance beyond the onboarding and implementation stages to set them up for success and lay the building blocks for a successful, long-term relationship. So, if you’re going to help your champion constantly sell for you, you need to find a way to measure their progress instead of yours.
Here’s a new set of customer centric data points we recommend to measure how your efforts are paying off and act as an alarm if things aren’t going the right way.
This is just a taste of how to measure buyer enablement. If you want to know how to dig into these metrics, you’ll want to check out Chapter 13, Measuring Buyer Enablement in Selling is Hard. Buying is Harder.
Buyer Enablement Data Basics
There are eight basic kinds of data you should track to measure how well your buyer enablement strategy works.
- Champion(s) identified
- Number of stakeholders discovered
- Prioritized interests of the buying group
- Percentage of buying group discovered
- Percentage of buying group engaged
- Percentage of buying group showing approval
- Share rate
- Buying stages each stakeholder has completed
Some of these only need simple manual tracking (like using a yes/no checkbox in your CRM for champion(s) identified), but others (hint – 5, 7, and 8) will require the help of deeper tracking from the buyer enablement software you’re using.
Whatever software you’re using, whether it’s a sales enablement tool or demo experience platform, you’ll want to make sure it can show things like topics of interest, how important each topic was ranked, and if they shared the content with others.
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Forecasting Stakeholder Engagement and Alignment
Revenue teams forecast their deals wrong.
Like a sales-focused strategy focuses on the sales rep, most forecasting focuses on what the rep has accomplished. Yes, you’re working hard and hustling, but that’s not enough to close deals, renew accounts, and expand customer relationships.
When forecasting, look at these key areas: alignment and misalignment within the buying group and deal progression and risk the buyer enablement way.
Misalignment can happen at any step, so this is another time when you need to have a firm handle on buyer needs and stages to help your champion overcome both initial objections and emerging threats.
Again, your team’s activity has nothing to do with how far a deal has progressed or if there’s risk involved.
It doesn’t matter if you’ve sent a proposal if no one looks at it. It doesn’t matter if you do a QBR if key stakeholders don’t participate. It doesn’t matter if your champion is successful if there’s no way to socialize that success.
Ignoring what the champion has accomplished and what the buying group looks like misses a huge part of the picture. It is crucial to map out the buying stages and (probably more importantly) what the buyers need to move to the next stage, whatever that stage may be.
If you don’t know where the buyers are in their journey, there’s absolutely no way they’ll know where they are. Remember, you’re no longer a sales rep; you’re a “buying coach.”
Buyer Enablement Data Tips
Keep these tips in mind as you use this new data to make changes to your buyer enablement strategy:
- Map out the buyer journey first. You can’t guide your customers through a process you haven’t nailed down yourself. But make sure you iterate as you go. If you notice a shift in how buyers are progressing through the cycle, update your process to reflect that. The buyer is in charge, not you.
- Identify your champion as early as possible. You won’t be able to close this deal without the help of your champion. Don’t rely on the buyer’s excitement alone as an indicator. You need their help in making this deal happen, so if they aren’t willing to work with you, they aren’t a true champion.
- Track buyer activity religiously. What happened after the champion shared something? Did they share, and did that person watch? This will be your north star for so many things like areas of interest, engagement, and identifying key stakeholders.
- Forecast based on customers’ actions, not sales. Put the focus on the customer and what they are doing. When forecasting, ask buyer-centric questions like, “Do you have a champion identified, and how do you know?” and “How many stakeholders have you discovered, and how many have engaged with your or the champion?” This will give you a more accurate picture of the deal’s status.
- Handle misalignments one at a time. If you’ve discovered more than one area of misalignment, don’t bite off more than you can chew and try to resolve them all at once. Instead, focus on the most critical problem first and then work your way through them. Some misalignments might not be a big deal and can be ignored.
- Consider each stakeholder’s influence before engaging. Each stakeholder has a different level of influence. A stakeholder may be a detractor but might not hold enough sway to derail a deal. Identify the stakeholders most likely to be the deciders and put your focus on them.
Even if you’re not a numbers person, this portion of your buyer enablement strategy is the linchpin for the whole system. These metrics are where you really shift the focus from sales to the buyers.
It might be scary to put your data in your buyer’s hands at first, but it’s a no-brainer when you remember who closes the deal. Start betting on the right horse and use your buyer’s actions as your success map.
Up next, we’ll cover how demo automation supports buyer enablement. Want to see what else demo automation can do for your organization? Check out our extensive resource center, view a webinar, or even watch your own demo on demand.
