Sales Engagement ROI: The Secrets to Measuring It
When it comes to sales engagement, the return on investment can be difficult to measure. How can you measure the ROI of something that has no direct monetary value attached to it? Well, where there’s a will (or a highly effective sales team) there’s a way! Knowing the financial impact your sales engagement strategy has on your organization is crucial to business success.
According to Gartner, 90% of sales leaders plan to invest in technologies that boost sales engagement with prospects and customers. Ultimately, sales engagement is at the forefront of sales leaders’ minds and should be top of your list too. In this article, we’re going to uncover the secrets to measuring sales engagement ROI.
What is sales engagement?
Sales engagement encompasses all interactions that take place between a sales rep and a prospect during the sales cycle. These interactions can be in the form of calls, email exchanges, interactive presentation prompts, and more. Consider an interactive sales presentation, for example. Through sales enablement software, reps are able to see which slides the prospect is engaging within real-time.
Basically, sales engagement strategies place a spotlight on efficiency. The best engagement frameworks inform sales reps of when and how to engage with buyers based on data. Instead of guessing which content will garner the most engagement, sellers are able to make data-driven decisions to present buyers with the right information at the right time. This strategy ensures that the prospect keeps moving forward down the sales funnel. Essentially, sales engagement allows organizations to build scalable strategies that accelerate sales and maximize revenue.
So the real question is, how can sales managers measure the success of sales engagement?
Content metrics to measure sales engagement
Depending on the technology your team has, your metrics for measuring sales engagement may be different. However, we’re highlighting the most universal content metrics that will help you better determine the ROI of your team’s engagement. These metrics give sales managers a better understanding of sales engagement ROI by discovering which content is favored by buyers and sellers.
Content accessed by buyer
This metric measures any piece of content that the buyer accessed and can include a number of things. For example, any content that’s readily available and acknowledged by a buyer such as a whitepaper they downloaded on the website. The right sales enablement technology will provide analytics as to which pieces of content like this are resonating most with buyers. From here, you can decide whether the content is working well or needs improvement.
A few other examples of content accessed by the buyer are as follows:
- Emailed sales materials like case studies and infographics
- Interactive ROI calculators
- Video tutorials
Content accessed by seller
Content accessed by the seller is defined as sales collateral that can be shared with prospects. For example, a rep can (and should!) email a case study relevant to a prospect’s use case to provide greater insight into the company’s offering. One of the most effective ways to positively impact sales engagement is to enable sales reps with the right sales enablement technology. Essentially, a sales enablement platform can serve as a dynamic content library housing all relevant content — like the case study mentioned above — in one central location and categorized appropriately by persona, sales stage, etc.
Consequently, all sales reps will have access to the right content when they need it. Furthermore, the platform will also provide insight as to which pieces of content top sales reps are using most. This helps sales managers determine which content sales reps are finding the most success with to engage buyers and which pieces of content are falling flat.
Email opens by buyer
This sales engagement metric is simple. It basically covers how many times a buyer opens an email sent from a sales rep. There are many reasons a buyer may not open an email. Maybe the subject line needs to be reworked or the sender name looks suspicious. On the other hand, when an email receives a high open-rate, it’s important to take note of the language used in the subject line and other aspects like time of day and date sent. This is so that reps can better serve their prospects by giving them the content they want when they want it. Essentially, knowing what works best boosts sales engagement across the board.
Let’s take a look at how integrating your email account with a sales enablement platform makes the insights mentioned above easier to operationalize. With SMTP for Microsoft Office 365, sales reps are able to send emails directly from their email address while still working in the sales enablement platform. This integration is what provides reps with the insights mentioned above. For instance, a sales rep can pull their email analytics over the last month to gain insight as to which materials propel their leads to the next sales cycle stage. Likewise, they can determine which materials are hardly opened. From here, the rep is better able to send sales materials that resonate most with buyers to bolster sales engagement.
Content-influenced revenue
Similar to the metrics above, the right sales enablement platform will uncover the influence that particular content is having in the sales process and tie that back to revenue. We know, it’s pretty cool!
For example, let’s say sales reps usually send a product data sheet 1-pager when they’re mid-way through the sales cycle. Everyone on the sales team feels great about how that data sheet helps to nudge their buyers along in their decision-making process. But, how can you really measure that? Let’s take a look at an example of what’s possible.
Let’s say that on average, for every 10 buyers who view that data sheet, 6 people make a purchase. This would result in a 60% success rate for that one piece of content. Moreover, this percentage can be translated into the amount of revenue generated. So if each deal is worth $5,000, then the average revenue for this data sheet (per 10 people) would be $30,000. Knowing this attribution further helps sales managers understand that product-related content used at a specific stage in the sales cycle actually works!
Engagement time
Next, engagement time is any amount of time a prospect spends engaged with content. For example, a sales rep sends an interactive presentation to a prospect via email. With the right sales enablement platform, the sales rep can see in real-time which slides the prospect is spending the most time on. This helps the rep better understand what the prospect is most interested in and enables them to better sell to the prospect in future interactions.
Revenue-producing metrics
The typical revenue-producing metrics such as sales velocity, pipeline growth, and productivity statistics, also illuminate the success of a team’s sales engagement strategy. We all know these! With these insights, sales managers are able to visualize their progress and see in real-time how their data-driven sales engagement decisions are impacting the top line. These insights allow managers to drive new efficiencies throughout the team where needed to increase revenue.
Moreover, the analytics on sales engagement activity can be used to determine which touch points convert to revenue. For example, efficiencies like making all sales content easily accessible in one organized location, increase sales velocity by reducing time spent searching the intranet for the right materials. Ultimately, this increase in sales velocity speeds up the sales process and drives revenue.
Final Thoughts
Ultimately, a great sales engagement strategy is all about delivering a high-quality experience with relevant content that promotes user interaction to increase revenue. Experts expect to see an acceleration of sales engagement practices in the coming years. In fact, 92% of sales organizations report that having a sales engagement strategy and platform is critical to their success.
Is your team going to keep up with the competition and implement a sales engagement strategy with the right technology? Or will you allow your competitors to win?
Make a data-driven decision — schedule a demo with Prezentor to visualize your team’s sales engagement success.