Hootsuite Accelerates Ramp-to-Revenue

Hootsuite accelerates sellers’ ramp to revenue with self-guided, dynamic training — achieving a 70% increase in closed won revenue from the most active Highspot users.

Key Results

70% more revenue closed by most active Highspot users
5x more Highspot usage by top performers
93% of reps use Highspot daily

Company Size

1,000

Industry

Technology

Growth is good — until it isn’t. Rapid scale puts sales leaders and enablement teams under pressure to boost new rep productivity in addition to improving current rep performance. As leading social media platform Hootsuite grew, the challenge of achieving both became their top priority.

Hootsuite’s Global Sales Enablement Manager, Shamis Thomson, started to solve the problem of achieving faster seller success by assessing the effectiveness of Hootsuite’s existing sales tools and resources. Digging deep into content analytics within Highspot, their sales enablement platform, Shamis discovered something fascinating: Highspot could help his team look at the extent to which reps were engaging with training and selling resources and correlate with their sales performance and level of effectiveness with buyers.

After doing some analysis, Shamis discovered that the more reps engaged with selling resources and training content within Highspot, the more they sold. Shamis recognized the opportunity right away. If his team could keep reps training and accessing resources within Highspot, they could boost seller performance for both incoming and tenured reps.

Shamis wasted no time. Working cross-functionally to build on Highspot’s core content management capabilities, he worked with teams internally to reorganize all onboarding and sales training content into a dynamic, self-guided experience within Highspot using SmartPages™ — then focused on driving rep engagement with the platform.

The more reps engaged with selling resources and training content within Highspot, the more they sold.

The result: After just three months and continuing to track for the next year, Hootsuite’s most-adopted sales technology platform has consistently contributed directly to a 70% increase in closed won revenue from the most active Highspot users.

Shortening our ramp-to-revenue was our number one priority. But efficient onboarding was impossible without an organized knowledge hub, let alone ongoing training. We needed a solution that could support onboarding and continuous training within reps' daily experience. Highspot was that solution.

—Liam Surridge, Vice President Global Commercial Sales, Hootsuite

Challenges: The Road to Revenue is Paved with Content and Training

Onboarding program leaves reps and trainers wanting more

Onboarding sets the precedent for new rep performance. But often, reps are expected to learn as they go. With training content spread across multiple systems, reps did not have a smooth journey for getting up to speed to start selling, which slowed their ramp-to-revenue. Further, without engagement analytics, sales trainers lacked visibility into where the program was falling short and struggled to prioritize areas for improvement that could accelerate their sellers’ ability to close revenue faster.

Consistent high performance requires continuous training

Reps need context alongside content to sell effectively. Most importantly, they need guidance on when and where to use specific content, and the ability to access it at the point of action. Though Hootsuite stored sales content within Highspot, these assets weren’t organized to support continuous, micro-learning experiences. This left reps struggling to engage modern buyers, and performance gains were inconsistent.

Managers want to help — but don’t know where to invest

Sales and enablement managers at Hootsuite knew reps required coaching to succeed, but didn’t know which reps needed it most. With limited time and resources, busy leaders needed a way to identify struggling sellers and intervene before a lack of coaching hindered performance.

Solution: Hootsuite Expands Beyond Original Highspot Use Case

Though he didn’t know it at the time, Shamis began his journey to world-class onboarding years earlier when he needed an easily searchable sales content management system.

Reps who accessed more content within Highspot on any given subject closed an average of 4x more associated revenue than their peers.

Highspot fit the bill and became an immediate success, quickly achieving 90% adoption among primary users.

As Hootsuite grew and accelerating ramp-to-revenue became a top priority, Shamis naturally began exploring Highspot data to understand rep activity patterns.

Highspot’s analytics showed Shamis that the more reps engaged with Highspot, the better they performed.

Soon, the answer to Hootsuite’s onboarding and training problems was clear. Hootsuite could use Highspot as a central hub for all learning content to ramp sellers faster, more effectively, and with greater predictability.

With Highspot, we were able to design role-specific learning paths that allow reps to access the right resources and learning experiences at the ideal point in their onboarding experience.

—Andrea Jones, Learning & Organizational Development, Hootsuite

Results: Self-Guided Learning Modules and Focused Content Drive Revenue

Better onboarding, more selling

First, Hootsuite organized onboarding assets via dynamic, comprehensive hubs using Highspot SmartPages™. Guided learning with role-specific experiences made training easier to find and consume. Unsurprisingly, reps were suddenly engaging with more content than ever. As Shamis expected, content consumption directly impacted performance: soon the most engaged Highspot users among newly ramped hires were performing the same or better than tenured peers with 1 to 3 more years of experience.

Continuous training enables consistently high performance

Just-in-time training created the immersive learning experience that reps needed to keep knowledge close at hand and close deals. By using Highspot to provide mico-training alongside content, reps not only quickly found the right assets, but also had guidance on how to use them effectively. In fact, Hootsuite saw an average increase of 60% in closed-won revenue across all groups of sellers for reps who increased their use of Highspot each quarter.

Performance becomes predictable

Hootsuite’s sales enablement team used the strong correlation between Highspot usage and performance to help sales leaders predict which reps will struggle based on how often they use Highspot, and by proxy, training and selling materials. This gave sales leadership enough information to effectively allocate time and resources and ensured struggling reps got the coaching they needed to improve.

Highspot allows us to easily analyze content and rep activity so we can continually learn, improve, and grow revenue.

—Shamis Thomson, Global Sales Enablement Manager, Hootsuite

Impact: Great Sales Teams Are Always Training

Hootsuite embraced modern onboarding and continuous training to unlock predictable, consistent performance for both new and tenured reps. Empowered by learning from the day they onboard to every deal after, Hootsuite reps are now more effective than ever before.

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