According to research by Marketo, sales and marketing alignment can help businesses become 67% better at closing deals. So, how can you drive alignment through enablement to improve business outcomes?
Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi and welcome to the Win Win Podcast. I’m your host, Shawnna Sumaoang. Join us as we dive into changing trends in the workplace and how to navigate them successfully. Here to discuss this topic is Heather Hoover, director of global marketing & academy at Össur. Thanks for joining, Heather! I’d love for you to tell us about yourself, your background, and your role.
Heather Hoover: I’ve been with Össur for about 15 years. Currently, I’m in the education team leading the global academy for bracing and support, and also for the marketing aspects of things. That’s where we’ve been utilizing Highspot for about a year and a half now. I am just really excited to tell you a little about our customer experience today.
SS: Fantastic. We’re excited to have you here. One of the key reasons you initially got involved in enablement is because of the overlapping needs between enablement and marketing. What were some of those shared needs that caused you to invest in enablement, to begin with?
HH: That’s what initially happened from the education side of things. We shifted because of COVID with a lot of in-person education and training to the digital side of things and really shifting towards video as well. It was just coming up with that strategy of shifting our customer education from a video perspective and then how to share it with customers so that they would have a good customer experience.
Originally, we were struggling with Outlook trying to send multiple videos out. Would you send it just like SharePoint? How would they find it afterward? Is it easy to download? That was one of the main reasons why, at least from the education side of things as we were kind of building out our strategy and shifting from in-person to digital, how would we have a better customer experience for our B2B side of things from the video side of things?
SS: I love that. You touched on a few of them before you implemented Highspot. It sounds like you were maybe leveraging an internal marketing hub, which sounds like it led to a few challenges. Can you talk to us about that experience and how maybe you’ve been able to solve some of those challenges with Highspot?
HH: For about nine years or so, we had our own internal system that we’re utilizing in order to share marketing tools. Just a place where the marketers were able to upload the marketing tools, documents, brochures, sell sheets, etc., but that was IT-based internally. With a lot of competing priorities, so within the organization, the IT team had to move on to other projects. So when there were some glitches or some things that needed to be updated within that system, it was just really hard to get those updates needed.
Of course, that just became very glitchy, and then needed to find a solution for our marketing tool hub. It was like one portion of it was looking into Highspot, but of course, the other aspect is how do we find a solution for kind of the video aspect side of things too.
SS: Yeah, absolutely. Since implementing Highspot, I mean, you guys have seen some really great adoption from your teams, including an 83 percent recurring usage rate. What were your best practices for really ensuring that you had an effective launch and rollout of the platform to your teams?
HH: I think with the adoption rate, it really just shows there was something that we had a big problem that needed to be solved internally. I would say it wasn’t much of a heavy lift from the sales team doing that training and education because it was such a big gap for us. Highspot did fulfill that gap. It was very intuitive as well. Once we roll this out to the sales team from the app side of things and be able to utilize this when they’re out in the field or just very easily on their office days as well if they did want to use their desktop aspect of it.
Qe did get a very quick adoption when we launched this. I would say the education side of things too was just easy because we just had a lot of big problems that needed to be solved and then the Highspot platform from both just the marketing tool side of things, or just being able to help create the libraries of information for our customers as well within Highspot. with the microsites that were just very well received by the sales force.
As we did the adoption to and, and all the trainings, there were quite a few sales members as well that went the step further and wanted to create their own pitch styles and kind of learn that too. We initially had the main reasons as to why we were instituting Highspot, but it kind of went above and beyond as well with the sales team and getting very creative on how else to use Highspot and how to create better customer experiences for our customers.
SS: To the point of the microsites or the digital rooms for your buyers, one area where your team is seeing a lot of success is leveraging the pitch capabilities in Highspot. Again, you guys have fantastic adoption there with 76 percent. Can you tell us more about how your reps use Highspot to engage buyers?
HH: Yes. The reps like to call it the library of information. I think everyone has email overload these days. If you’re one of our customers and you have to deal with multiple suppliers, one of the things that’s like, where did you find that information? Did they text you? Is it in Outlook? Do I have to comb through all my emails? And what was that rep’s name? Or, trying to find that information.
The way that the reps often sell it is the library of information and that can be continuously added to as well. It makes the customer more efficient that way that they can, remember that oh you know, Össur has this hub, they utilize Highspot. I can just kind of use this link and make it part of my favorites, and then the Össur rep, when I see them, could just add in anything that I’ve asked them right, right to that link continuously as well as to have a search through Outlook or, all my emails to find that information. That’s one of the main reasons why the sales team utilizes it a lot is from the pitch aspect too, it is kind of the library of information and a one-stop shop for customers to find the information.
SS: Yeah, I love that. Could you share with us, what are some other wins or maybe business outcomes that you’ve been able to achieve since implementing Highspot?
HH: I think one of the bigger things is from the academy perspective, just being very easily able to share videos and then also have that library for the videos as well, whether it be like our often the clinician and patient fitting information. You can continuously add to that as well as the customer purchases more products. That’s really nice just to be able to have those microsites and be able to continuously build off of those.
Also from the pitches, just being able to see those analytics. I think that always creates warmer leads that way as well to see who’s engaging within the customer when you do send those pitches out and how often they’re engaging. That was just something that we never had previously as well as an organization with our previous platform being able to see, was it actually opened and how long did the person engage with it as well? It’s been really helpful from that aspect. Also, just being able to view those analytics from our strategic initiatives to see from the engagement rate and open rate with what the reps are sending.
SS: Yeah, absolutely. Those are some fantastic wins. After the success you’ve had with your US and Canadian teams with their experience with Highspot, I understand that you’ve actually decided to expand the platform globally. What is your advice for gaining buy-in to expand enablement globally in that way?
HH: We launched from the US and Canada about 18 months ago. At that point with the launch within the US and Canada teams, it was a bit more of like a manual upload process. The rest of the global teams decided to wait until we had an API connection flowing for a lot of our marketing tools. It does take a lot, I would say from an internal standpoint of getting the right stakeholders on board, but I think the key thing that the Highspot team did was just help us identify what our problems and challenges are and then how a Highspot and a platform can help solve that as well. Just to be able to help get some of the key stakeholders globally on board with that.
SS: Yeah, that’s fantastic. What are some of the key considerations that you need to keep in mind when you’re launching Highspot in new regions and how are you preparing for an effective rollout in those regions?
HH: I think the key thing was this API connection that we have with all our approved marketing materials. That really just helps out with consistency from a brand globally along with making sure that everything’s been correctly validated from a claim standpoint too. I think that’s kind of one of the key things and not something that I personally thought of at the launch of Highspot as well was just making sure that we kind of have that flow of all the approved content and material from our internal standpoint, ready to go so that it’s consistent from a brand and messaging standpoint globally too. I think that was kind of, one of the key learnings that I kind of wish we planned for and thought of ahead of time before the initial implementation.
SS: How have you been able to actually maybe drive stronger alignment across teams and regions since investing in enablement?
HH: I think it’s always keeping things top of mind. When it really comes to the sale with any sales team members, everyone always has a lot of competing priorities across any organization. It’s just keeping a top of mind for the sales team as well, since they just have so many things that they’re working on, so many customers that they’re working with. It’s kind of just keeping it top of mind with best practices, lessons learned and continuous training as well.
Early on the beginning of the implementation within Highspot, we just had initial training sessions, but then also monthly check-ins with the team as to the best practices lessons learned, and key successes as well so that they can learn from each other. I think that’s always the thing is making sure that we have the training needed or at their fingertips but then also some reiteration and repetition with the team to make sure that everyone understands that the things that they can get accomplished within the platform.
SS: Yeah, absolutely. Last question for you, Heather. What are some of the key initiatives that you’re looking forward to achieving in 2024 with your partnership with Highspot?
HH: I think it would be the global rollout. I think we just had so much that we learned between the US and the Canada teams when we rolled it out over the past year and a half. We have those best practices, we have those Lessons learned. Now, with the global rollout, it’s just really helping out some of the other regions and being there for them as well, and how we can help support that side of things and just making sure everyone has as great of a successful rollout as the US and the Canada teams did.
SS: Fantastic, Heather. Thank you again so much for joining us today.
HH: Of course. Thanks for having me. Really appreciate it, and thank you so much for the Highspot team and for making our launch so successful.
SS: To our audience, thanks for listening to this episode of the Win Win Podcast. Be sure to tune in next time for more insights on how you can maximize enablement success with Highspot.
