How ExtraHop Increased Win Rate by 10%

Slow Ramp Times Stall Growth Potential 

ExtraHop’s cutting-edge solutions power organizations across the globe. That said, learning to successfully land the value of those solutions is no small task, particularly for brand-new sellers. “We’re very complicated,” began Russell Wurth, head of revenue enablement at ExtraHop. “It often takes a lot of time to understand the dynamics of our portfolio and who to sell it to.” To combat the challenge, ExtraHop sought to create onboarding programs that established foundational knowledge and readied new sellers to put it into practice in the field. While engaging reps in these programs can often be difficult, ExtraHop’s existing solution only amplified the challenge. “Getting salespeople’s attention is always really hard,” noted Wurth. A disjointed enablement tool and insufficient analytics only made it harder. 

Gradually, ExtraHop realized its existing solution couldn’t provide the on-demand, in-the-moment learning its sellers would actually engage with. “Part of getting sellers’ attention relies on how you reach reps in the moments that they need to find and apply learning on the job,” explained Wurth. To boost engagement with onboarding and ongoing learning materials, it needed to create programs that reached sellers at these moments — and do so in a way that suited each sellers’ unique learning style. Without a natively built platform and dynamic, customizable learning experiences, it was a struggle to create engaging learning that resonated with every seller. “We have a lot of things we want to try to impart, so we wanted to have a little novelty,” added Wurth.

To help sellers grow into their roles, ExtraHop began evaluating solutions, searching for one that could help streamline the onboarding process and decrease the time to productivity. “We’re trying to shorten ramp time,” shared Wurth. To create an onboarding experience that met sellers where they were — and evolved alongside them — ExtraHop switched to Highspot’s unified platform.

Onboarding Programs Build Readiness — and Effectiveness

At ExtraHop, onboarding isn’t a one-and-done motion. It’s an ongoing process that supports sellers through, and beyond, their first few months. The skills to effectively sell to its particular personas and across its technical portfolio don’t come easy; to instill these from day one, ExtraHop has created robust programs designed to build high levels of competence and confidence. With Highspot, it developed onboarding and continuous education programs that evolve new sellers into experts who are not just ready to sell, but highly effective in doing so. “Readiness gives you the basics: You can get out there, talk to partners, and talk to customers. Effectiveness, then, is about learning the more advanced use cases and technical elements,” explained Wurth. 

As it designed these programs, ExtraHop kept key business priorities front of mind. “Design for the change you want to have on lagging metrics, like win rate, ramp time, and time to deal close,” shared Wurth. “Great leading metrics guide performance sales metrics, but how do we get adoption of them? By designing learning programs that make sure people view the materials, watch the video, and put it into practice.” Understanding the connection between effective training and high-priority business outcomes, ExtraHop aimed to design programs that trained sellers to take actions that roll up into tangible impact. That said, training investments would only be impactful if sellers leveraged learnings during onboarding and beyond. Bite-sized training and multi-modal learning became key levers in this effort. “We try to trickle information across different modalities — reading, short videos, long videos,” noted Wurth. “It lets people learn in different ways.” These varied experiences resonated with sellers old and new, resulting in 86% of ExtraHop’s sales force becoming active learners. 

Now, Highspot’s robust analytics have given ExtraHop the ability to track these leading indicators. “It’s always tough to have a one-for-one attribution for enablement’s efforts and what impacts that,” acknowledged Wurth. “Find your leading metrics. Things like Digital Rooms are fantastic for showing this.” With the ability to track seller behavior from training completion all the way to buyer engagement, ExtraHop has the insight it needs to establish readiness and gradually develop effectiveness. Already, it’s seeing the impact on seller performance — as sellers lean on Highspot to evolve their skills, ExtraHop’s average quota attainment has increased by 10%.

Ready, Effective Sellers Improve Win Rate

Becoming an effective seller takes time, but it also takes practice. With onboarding programs building initial readiness, new sellers reach buyers sooner and continue their learning on the job. As a result, ExtraHop has seen the time to initial productivity decrease. “The overall onboarding program may be 9 to 12 months, but the readiness piece comes at 3 months — they’re ready to get out there.” And once sellers are productive, they’re more productive than ever. Across the board, sellers have saved 4 hours per week since the implementation of the platform. Now, its highly adopted programs evolve sellers from brand-new to ready-to-sell and, eventually, ready-to-sell effectively. Across its sales force, approval rates are high: While the high active learner rate speaks for itself, a recent survey only reiterated the value reps see in the platform. “We saw high scores from sellers about the e-learning in Highspot,” praised Wurth. 

A unified platform offered the end-to-end support ExtraHop needed. With Highspot, its sellers engage with training and take action against key leading metrics. As a result, ExtraHop has seen the impact on essential lagging indicators, with its win rate rising by 10%. Adoption and engagement secured, ExtraHop’s training programs now act as a strategic lever for driving high-priority business outcomes — an impact that will only grow as its sellers develop further with time.