How Newsela Reduced Time to Revenue by 29%

Enablement Function Scales to Face Challenging Market

An acquisition loomed on the horizon; rapidly changing market conditions made selling more challenging than ever before. To equip reps for success, Newsela’s enablement function sought new ways to scale its impact. “I am an enablement team of one,” began Lizzy Goldstein, sales enablement manager at Newsela. “My passion is to scale so that I can do everything I can.” A lean enablement team can — and, as Newsela has proven, does — have an incredible impact. However, the absence of a comprehensive enablement solution made scaling the impact of Newsela’s enablement function challenging.

After purchasing another educational technology, Formative, Newsela knew it needed to align its newly acquired and existing sellers to its new, shared messaging — the value of its unified platform. By doing so, it could better position itself against shrinking budgets and evolving needs to traverse the changes ahead with confidence. Doing so, however, required a new strategy, one not beholden to the limitations of its previous solution. “We wanted to make sure that the entire go-to-market organization had the same baseline level of knowledge for our entire product suite,” explained Goldstein. “So, how do we educate our go-to-market team about this changing landscape? How do we continue to drive value and show our districts the value Newsela brings?” 

Along its journey to scale its enablement programs, Newsela switched to Highspot. Now, it had an opportunity to truly harness the power of a unified platform to address these questions and establish the sales readiness that would carry it through both an acquisition and an ever-shrinking market. 

Natively Built Platform Supports Organizational Evolution

As Newsela strategized how to align its disparate sales force, Highspot emerged as an integral part of the plan. Already, the platform was an essential piece of Newsela’s go-to-market motion. “We set the expectation with everybody that if it’s not in Highspot, it didn’t happen,” shared Goldstein. This Highspot-first ethos led to a 91% recurring usage rate, establishing a single source of truth that would prove essential in the days to come.

To establish foundational readiness across its entire seller base, Newsela leaned on Highspot’s training capabilities. “We used Highspot to educate and evaluate our sales reps,” continued Goldstein. “We built e-learning courses that allowed them to explore the new platforms.” Those learning experiences were promptly reinforced through coaching, with frontline managers responsible for reviewing completed training and submissions — easing the lift on Newsela’s enablement team while also informing manager-led coaching experiences. “We used our managers as reviewers to make sure they could hear reps’ pitches and get a sense for where each of their individual contributors were through this transition,” added Goldstein. The addition of Sales Plays only further equipped reps, with 95% Play adoption leading to greater consistency across sales teams. 

This renewed focus on readiness led Newsela to revisit its onboarding program; soon after adding foundational Learning Paths into the onboarding process, Newsela noticed significant improvements in rep effectiveness. “We reduced the time to revenue for sales reps to 36 days, which was a 15-day improvement over the previous year,” enthused Goldstein. “That’s been huge for our organization. The earlier somebody can generate revenue, the better.” In partnership with Highspot, Newsela accomplished each of the goals it had set forth: providing meaningful learning, creating an aligned sales force, and capitalizing on Newsela’s recent investment despite challenging conditions. 

Unified Sales Force Wins Faster Than Ever

A streamlined approach to sales readiness meant every seller had the foundational knowledge to land the value of Newsela’s unified solution with skeptical buyers. High platform adoption and consistent engagement with enablement activities, it seemed, had created a perfect storm. “The two things I focus on are actionability and accountability,” added Goldstein. “The word that comes to mind with Highspot is accountability.” With the support of a like-minded platform, Newsela can now supply the actionable learning it initially sought — and hold reps accountable to it. 

Nowhere has the impact been felt more than in Newsela’s onboarding program, with efforts to provide meaningful early learning leading to a 29% reduction in time to revenue. “The work we did to stabilize and standardize our onboarding has made a huge difference in our organization,” said Goldstein. With an aligned sales force delivering results faster than ever, Newsela is well positioned to thrive despite market challenges. As it looks to the future, scalability and efficiency remain top of mind. “We will be looking at AI and technology that can decrease our time sitting in front of a computer and increase our time face-to-face with a customer,” concluded Goldstein.