How NRG Energy Increased Platform Adoption by 19%

Prioritizing Value Throughout the Buyer Journey

The buying journey doesn’t end at closed-won — it’s a philosophy the enablement team at NRG Energy infuses into everything they do. When pre- and post-sales teams work together to build lasting customer relationships, high retention rates and new expansion opportunities follow. While post-sales teams play a pivotal role in this equation, they don’t always receive the enablement support they need to succeed. “The role of post-sales is increasingly undergoing a transformation in the way we think about customer expectations,” began Lamar Lee III, business enablement at NRG Energy. “The enablement team has a major role in that transformation.”

Recognizing their role in helping reps across the go-to-market organization rise to the occasion, the enablement team knew they would need to broaden their efforts to include post-sales teams. More than that, they would need to reframe each team’s understanding of their role in the go-to-market motion. “A lot of times, pre- and post-sales teams have competing goals,” explained Lee. From these conflicting priorities, the team sought to forge a shared mission, one that united pre- and post-sales teams in an effort to drive customer value and satisfaction at every turn. If they could, new alignment — and its accompanying business impact — would follow. 

Enablement needed to redirect reps’ focus from day-to-day tasks to the broader strategic vision those activities supported. While this mindset shift wouldn’t change reps’ remit, it would reimagine how they approached it. “Our goal is to build a relationship that encourages customers to return,” continued Lee. “To do that, you have to understand their needs and expectations. You have to be personalized in your approach.” As the team sought to renew its focus on the buyer experience from first-sale to expansion, they realized that an enablement platform would ease the process. To ensure reps provided the high-quality experiences that lead to higher lifelong revenue, NRG Energy chose Highspot.

Honing Performance Across Go-To-Market Teams

Highspot became a key lever for establishing customer-centricity as a pillar of NRG Energy’s go-to-market approach. The enablement team started by building a well-governed environment from which reps could surface and share essential assets. Their efforts resulted in a 90% content findability rate, which meant reps could quickly find content and just as swiftly put it to use in the field. “We were able to utilize Highspot to house all of our content,” shared Lee. “We gave all of our teams a central location for the information they needed to feel confident in the conversations they were having.” 

With a single source of truth established, the team looked to Highspot’s training capabilities. They began to develop learning programs that would prepare pre- and post-sales reps to rigorously pursue their departmental — and organizational — goals. “We utilize training and coaching features in Highspot as well,” shared Lee. Using these features, for instance, the team designed a program to support post-sales teams as they pursued cross-sell and upsell opportunities. Regardless of the audience, every learning experience included an overarching thread: Value and customer satisfaction are the most important features of every conversation. 

To strategically supply value, the team placed new importance on engagement data. They trained pre- and post-sales teams to leverage the data attached to every external share in Highspot. From that data, reps can dive into viewing trends and take action based on engagement patterns. “We determine a customer’s expectation through analytics,” noted Lee. “Being able to bring in insights for cross-sell opportunities and upsell opportunities allows us to drive value and seamless customer support.” With data at their fingertips, reps working at every stage of the buyer journey — from first-sale discussions to cross-sell conversations — can more effectively pursue buyers and supply experiences that meet them exactly where they are.

Building Customer Relationships That Drive Durable Growth

A unified platform equipped the enablement team to achieve a number of NRG Energy’s high-priority goals. Initially, the team created a highly utilized single source of truth, which is an achievement in itself. That effort improved platform adoption by 19% and enabled the team to more effectively drive behavior change. As they rolled out training programs to pre- and post-sales audiences, the team successfully reimagined how reps sell. They gave reps the right mindset, robust analytics, and easy-to-use engagement tools — everything they needed to more effectively pursue opportunities across the customer journey. 

With Highspot, the team at NRG Energy empowered pre- and post-sales teams to build loyalty, drive retention, and prime expansion. “We created more collaboration among the pre- and post-sales teams,” enthused Lee. “We centralized all this information in Highspot, and we all had a common goal: customer satisfaction.” This perspective shift changed the game: Now, every rep knows exactly how to provide the seamless experiences that evolve prospects into evangelists, ready to evolve as NRG Energy does. “It allowed the teams to be more collaborative in their efforts,” continued Lee. “They weren’t competing — they were working together. It created a good base going forward.”