In this edition: AE’s conduct Proof of Concepts, using Enablix Engagement Hubs to keep track of tasks and improve visibility.
A few weeks ago Enablix launched Engagement Hubs, which help align and manage stakeholders alongside content and training, in order to break down silos and get the most out of tools. While there are various uses for this tool, our AE’s have been loving Engagement Hubs to organize and conduct Proof of Concepts (POCs).
Let’s dive into the specifics of how our AEs have been using Engagement Hubs, and why they’ve been so helpful with POCs:
The Problem: Drawn Out POCs Put Deals at Risk
POCs are a great way for interested prospects to confirm that a tool can work for them and meets all their needs. They’re common in the sales process, particularly in larger enterprise-sized deals, or situations where your product or whatever you’re selling is highly technical.
But lately, we’ve noticed that more and more sales cycles have been acting like enterprise deals, with traditional mid-market deals taking six months to close, and involving a full POC. On top of this, running POCs can often be intricate and time consuming– putting more stress on your AEs as they conduct them more often.
Traditional spreadsheets or documents are fine for organizing a few tasks, but rarely can accommodate the complexity of a POC checklist. Communicating progress to all the stakeholders involved also becomes difficult when no one views the spreadsheet or document, slowing down progress, impacting deadlines and potentially even jeopardizing the entire deal.
With multiple stakeholders to communicate with and requirements to fill, there needs to be an easier way to track tasks and keep POCs moving forward.
Simplified POCs with Enablix Engagement Hubs
After the POC kick-off call, our AEs will throw all the objectives and tasks into an Engagement Hub, which shows the task, owner, due date, priority level at a glance, but each task can be expanded to show further detail and even attach content to help complete the task.
Having all this information in one place makes running POCs easier for a few reasons:
- Increased Visibility For All Stakeholders
Gone are the days of emailing over a google doc that no one looks at or updates. These Engagement Hubs are easy to understand and more likely to be engaged with, meaning all stakeholders are able to check in on POC progress at any time.
Our AEs also love including these into existing microsites. These microsites follow a customer all the way from prospecting, to onboarding so it’s a great place to add a POC plan in order to increase visibility.
- Spend Less Time Recapping Progress
When stakeholders are looking at the POC plan more frequently, they know what’s going on and which tasks still need to be completed– meaning that meeting time doesn’t need to be spent recapping progress and instead can be used to jump right into technical details.
- Better chance of sticking to deadlines
Imagine how much smoother a POC could run if everyone was on the same page and had the tools they needed to complete tasks… Now this is not to say that AEs won’t encounter any setbacks or roadblocks along the way, but with better communication and visibility the entire POC process has a better chance of staying on track, and eventually leading to a closed-won deal.
End to End Analytics
On top of all this— AE’s can also make use of the end to end analytics that the Enablix platform provides. Especially when these Engagement Hubs are used as part of a custom microsite, AE’s can get powerful insights into how the prospect is interacting with content. Whenever a prospect views or interacts with the microsite or Engagement Hub, the AE receives an email notification with important details like who viewed what, how long different pages were viewed for, and so much more (see below).
These analytics can provide helpful insights to your AE’s like, which team members are checking in on progress, what times of days the prospect is viewing content most often, or even how likely this POC is to be successful. All of which give your AE’s more opportunities to mitigate risk and ensure that the POC leads to a closed-won deal.
POCs that lead to closed deals
Overall our AEs have been loving using these MAPs for conducting POCs because they make it so much easier to keep track of everything, have better communication with the prospect, and run an effective POC.
Want to learn more about Engagement Hubs? Reach out!
