Highspot Boosts Win Rates with New Messaging and Just-in-Time Enablement

Discover how this sales enablement leader transformed their approach to create multi-threading success.

About Highspot

For SaaS tech companies, growth is the name of the game. But achieving that growth requires more than just a great product—it demands a revenue team that can effectively communicate value to prospects and customers. This was the challenge for Highspot, a leading sales enablement platform.

Key Takeaways

  • Overhauled their sales messaging to align to buyers' needs.
  • Implemented a just-in-time enablement approach.
  • Increased overall win rate by six percent.

The Challenge

Highspot was already growing at an impressive rate, but the company also recognized that their approach to sales enablement wasn’t meeting the dynamic needs of their sales force.

They needed a system that could respond quickly to market changes and provide relevant, timely support to their sales team. But to get there, they had to undertake a top-to-bottom overhaul of their training and enablement approach.

Previously, the enablement team at Highspot was juggling up to 12 large initiatives in a six-month timeframe, overwhelming both the enablement team and the sellers. 

This approach wasn’t just inefficient—it wasn’t driving real behavior change or the business outcomes the company wanted.

“We recognize that our sellers can’t absorb all of that,” says Annie Lizenbergs, Senior Director for Revenue Enablement and Global Programs at HighSpot. “We can’t drive behavior change across four or five or six different initiatives.”

The Turning Point

Highspot’s initial analysis of both buyer and seller feedback revealed that they were losing a noticeable number of deals—not to competitors, but to indecision.

Further investigation showed:

  • A clear correlation between win rates and the number of stakeholders engaged within an account, particularly when those stakeholders included executive-level buyers.
  • When deals involved multiple personas within an account, and at least one or more of those personas were executive-level or “above-the-line” buyers, win rates increased substantially.

These insights pointed to multi-threading and power threading (engaging executive-level buyers) as high-impact areas for improvement that could directly address the “closed, no decision” problem.

“At Highspot, we definitely start with the data,” says Lizenbergs. “The data allows us to understand what current performance looks like. What things are working that we want to optimize—that we want to accelerate? Where are we seeing blocks or bottlenecks or something’s just not working?”

The Implementation

The first step to address their needs was to develop a sales message that everyone in the organization could align on—from frontline reps to the executive team.

For that, Highspot engaged Corporate Visions for customer acquisition and executive conversation messaging and skills training.

“For the first time, because the CEO was in the room and the executive team was in the room and we had frontline reps in the room and they aligned to a message, we had something that all levels of the organization could share together and believe in,” says Kelly Lewis, VP of Revenue Enablement at Highspot.

“Having former CEOs, CFOs in the room talking with [reps] was so inspiring,” Lewis notes. “I’ve never seen people leave a training event so excited.”

Armed with the new messages and skills, it was time to enable the team.

This process included:

  1. Creating tailored playbooks for different roles, including account development and account managers, ensuring every rep has relevant, actionable guidance at their fingertips. “What good looks like” examples in these playbooks showcase best practices from top performers, while in-app nudges provided timely reminders and suggestions within the tools that reps use daily.
  2. Using technology to coach their sellers in the moment. Specifically, managers were equipped with coaching playbooks and tools to support their teams effectively. Highspot uses the TruVoice win-loss analysis platform to gather buyer insights on eight key sales competencies, allowing for targeted improvement based on unbiased feedback from prospects and customers. They also use AI-powered coaching tools to analyze call data and provide personalized coaching to their reps at scale.
  3. Measuring results across multiple dimensions, from enablement activities to business outcomes. Highspot implemented a measurement framework they called “enablement walk to value.” This approach tracks progress from initial enablement activities (like course completion rates) through to rep activities, effectiveness metrics, and ultimately business results like win rates and revenue impact, providing a clear line of sight from enablement efforts to bottom-line results.

The new approach allowed Highspot to become more agile and responsive in their enablement efforts. Rather than rolling out large, generalized training programs, they can now quickly develop and deploy targeted interventions that address immediate business needs.

It’s a true shift to “just-in-time” enablement, providing salespeople with the exact support they need, precisely when they need it.

I’ve never seen people leave a training event so excited!
Kelly Lewis
VP, Revenue Enablement

The Solution

To tackle these challenges, Highspot partnered with Corporate Visions to develop a “just-in-time” enablement strategy.

Instead of calendared events and one-size-fits-all training, just-in-time enablement focuses on delivering targeted and timely training and content to sellers in the flow of work, where and when they need it most.

The process started like most other strategic initiatives—by identifying the most urgent needs of the organization. Highspot then prioritized which sales behaviors must change to meet those strategic goals, based on buyer feedback, conversation data, and input from sellers.

“Our enablement prioritization and strategy process is really foundational to the way we work with our go-to-market teams,” says Lizenbergs. “What it allows for is…to ensure that we enable those items that are most important to the business and drive the business outcomes that are needed at that moment.”

With clear objectives in mind, Highspot then identified the most appropriate interventions. These included messaging workshops, targeted training, sales playbooks, coaching programs, and new tools—all designed to support the prioritized sales behaviors and initiatives.

Because sellers have varying levels of experience and skill, Highspot didn’t settle for one-size-fits-all training. The team carefully designed tiered learning paths and targeted interventions to help individual reps “level up” their skills.

Crucially, measurement was built into every step. Highspot tracked training completion rates as well as actual behavior changes and impact on sales outcomes. This careful attention to the data allows them to demonstrate clear ROI for their enablement efforts over time.

Highspot’s agile, responsive approach ensures that salespeople receive the exact support they need, precisely when they need it, driving meaningful behavior change and business results.

The Results

Highspot’s implementation of just-in-time enablement has yielded significant, measurable results. Specifically, Highspot:

  • Increased multi-threaded opportunities from 43 percent to 60 percent, indicating a substantial improvement in the sales team’s ability to engage multiple stakeholders within target accounts.
  • Increased overall win rate by six percent, directly impacting the bottom line and demonstrating the business value of their enablement initiative.
  • Increased multi-threading rate by 12 percent for reps who completed the enablement program vs. those who did not.
  • Increased individual win rates by five percent for reps who completed the enablement program vs. those who did not, further validating the impact of the enablement efforts on sales performance.

By embracing a new enablement approach and creating a structured process to implement it, Highspot is poised for even greater success in the years to come. They’ve shown that growth isn’t just about the product—it’s about empowering the people behind it.

Sales messaging can be a game-changer—and a career-maker too.
Karen Loiterstein
VP, Revenue and GTM Enablement, TierPoint

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