19 Sales Enablement metrics & KPIs to measure performance

The Dock Team
Published
July 15, 2024
Updated
September 30, 2024
TABLE OF CONTENTs
TABLE OF CONTENT

How should you measure the performance of your sales enablement program?

Measuring a sales team, sales leader, or sales rep is relatively easy — the numbers don’t lie.

But enablement is a different story.

Yes, Sales Enablement’s job is to impact sales, but compared to a sales manager, for example, Enablement has less of a directly attributable impact on moving the needle.

They can’t hire and fire, build their own pipeline, or close deals one-on-one, but they can train reps, get the right content in front of customers, and accelerate how quickly prospects move through the sales cycle.

So how should your sales enablement program be measured?

Here are 19 metrics to put on your consideration list.

How to think about measuring sales enablement

Disclaimer: We’re going to suggest 19 ways to track sales enablement success—but we don’t suggest you track all 19 of them.

Resist the temptation to over-measure. Metrics should always connect back to your biggest business priorities.

Rather than track every available data point, focus on a handful of key goals and problem areas for your sales team and start there.

What you measure should be part proactive and part reactive

  • On the proactive side, where do you want sales to be in 6 months? What sales enablement behavior do you need to encourage to get there? Measure that.
  • On the reactive side, where are your biggest sales fires right now? What can you do on a short timescale to move the needle as quickly as possible? Measure that too.

For example:

  • If your top priority is ramping up new hires quickly, measure time to productivity and rep competency after the onboarding process.
  • If inconsistent messaging is an issue, look at content usage rates and absorption across reps. 
  • If you need to validate enablement spending, quantify return on investment (ROI), ramp time, and pipeline velocity.

But remember: If a metric doesn’t inform how you’ll focus your actions and make decisions going forward, it’s not worth tracking.

Sales enablement metric categories

There are three general categories of metrics for measuring sales enablement:

  1. Sales metrics tie broader enablement efforts to overall sales team results, including deal cycle times, win rates, quota attainment, and revenue influenced by marketing events and campaigns
  2. Rep-level performance metrics: content usage rates by rep, product knowledge, and ramp times for new hires.
  3. Content metrics show how individual sales enablement assets and activities perform, such as views, downloads, and completion rates for sales collateral, sales training, and coaching.

Sales and revenue metrics

Sales and revenue metrics are the ultimate measures of success for any sales organization and, therefore, any Enablement team.

These sales enablement analytics provide a direct link between the resources, training, and support you provide to your sales team and the tangible results they achieve in driving business growth and profitability. 

1. Sales cycle length

Sales cycle length measures the average time it takes for a rep to guide a buyer from initial contact to closed-won. 

Here's a basic formula for calculating sales cycle length:

Sales Cycle Length = Total Number of Days from First Touch to Close / Number of Closed-Won Deals

According to HubSpot, the average length of a sales cycle is 84 days (averaged across all contract sizes). For enterprise or high-ticket sales, the length of course increases beyond 3 months.

Reps who build trust, demonstrate value, and create urgency consistently outpace their peers and achieve shorter sales cycles

Focus on creating a repeatable, buyer-friendly sales velocity engine. The faster reps guide buyers to a confident decision, the more revenue everyone will win.

One way to create more urgency for the buyer is to use mutual action plans. 

Dock’s mutual action plans give buyers clear next steps so they can see the path to close. This shared accountability keeps deals on track and prevents drift, significantly shortening the sales cycle.

Dock’s mutual action plans give buyers clear next steps so they can see the path to close.

💡 Tip: Anchoring the task due dates to the buyer’s ideal close date creates genuine urgency on the buyer’s side.

2. Average contract value

Average Contract Value (ACV) measures the average deal size closed by your sales team. 

To calculate ACV:

ACV = Total Revenue / Number of Deals

ACV reflects reps' ability to communicate and quantify your solution's full value, sell additional seats, and pitch horizontal products.

Enablement boosts ACV by:

  • Arming reps with ROI calculators and case studies that showcase tangible value
  • Training reps on value-based selling and objection-handling techniques
  • Creating upsell and cross-sell playbooks to expand deal size

The higher your ACV, the more revenue you'll generate from each hard-won customer. Make it a key focus for enablement to empower reps to consistently close larger, more profitable deals. 

3. Customer lifetime value (CLTV)

Customer lifetime value (CLTV) measures the total revenue a business expects to generate from a single customer over the course of their relationship.

It answers the critical question: How much is each customer worth to our company in the long run?

Here’s the formula: 

CLTV = Average Value of a Sale × Number of Renewals × Average Retention Time

Reps who consistently cultivate high-value, long-term customer relationships are true revenue engines.

CLTV reflects long-term customer fit, how successful your onboarding program is, and a strong renewal motion.

Increase CLTV with enablement by:

  • Developing customer journey maps and playbooks that guide reps in delivering the right message, content, and experience at each touchpoint
  • Having a strong Sales-to-CS handoff with an airtight onboarding and implementation process
  • Creating always-on customer education and engagement hubs, like Dock client portals, that make it easy for users to find ongoing value and support
  • Equipping reps with data and insights to personalize outreach and proactively address customer needs and risk factors
  • Aligning sales, marketing, and service teams around a unified view of the customer

Orienting your enablement efforts around these CLTV levers creates a cycle of rep empowerment and customer value creation. 

Reps who consistently use enablement to deliver superior customer experiences drive higher CLTV, which in turn shows the bottom-line impact of enablement and justifies further investment.

4. Customer acquisition cost (CAC)

Customer acquisition cost (CAC) measures the total investment required to win a new customer. 

Here's the standard formula for calculating CAC:

CAC = Total Sales and Marketing Expenses / Number of New Customers Acquired

The average CAC for B2B SaaS is $239. The lower your CAC, the more sustainably you grow your customer base and revenue.

CAC is also a key lens for evaluating sales enablement ROI. Every resource, tool, and program that enablement deploys should ultimately be in service of helping reps win more customers faster and at a lower cost. 

If enablement investments are truly making a difference, you should see a corresponding reduction in CAC.

Sales rep performance metrics

Sales enablement is ultimately about helping people sell. These metrics let you gauge how well your enablement efforts translate into rep productivity, efficiency, and success. 

5. Ramp time

Ramp time measures how long it takes for a newly hired sales rep to reach full sales productivity. Here’s how you calculate it:

Ramp Time = Date Rep Reaches Full Productivity - Hire Date

The faster reps get up to speed, the sooner they start contributing to revenue growth. Long ramp times mean slower returns on sales hiring investments.

In a recent conversation on our Grow & Tell podcast, Ben Braverman—Chief Business Officer of Hadrian and former CRO of Flexport—shared advice for ramping up new sellers.

Ben paired new sellers with experienced "rampers" who would intensely coach and mentor them, even going on sales calls with them. Top performers who successfully ramped up new sellers received equity incentives if the new hires hit their quotas.

"The way you ramp a seller is you take them on the road with someone who knows the dance,” said Ben. “And they get to watch it first, and before you know it, they’re dancing down the road."

This approach allows the experienced seller to pass on their knowledge, best practices, and winning strategies directly to the new hire. The new seller can absorb the company's sales culture and techniques much faster by shadowing and learning from a top performer.

6. Sales readiness

Sales readiness is a subjective measure of how ready a rep is to sell in the field. While it’s not a quantitative metric, you can assess it through:

  • Training completion rates
  • Product knowledge tests
  • Certification achievements
  • Sales manager assessment of rep readiness

Sales readiness reflects how well your sales enablement program prepares reps to succeed in their buyer interactions.

Continuously measure these readiness indicators to identify knowledge gaps, refine training approaches, and improve content assets.

An easy way to increase sales readiness is to templatize your sales process with Dock’s sales room templates.

By giving your team one sales room template that can be copied for each customer, there isn’t as much burden on enablement teams to teach new sellers every aspect of every product and every step in the sales process—you can simply put content right in the hands of buyers.

For example, Nectar’s Director of Sales, Andrew Hollis, faced a training challenge as he scaled his sales team beyond 10 members — he couldn’t give every new rep the same attention he used to.

“When the growth is linear, it's simple, right? I add a new person,” said Andrew. “They're sitting right next to me. They ask me questions. I answer. We didn't have a knowledge base.”

But that strategy doesn’t hold up now that they’re hiring many reps at a time.

“ Now that we’re adding new users, Dock is elevating the quality and shortening the time for our new reps to give A-tier follow-up.”

“Part of scaling is that now we have this database of Dock templates—and ten reps creating them and innovating within Dock. Our reps can whip up these freaking awesome follow-ups in like three minutes. It's crazy. It saves them a lot of time.”

“And so the first follow-up that a new rep gives is of the same tier as someone that's been here for two years using Dock every single day because they're copying that template.”

7. Win rate

Win rate measures the percentage of sales opportunities a rep successfully converts into closed-won business — it’s a measure of a team’s sales effectiveness.

Here's how to calculate it:

Win Rate = Closed-Won Deals / Closed Deals x 100%

Better training and enablement resources increase their capacity to convert opportunities into closed-won business.

On our Grow and Tell podcast, Peter Kazanjy, author of Founding Sales and co-founder of Atrium, suggests using win rate as an indicator of a team’s readiness to bring on more reps.

If you consistently close 20-25% of your deals and see that win rate staying consistent, you can have confidence that your sales process works. Another rep can replicate the success following the same proven process.

Ultimately, sales enablement and win rates are two sides of the same coin. Enablement provides the foundation for reps to succeed, while win rates are the scorecards for enablement’s impact. 

8. First meeting conversion rate

First meeting conversion rate is the percentage of initial meetings leading to opportunities. You calculate it like this:

First Meeting Conversion Rate = Number of Prospects Agreed to a Second Meeting / Total Number of First Meetings x 100%

The ultimate goal is to make every first meeting count. The faster reps spark buyer interest and advance opportunities from the start, the healthier your pipeline.

Dock's sales rooms ensure your first meeting leaves an impact. Create custom microsites for each buyer that showcase relevant content like case studies, ROI calculators, and product overviews. 

After the meeting, the buyer can revisit the workspace to review materials and share them with colleagues. This maintains the buyer’s interest and positions your reps as trusted advisors.

9. Quota attainment

Quota attainment measures the percentage of sales target a rep achieves in a given period. 

Quota Attainment = Actual Sales / Rep's Quota x 100%

According to Gartner, the average time to full quota attainment is 42 weeks. The mark of a great enablement team is being able to help reps reach quota attainment and fully ramp before that 42-week mark.

Easy access to sales enablement content and templatized sales materials is a great way to increase quota attainment.

Dock’s content management system improves quota attainment by letting teams track client content in one place.

Instant access to current, relevant content helps reps advance deals more quickly. They can always find the right asset for each unique buyer without wasting time searching through scattered repositories.

Help reps find the content they need in seconds

Create a culture of consistent quota achievement—equip reps with the right enablement support to exceed their targets. 

10. Upsell rate

Upsell rates measure the percentage of existing customers that a rep successfully convinces to purchase additional products or services. 

Upsell Rate = (Number of Upsells / Total Number of Customers Handled by Rep) x 100%

Upselling is often the most profitable growth lever. 

Existing customers already know and trust your brand, making them more receptive to additional offerings. Reps who excel at upselling boost revenue without the cost of new customer acquisition.

Increase upsell rates by sharing enablement content like:

  • Case studies highlighting similar customers who have seen ROI from greater adoption
  • An interactive calculator demonstrating the potential impact on the customer's business metrics
  • A product roadmap showing upcoming features that align with the customer's goals

Track upsell rates as a key metric for rep and program performance, and identify the reps and tactics driving the most account growth. Use this insight to shape your enablement initiatives to ensure all reps are equipped to maximize customer lifetime value.

Sales content metrics

Sales content metrics collectively paint a picture of how reps and buyers interact with your enablement content. 

Analyzing these metrics at both the library and asset level spotlights top-performing content and uncovers gaps or weaknesses. 

Sales enablement tools like Dock provide clear visibility into these sales enablement metrics to empower sales enablement teams to track, measure, and improve content assets' performance.

Here’s what these metrics mean:

Content utilization metrics

Content utilization can be thought of from two angles: 

  • How much is content getting used by reps (i.e., looking at an asset’s utilization)?
  • How much is a rep making use of content (i.e., looking at a rep’s usage of a key asset)?

11. Shares (of an asset)

Shares refer to the number of times a rep shared a sales enablement asset with a prospect. This key metric shows:

  • The relevance of your enablement content in the typical deal cycle
  • The usefulness of content in the eyes of your reps
  • Where reps may need more encouragement/coaching to use assets

Measuring shares uncovers your most high-impact sales assets based on natural bottom-up adoption. 

Focus on creating assets that address the most common questions, objections, and pain points that reps encounter during the sales process. 

Encourage reps to provide feedback and involve them in content creation to ensure assets are highly relevant, easy to use, and aligned with real-world selling scenarios.

Dock’s content analytics can show you how much an individual asset is utilized by your team:

You can track views, shares, downloads, and all recent activity from reps and clients.

12. Utilization rate 

Utilization rate is the percentage of your enablement content that has been used at least once. It measures how much your sales team actually uses the content you create to help them sell. 

Utilization Rate = % of content assets that have been shared at least once

A high utilization rate is a good sign. It means your sales reps find your content helpful and relevant to their conversations with potential customers. If utilization is low, it could mean your reps are having trouble finding the right content or using it.

Encourage utilization by integrating your sales enablement platform with your CRM system to provide reps access to content within their daily workflow. Also, update and refresh your content library to ensure assets remain accurate, current, and aligned with the latest product updates, market trends, and competitor information.

Dock’s Content Influence Report includes utilization rate—among other metrics. You can track which assets are viewed most often, which are never touched, and what percentage of your total content is used.

Buyer engagement metrics

Buyer engagement metrics provide a deep dive into whether your content assets resonate with your buying group. Dock provides visibility into this at the asset and library level:

13. Views (of an asset)

Views measure how frequently buyers access and consume your sales enablement content throughout their purchasing journey. It’s the sum of the total number of times potential customers viewed an individual asset.

Three factors influence view counts:

  • Relevance and quality—assets that align closely with buyer questions and information needs at each stage of the sales funnel
  • Accessibility—content that’s easy for buyers to find and digest
  • Usability—design that’s engaging and easy to consume on any device 

At the individual asset level, views highlight which content pieces resonate with target personas in specific deal scenarios. Use this data to pivot your sales enablement strategy.

For example, an outdated feature overview video with minimal views should probably be retired.

Ultimately, strong view sales enablement KPIs indicate you're delivering the right information to buyers at the right time, boosting credibility while smoothly ushering them through the buying process. 

14. Engagement rate 

Engagement rate measures how well your sales enablement content captures buyer interest when shared by reps. 

Engagement rate = Number of views an asset receives /  the number of times it was shared.

Unlike raw view or share counts, engagement rate gives you a more holistic picture of content performance by comparing viewing and sharing activities. 

A high rate means an asset compels buyers to engage whenever reps present it, while a low rate indicates the content isn't hooking buyers' interest.

Tips to improve engagement rate:

  • Use interactive content formats like videos, assessments, and calculators
  • Use social proof and customer-generated content, such as case studies, testimonials, and success stories
  • Collaborate with subject matter experts, thought leaders, and industry influencers

15. Engagement quantity

Engagement quantity measures the total interaction your sales enablement content receives from potential buyers.

It sums up all the different ways buyers engage with your assets like:

  • Views
  • Clicks
  • Downloads
  • Shares

Ultimately, engagement quantity gives you a high-level view of how much buyer interaction your overall sales content drives. Is that number going up over time? You're on the right track. Plateauing or dipping? It's time to reevaluate your content strategy.

16. Individual buyer engagement

Individual buyer engagement measures the content interaction activity of each stakeholder involved in a purchasing decision.

Knowing which stakeholders engage the most with your content gives powerful signals about overall account interest, individual buyer intent, and where a deal stands.

Say you're working on an enterprise opportunity involving multiple stakeholders. By tracking individual engagement, you gain visibility into pivotal questions like:

  • Are all the key decision-makers actively consuming content and moving toward purchase?
  • Is the economic buyer reviewing materials about pricing and ROI? Have they shared that content with colleagues, indicating deal progression?
  • Did a new contact just view several assets, signaling a new stakeholder has entered the buying process?

Dock’s People Analytics spotlights how often each stakeholder views and acts on every content asset. 

Ultimately, this individual engagement data enables revenue teams to forecast more accurately, tailor content to specific buyer needs, coach reps on deal multithreading, and proactively advance opportunities. It takes the guesswork out of stakeholder interest and influence.

Revenue influence (for assets)

Understanding the revenue influence of individual sales enablement assets is a powerful way to identify which content pieces impact your bottom line the most. 

Dock helps you track your assets' performance and understand their specific role in driving revenue growth. With this information, you can retire underperforming pieces and create new content that emulates the characteristics of your best assets.

17. Pipeline touched

Pipeline touched measures the percentage of total open opportunity value where potential buyers viewed a specific sales enablement asset.

Why is this metric so useful? Simple: it shows the real-world impact of sales content. 

A high pipeline-touched percentage shows an asset is resonating with buyers and influencing a significant portion of potential deals. A low percentage suggests the content is not useful in driving revenue.

Improve it by:

  • Tracking how buyers engage with your assets across different stages of the sales cycle and identifying the content types, topics, and formats most effective at each phase
  • Developing a comprehensive content taxonomy and tagging system that allows reps to easily search for relevant assets based on opportunity characteristics, like industry, company size, and buying stage
  • Encouraging cross-functional collaboration between sales, marketing, product, and customer success teams to create holistic, customer-centric content 

18. Revenue influenced

How much revenue can you directly tie to a specific piece of content? 

That’s exactly what revenue influenced answers. It measures the percentage of total closed-won deal value directly tied to views of a specific sales enablement asset.

There's no ambiguity—an asset either contributed to closed business or it didn't.

Dock's revenue influence analytics make it simple to see these percentages at a glance. 

Over time, aim to drive up this metric across your sales content library. The more revenue tied to your assets, the more indispensable your sales enablement program becomes. 

19. Active & closed deals

Active and closed deals is a quantitative metric that shows how many opportunities a sales enablement asset appeared in. 

It answers two key questions: How many in-progress deals is this content influencing right now? And in how many successful closed-won deals did this asset play a role?

This dual metric provides a powerful leading and lagging indicator. Active deals gives a forward-looking view of asset impact on upcoming pipeline—while closed deals shows rearview confirmation of which content contributed to past wins.

Unlike revenue metrics that skew toward huge deals, active and closed deals is a pure volume play. It maximizes the number of opportunities each asset touches.

By consistently tracking active and closed deals, you build an enablement engine that touches more opportunities and repeats successful outcomes. Optimize for assets that show up frequently across all deal stages, from first touch to final signature.

The end goal? Ensure your entire sales content library actively moves deals forward and contributes to more closed business. That's enablement that drives quantifiable impact.

Maximize your sales enablement ROI with Dock

You spend a lot of time creating sales enablement assets—make sure that effort translates into tangible results and revenue impact. 

Dock's centralized enablement library removes barriers to access and drives up usage. Plus, find out exactly which assets deliver measurable value and copy-paste that approach to create more assets. 

Dock is free to try. You can sign up for 5 free customer workspaces here.

The Dock Team