Lost Without a Compass: Navigating the Path to Peak Sales Performance at GoTo

Maps are an important navigation tool. But for sales enablement professionals, a map isn’t always enough.

Sales enablement professionals need a map and a compass to navigate the road toward peak sales performance. “We’ve got to be agile enough to redirect ourselves but not lose sight of that north star,” said Teri Long, VP of Revenue Enablement at Mindtickle.

GoTo is an organization that understands the transformative power of leveraging both the map and the compass. Recently, the team at GoTo developed their Sales Compass, an integrated ecosystem powered by Mindtickle that supports sellers throughout the purchase journey and empowers them to reach peak performance.

“GoTo needed to be really clear about where they wanted to go and how they could back into that,” explained Long.

At the Sales Enablement Summit in Boston, Long joined Tara Medeiros, Sr. Director of Sales Enablement at GoTo, to explore how GoTo has used its Sales Compass to transform rep behavior and drive better business outcomes.

Optimizing the tech stack

The GoTo team recognized challenges with efficiency and seller productivity. Upon further investigation, it became clear that the root cause of some of these challenges was related to the company’s tech stack.

“We’ve had a lot of growth through M&A activity over the last nine years,” explained Medeiros. “Our sellers are no strangers to change and pivoting. When things aren’t working well, the enablement team is the first to hear about it.”

One recurring piece of feedback was that there were too many internal tools and systems. “It was absolutely overwhelming,” said Medieros.

The enablement team knew they couldn’t control all the company’s systems and tools. Instead, they focused on what they could change and how they could make a significant impact.

Sellers are first introduced to the Sales Compass during the interview process. During the presentation round of the interview process, candidates are given a digital sales room (DSR), a page devoted specifically to them. On the DSR, they can find details on expectations and how they’ll be assessed. “We want them to know that if they choose to be a seller at GoTo, we’re going to invest in them,” said Medeiros.

For the team at GoTo, champion building has been a key part of building and launching the Sales Compass.

“You can’t move any needle forward unless you have your champions,” said Medeiros. “Sales leadership was obviously #1. We pulled them into the process extremely early so they felt as if they were building it with us – which they were.”

The enablement team also worked to gain buy-in from product marketing. “With our LMS and our CMS, product marketing didn’t have much insight into the content they were creating,” said Medeiros. The Sales Compass was going to solve that pain for them, but it also came from our budget, so they were totally on board. We pulled them in really early and made sure that they were with us the whole way through.”

Guiding and influencing leadership

All too often, sales enablement teams simply do the bidding of others. But increasingly, teams are moving away from enablement as a service – and working to get a real seat at the table.

To earn a seat at the table, the team at GoTo knew they must be able to prove impact. In the past, this wasn’t always easy.

Today, the team at GoTo holds monthly performance review calls, where leaders from different areas come together to address performance issues and make improvement plans. Thanks to the Sales Compass, the enablement team always has the data they need at their fingertips.

“We know we must be seen as a must-have organization and not as nice to have organization. The only way you can really do that is if you’re showing up with data and you’re making actual correlations,” said Medeiros. “Beforehand, data was in disparate systems. I had attendance records over here and certification completions over there, and there was no way to really tie it in a meaningful way. Now, we finally have that seat at the table.”

Integrating with impact

Every enablement team aims to have an impact. But the team at GoTo knows that impact must go beyond a check box exercise. Now, GoTo has the data needed to prove impact and adjust as necessary. “We have data at every turn,” said Medeiros.

One of the biggest impacts of adopting their new Sales Compass is that sellers can more easily find what they need.

Today, everything is centralized, and reps can find information within the workflow. “There’s less clicks for the reps, and more direct access to the content they need – quickly,” said Medeiros.

“The CRM integration is huge,” she continued. “They live in the CRM. Let’s meet them where they’re at.

Prior to rolling out its new ecosystem, GoTo also introduced a new sales methodology, which required sellers to undergo significant behavior change. GoTo has embedded its sales process into its Sales Compass, which allows the company to quickly identify what’s working well and where there are gaps or inefficiencies.

We know they went through the training, they’ve completed the certification,” said Medeiros. “We have that data, that’s easy. But are they implementing it? Are they following the process as it’s been outlined for them? This tool has given us the ability to easily check in and be that proactive support role, instead of reactive.”

Improving sales results with digital sales rooms

Digital sales rooms are one Mindtickle feature that GoTo’s sellers have embraced with open arms.

“This was easily the best feature to get our sellers on board. This excited them, this engaged them,” explained Medeiros. “It was the DSR that got our sellers to understand the real impact that this new platform could have for them because it changed the way they communicated with their customers.”

Digital sales rooms drive big impact

“We had three deals that were really on the line, totaling just under two million ACV,” explained Medeiros. “All three of those deals cited the DSRs as being a competitive advantage because it presented so well and so buttoned up and allowed communication flow to be that much easier.”

DSRs also track activity and provide data on how buyers engage with content, how sellers execute mutual action plans, and how they follow up with customers. In addition, new contacts can be created in Salesforce anytime a champion forwards a DSR to someone else. “That’s work that the reps aren’t having to do,” said Medeiros. “That sphere of influence is growing without reps having to do anything.”

What’s next for GoTo?

Already, GoTo has seen a big transformation by implementing their Sales Compass – not to mention significant results in terms of sales productivity and performance. But they’re not stopping there.

Recently, GoTo merged its sales and marketing teams under one revenue organization. “Next up on our plate is really thinking about our first-ever revenue kickoff, instead of just a sales kickoff,” said Medeiros. “We’re really eager to see what the platform can do with an event like that.”

The team also plans to start experimenting with AI role-plays, which is a Mindtickle feature that enable sellers to practice their skills in dynamic scenarios with a realistic, AI-powered bot. “We’ve already got ideas spinning around like ‘can you beat the C-suite?’”

In addition, the GoTo team plans to dig into Ideal Rep Profiles (IRPs). IRPs in Mindtickle enable teams to define the behaviors and competencies of their top performers. “We want to pull all that data in and try to replicate and pull as much of that into our programming as possible,” concluded Medeiros.

Tara Medeiros recorded this session while she was in her role as senior director of sales enablement and has since moved on from GoTo