How Center for Creative Leadership Improved ROI by 4x

The Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) is a global non-profit focused on leadership development—with a presence in 120 countries and 30,000 people a year benefiting from its training courses, the organisation is well-equipped to make an impact. “We can train anyone from a second grader to a five-star general on how to lead themselves and other people,” says Marie Leonard, knowledge manager, sales enablement and training at CCL. “We are one of the few organisations that is solely focused on research based leadership development.” However, as CCL noticed reps struggling to find the right content, the team began a search for a sales enablement platform that would connect sales reps with the most impactful content, faster.

Bringing Teams Together With Enablement

CCL faced a challenge when it came to helping sales reps be their most effective selves. “The number one challenge reps faced was searching for collateral across an array of platforms,” remembers Sonja Huck, director of sales enablement at CCL. In fact, CCL sales reps used to spend up to six hours every week searching for content among 10 different content repositories. Even if reps managed to find what they were looking for, version control issues made it hard to tell what content was the most up to date. “It was a double problem,” says Leonard. “There were all these hidey holes of information, and when you got there, they weren’t sure if they’d found the latest version.”

Issues with version control also contributed to an overwhelming amount of email communications. “We used to send countless emails around with the latest documents,” says Huck. If something needed to be changed, it necessitated another email containing the revised document, quickly creating too much back and forth. “With Highspot, we can make changes to content behind the scenes,” says Huck. “It’s less disruptive and helps build confidence in our materials.

Winning the Loyalty of Sales Reps

CCL reps’ pain points persisted until the organisation launched Highspot at their Sales Kick Off and introduced a single source of truth where reps could find up-to-date content, faster. “Highspot has saved me countless hours of time… I can simply look in one place and get everything my clients need. Quickly, professionally, and packaged beautifully,” says Taylor Logan, Business Partner, Societal Advancement Group at the Center for Creative Leadership.

When searching for a sales enablement platform, Huck and Leonard evaluated several options. “Ultimately, Highspot rose above the competitors because of the intuitive nature of the tool,” says Huck. “We also gravitated towards Highspot for its ability to integrate with Dynamics 365, the competitive price, and speed to deploy.”

After selecting Highspot, CCL then focused on getting sales reps excited about the new tool. “I was worried about adoption, but Highspot is so intuitive that it was quickly embraced,” says Leonard. “If Highspot was taken away, there would be a rebellion.” Today, 4,300 items are stored in Highspot and the tool has become indispensable to CCL reps.

Tailoring Communications to Improve Sales Effectiveness

Adoption of Highspot quickly took off at CCL. Leonard was pleasantly surprised by Highspot’s success among tenured sales reps. One tenured rep was impressedwith the analytics Highspot provided, a capability that CCL lacked prior to Highspot. “They could suddenly see how clients engaged with content and when they opened an email,” remembers Huck. “Having those metrics and open rates was huge. ” says Leonard. Today, CCL employees continue to explore Highspot capabilities, for instance creating vertical and product based micro sites.

The move to Highspot came with some unexpected benefits for CCL, including a sense among new hires that the company was committed to providing leading edge tools. And, when COVID-19 transformed how organisations around the world worked, Highspot became the go-to platform where CCL communicated with employees. “We created a COVID spot where we shared the most current information,” says Huck. “I don’t know how we would have managed without it.”

Now that Highspot is entrenched at CCL, Huck and her colleagues in sales enablement are playing a more prominent role in the business. “Because we had such strong ROI and a great experience with Highspot, it’s opened doors for the business to invest more in sales enablement,” says Huck. “Highspot helped put sales enablement on the map at CCL. Today, it’s not unusual for Highspot to be a topic of conversation in executive meetings. For the work of sales enablement to reach that level is really gratifying,” says Huck. “By introducing Highspot, we have elevated knowledge management too, proving that knowledge management is not just a dream,” says Leonard.