How Checkmarx Reduced Wasted Time by 1/3

Checkmarx provides comprehensive solutions for automated security code review, pioneering the concept of a query-language-based solution for identifying technical and logical code vulnerabilities. A high-growth company, Checkmarx added more than 100 new reps to its sales ranks in fewer than two years — the biggest boom in hiring it’s had yet. To keep pace with rapid growth and change in the market, Checkmarx needed a robust enablement solution to centralise essential information and resources. With Highspot, the company gained a strategic partner to help it scale effectively.

Rapid Growth Disrupts Sales Process Harmony

During a period of rapid growth, Checkmarx found it difficult to ensure that sales reps received consistent onboarding and training. Continual evolution of the Checkmarx solutions to keep up with changing technology led to constant creation of new sales collateral, which began to overwhelm the marketing, sales, and sales enablement teams. Coordinating and applying a consistent sales enablement process across such a large and widespread sales force was a challenge. Sales reps were spending too much time attempting to find the sales, marketing, and training content when they should have been more focused on selling. Reps received most content through company-wide emails and Salesforce.com, forcing them to save collateral to their desktop or cloud storage accounts.

Often, reps created their own version of content to personalise it for buyers because it would take too much time to search endless files, folders, and emails for the right resource. This led to off-brand content, and without analytics, neither sales nor marketing knew how the content performed with reps or buyers.

Providing Organisation and Analytics

When the Checkmarx team decided to purchase a sales enablement tool to provide a single source of truth, they had a few requirements. Ultimately, the platform would have to have a short learning curve, save their reps time when searching for and pitching content, and provide content analytics for the sales, marketing, and enablement teams. After asking other fast-growing peers in their industry for platform recommendations, Checkmarx received a demo of Highspot and subsequently added them to their shortlist. 

During the evaluation process, the sales enablement team at Checkmarx gave a demo of Highspot to a group of sales reps and received very positive feedback. Cohen remembers one rep mentioning, “This is so easy to use — I can’t wait until we implement it.” When all was said and done, Highspot was the chosen vendor thanks to features such as the user-friendly interface, smart recommendations, and the ability to schedule content availability, as well as the ease and speed with which reps were able to find and pitch content.

One unexpected benefit of Highspot was the ability to view content analytics. Sales reps and marketing could now see which content was resonating with customers and which wasn’t. Reps especially appreciated the ability to receive emails telling them when a buyer was viewing promotional content. Highspot solved Checkmarx’s initial problem by providing a smart, user-friendly, content repository for sales reps while also making the sales cycle much more efficient — sales reps were now spending a third less of their time searching for content.

One Platform to Drive Sales Efficiency

Since implementing Highspot, Checkmarx has been able to deploy 60+ content items that range from whitepapers, competitive guides, training documents, proof-of-concept instructions, and customer-facing PowerPoint decks into one location for sellers and one location for partners that is easy for reps and partners to locate. “Everything the reps and partners need is right there in Highspot, which saves them tons of time and effort,” shared Cohen.

The company’s enablement and marketing teams have also found great value in Highspot’s analytics, which provides insight into what content sales reps are sending to customers, as well as what content prospects engage with most frequently. This will allow both teams to ensure that the right content is available to their users. For example, Checkmarx recently launched a new product and saw a considerably greater level of coordination with the help of Highspot. Sales reps were able to pitch the new product with a range of promotional items that could be accessed easily and analysed for effectiveness. As a result of these efforts, Checkmarx has seen strong adoption, including 76% recurring usage of Highspot and a 63% increase in rep engagement in enablement programmes.