How Personio Improved Buyer Engagement by 28%

The team at Personio, Europe’s only homegrown HR tech company, knows the importance of sales enablement in the modern business environment. Since its foundation in 2015, the company’s all-in-one HR software has helped more than 10,000 teams across Europe automate administrative processes and spend more time focused on their strategic goals. As Personio’s business has grown, its product portfolio has expanded, resulting in new sets of buyers for its teams to understand. And as its customer success motion recently underwent a significant transformation, it became more important than ever to drive alignment and consistency across revenue teams. With their recent partnership with Highspot, the Personio team has streamlined access to enablement materials, making it easier for teams to engage buyers and empowering behavior change.

Control and Consistency Needed For Effective Change Management

In less than five years, Personio experienced significant change as a business: its sales team grew from seven employees to over 250, the product portfolio expanded, and its go-to-market motion transformed as the customer success team began carrying a quota. While Personio had many go-to-market resources available, information was siloed and different teams had different standards for governance. This made it challenging to determine when teams were leveraging the correct materials both internally and with potential buyers and customers. Without a centralized platform for enablement, the team also lacked data on what was resonating and how resources were being used.

To keep pace with change and empower scalability amid growth, the Personio team knew it needed an enablement solution to equip its sales and customer success teams with the resources they needed to be successful.

Increased Alignment Drives Behavior Change

To support the rapid growth of its business alongside transformation of its go-to-market motion, Personio implemented Highspot and quickly began seeing results. For example, with a new real-time payroll product being rolled out in Germany, ensuring messaging consistency across sales and customer success was critical. “It’s a new product, it’s a new set of buyers to position to and understand,” explained Gesine Halligan, director of sales enablement at Personio. “Highspot is critical to make sure that employees put their best foot forward when engaging with customers.” With seamless access to the correct collateral through a unified solution, content governance has improved by 63%, helping revenue teams stay aligned.

Equipped with the right assets, teams can better engage buyers with capabilities like Digital Rooms that allow for personalization at scale. “We’re really excited about Digital Rooms because we can customize the experience for our customers and prospects,” highlighted Halligan. Additionally, increased visibility into what works through Analytics has helped connect the dots between revenue teams and improve collaboration. “We can give feedback to our marketing teams through the Analytics so they can understand what is valuable for customers and what is resonating to be able to say, ‘That worked well, that didn’t, and here’s where we need to make more progress,’” noted Halligan. This hasn’t just helped improve collaboration internally, it’s been instrumental in offering a customized experience that helps buyers make decisions from pre to post-sales. In fact, buyer engagement has improved by 28% since implementing Highspot.

Beyond the capabilities of the platform, Personio partners with Highspot’s professional services team to help build a holistic enablement strategy that drives behavior change. For example, to help the team implement best practices with a focus on user experience, Highspot professional services consultants facilitated an in-person workshop with Personio enablement leaders. “We left the workshop with a lot of work done that would have taken weeks otherwise,” explained Halligan. “We now have a really clear path and roadmap for what we are going to accomplish, and I couldn’t be more excited.”

Unified Enablement Drives Value For The Entire Company

Since making the transition to Highspot, the team at Personio has celebrated being able to use the same unified platform to support both sellers and customer success managers. In particular, this unified approach made it easier for Personio to effectively navigate change. “I think that sales enablement to me is change management,” shared Halligan. “You’re really helping people change behavior, and change happens at the individual level.” As sellers have begun to see the impact that enablement can have on their performance, Highspot has become embedded as a core part of their workflow, resulting in 88% recurring usage of the platform.

With a strong foundation for enablement established among the revenue organization with Highspot, Personio sees significant opportunity to expand its enablement efforts to other teams across the company, including leadership. “Sales enablement must be anchored on different levels,” explained Manojlovic. “In addition to project managers and drivers from sales and marketing, it should be a topic for management.” As it looks to the future, Personio plans to continue to leverage Highspot to drive its enablement strategy forward as a key lever for business transformation.