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Hobsons is an education technology company that helps students identify their strengths, explore careers, create academic plans, match to best-fit educational opportunities and reach their education and life goals. Founded in 1974, Hobsons has over 400 employees, with offices in Arlington, Virginia and Cincinnati, Ohio.
As a technology company with three separate products, there’s no shortage of information for employees to learn and absorb. Between familiarizing new reps with each product, training on best practices in Salesforce and adopting new technology – enablement was labor-intensive and disconnected.
Layered on top of these struggles came a new initiative. The team is exploring a move to Salesforce CPQ in the next fiscal year, which requires migrating from Salesforce Classic to Salesforce Lightning first.
Todd Tribble is the Vice President of Sales Operations and Enablement for Hobsons. He leads a team of 15 Salesforce admins, developers, analysts and enablement experts. They were tasked with driving adoption in Salesforce, leading the charge on the migration and, ultimately, empowering the sales team with the tools and training they need to be successful.
There were 300 people within Hobsons that needed to transition to Salesforce Lightning. We interviewed Todd to learn more about the challenges he faced and how they were addressed. Here’s what he said:
What were your top training challenges?
Our top three challenges were really:
1) How do I disseminate information?
I wasn’t meeting my people where they are. I had the information I needed to give them but didn’t have an easy way of putting this content where they were. Information became less and less useful because it was spread across docs, disparate tools and spreadsheets. It wasn’t sitting where my team was on a daily basis.
“I wasn’t meeting my people where they are. Information became less and less useful because it was spread across docs, disparate tools and spreadsheets.”
TODD TRIBBLE, VICE PRESIDENT, SALES OPERATIONS AND ENABLEMENT
2) How do I keep retention rates high from initial training to adoption?
The retention of information was a huge challenge for us. It’s one thing to know what you’re doing a day or two after you’ve been trained on it, but that same information needs to be utilized in the weeks/months to come.
3) How can I find a training solution that scales with our business?
We’re not going to stop at the Lightning migration. We’ll be implementing new platforms, training on existing ones (Eloqua, for example) and bringing in new tools to support our growth. I needed one consistent platform to disseminate information that would expand as our business needs grew.
What was your initial reaction to Spekit?
Spekit is the smart, intuitive and simple solution to a problem that I didn’t even know there was an answer for.
We became so accustomed to workarounds, I hadn’t even thought that there might be a solution out there. But, after seeing the product in action, it all clicked. Like, ‘of course you should put information where the user is. Of course, you should deliver training in a way that’s quick, integrated, simple to alter and change.’ It became so obvious.
When I took over this role, I felt passionate that to grow as a company, we had to lose the peripheral stuff and get ourselves in one place. Spekit became a big part of that.
“After seeing the product in action, it all clicked. Like, ‘of course you should put information where the user is. Of course, you should deliver training in a way that’s quick, integrated, simple to alter and change.’ It became so obvious.”
TODD TRIBBLE, VICE PRESIDENT, SALES OPERATIONS AND ENABLEMENT
How did Spekit support your Lightning Migration training?
The training was really bolstered by the fact that you can put that information in front of them again. Nobody really questioned it. The Spekit logo embedded within Salesforce became a natural part of the Lightning environment for them. It ceased to become this new thing and was instead, simply what I use when I have questions.
After the training, if they’re struggling to remember what we taught them or had questions we just reminded them that, ‘hey remember, it’s right there for you.’ Spekit became a verb for us and people were soon accustomed to simply hovering over an icon for answers before ever reaching out to our team.
“Spekit became a verb for us and people were soon accustomed to simply hovering over an icon for answers before ever reaching out to our team.”
TODD TRIBBLE, VICE PRESIDENT, SALES OPERATIONS AND ENABLEMENT
What long-term results have you seen as a result of implementing Spekit?
Improved knowledge retention
Overall, I’d say the retention of knowledge and material is much higher. We received fewer questions once they left training and those that we did receive were more pointed to things that we’d forgotten to include.
Reduced support tickets
We run an operations help ticket system and we’ve seen a 35% drop off in inbound tickets that have to do with process or definitions.
As Spekit becomes more sticky, people don’t have to ask, they can see the information provided within Salesforce. Now, I can reallocate my people toward things that help drive the business forward versus answering a slew of tickets. My enablement team can actually focus on enabling sales skills instead of teaching people how to use Salesforce.
Increased Salesforce usage
We’ve seen the overall usage and time spent within Salesforce significantly increase. People come in and they stay in, they’re not bouncing out. We’re giving them everything they need directly within the system so they have no reason to leave.
In your opinion, who is Spekit for?
For any company looking to utilize Salesforce as a true place where they want their reps living, breathing and running their business, Spekit is a necessity.
You can disseminate information directly within your team’s workflow. You can deliver updates to your team the moment things change. You can improve retention by surfacing information after onboarding. And, as you scale and bring other entities into Salesforce like CPQ, Eloqua, etc, Spekit becomes that one platform your team is familiar with to reference for continued learning. It really increases efficiency across the board for the whole company.
“You can disseminate information directly within your team’s workflow. You can deliver updates to your team the moment things change. You can improve retention by surfacing information after onboarding. Spekit becomes that one platform your team is familiar with to reference for continued learning. It increases efficiency across the board for the whole company.”
TODD TRIBBLE, VICE PRESIDENT, SALES OPERATIONS AND ENABLEMENT
