Streamlines onboarding and training with Seismic

The Challenge 

Successfully Onboarding New Reps in a Scalable Manner 

In 2021, the Pleo organization started to evaluate its company structure and existing technology stack, identifying the business’s need to build a sales enablement function to support its go-to-market (GTM) teams. The challenge was not only that the sales enablement team was to be built from the ground up but that their GTM function was made up of several different sales representatives who were based in various locations. As a hyper-growth startup at the time, it was essential that new hires could be onboarded quickly and efficiently, making sure they could start working deals as soon as possible.  

“When I joined the company, I had a high-level plan in mind for what I needed to be successful and make an impact in the first six months. One pillar on the roadmap was the technology that would help us orchestrate what we wanted to do,” said Felix Dumitrica, Director of GTM Enablement at Pleo.  

In addition, the Pleo team wanted to ensure that onboarding was consistent to enable every employee to build lasting and successful relationships with their customers, as well as allowing them to both learn and develop at their own pace when they are at their peak productivity. “Before I joined the company, there wasn’t an enablement function per se. There was not necessarily a clear need for investing in enablement. But when companies want to expand, want to grow, and want to hire more reps, then enablement and operations both become crucial. If you don’t have these two, you cannot expand,” said Dumitrica.  

Since enablement was a completely new function, Pleo and Dumitrica set out to find a solution that would not only be effective but also scalable while keeping the tech stack for reps as small as possible.

The Solution 

Driving sales efficiency by onboarding and coaching new team members  

Using an extensive selection process that included business and a series of capability criteria, the decision was made to implement Seismic Learning (formerly Lessonly by Seismic). This allowed Pleo to not only automate the onboarding of new hires at a greater capacity but to tailor and personalize this training according to the specific role. From day one, new hires were guided through a structured process, split up into bite-sized sessions, making it easy to work through, digest, and fit into their schedule.  

In addition to using Seismic Learning to onboard all new hires on the GTM team, Pleo has integrated the tool deeply into their internal promotion process. “Seismic Learning also helps us with our internal upskilling process. Let’s say we want to upskill a rep on negotiation tactics or objection handling – then Seismic helps us to make those lessons available. Some of them are assigned, some have due dates, and some of them are even mandatory. This becomes important during our promotion model where, among other things, mandatory training completion is a part of the criteria,” said Dumitrica. 

Centralized content, training, and onboarding through a self-service format gave Pleo’s enablement team the power to scale their enablement efforts while ensuring the experience for new hires was both seamless and role-specific. 

Increasing agility and speed to market by introducing new initiatives, faster 

Pleo operates in a fast-paced environment and needs to react quickly to any changes within and outside of the company. By allowing the GTM team to participate in continuous learning, Seismic Learning has ensured that internal changes are communicated and adapted to in a timely manner and that reps are better equipped for external changes. New lessons can be created and assigned to the individuals, who will be notified and given a deadline for completion. This ensures the adoption of company critical changes, such as new messaging or tools, is completed seamlessly, keeping individual needs and schedules in mind.  

The enablement team can get ahead of changes and start planning on time, which would not be the case without a learning tool. Using Seismic, Dumitrica and his team can push an initial lesson outlining the reasons for the changes several weeks ahead of when the changes are due to happen. Once this initial teaser has gone live and been completed by the necessary employees, the enablement team can build on this by adding another set of lessons and diving deeper into the changes being made. By the time the specific changes are rolled out, everyone on the team has had time to grasp and understand the information.  

“Having Seismic Learning at hand, being able to create a lesson using text, using images, using video, embedding videos, with the leadership’s message, explaining why we made a decision, and explaining the business rationale behind it, allows us to support the transition to the new way of working. It is very easy for us. It is scalable because we can reach out as soon as something happens or changes in the process to our 250+ customer-facing reps,” said Felix Dumitrica.