The Challenge
Investing in enablement to support larger cohorts of new hires
SpyCloud is a leader in the account takeover and fraud prevention space. Their mission is to disrupt the cybercriminal economy and to eliminate the loss of money, time and reputation caused by online fraud. The teams at SpyCloud are making the internet a safer place for both individuals and businesses. In 2022, the CPN Awards recognised them as the Best Anti-Fraud Solution in the Startup category.
“I love the human element that we bring to cybersecurity and the protection that we bring to enterprises and consumers,” said Liz Jurewicz, the Senior Revenue Enablement Manager at SpyCloud and the foundational member of their enablement team. “My charter when I came in was to establish the enablement infrastructure for us to grow at scale. That includes onboarding, defining and aligning our sales processes, managing and optimising our tech stack for sellers and helping to structure the ROI for strategic opportunities.”
In 2021, SpyCloud was at a turning point when it came to the decision to invest in an enablement team and technology solutions. The company was growing rapidly and needed to scale to support larger cohorts of new hires. “It was a combination of capacity planning and realising we wanted to make some strategic shifts in the sales process. This required a resource dedicated to management and execution of this new programme,” said Jurewicz.
SpyCloud partnered with Seismic and Seismic Learning (formerly Lessonly) to bring content into one easily managed solution. The solution enabled scalable training and onboarding which allowed for faster new seller ramp time and their ability to create great experiences for their customers.
Liz Jurewicz
Senior Revenue Enablement Manager
The Solution
Proactive Enablement
When launching Seismic and Seismic Learning, SpyCloud’s enablement team was clear on the goals for the year ahead and implemented the technology to support a sales team that was planned to triple in size. The days of onboarding one new hire at a time with one-to-one training were soon going to end and SpyCloud was thinking about how it was going to scale onboarding to support entire groups of new hires.
“We started this conversation early enough with the Seismic that we were able to be proactive. I don’t even want to imagine a world where we tried to scale an onboarding programme without a learning management system,” said Jurewicz.
SpyCloud made the decision to invest in both an enablement function and the technology required to support enablement motions. These investments directly impact the ROI of new talent joining the company. With Seismic, SpyCloud has more robust management of content and a central location for the critical information that new and existing sellers need for their customer interactions. Seismic Learning supports a tailored onboarding and training programme for the entire Go-To-Market (GTM) organisation and helps ramp new hires faster.
“Technology should be a compliment to your enablement strategy. If the corporate objective is to grow by X% over the next year with plans to aggressively hire, then enablement and technology have to be included or you run the risk of revenue-generating hires that can’t efficiently contribute to hitting that target,” explained Leah Burk, VP of Revenue Operations. “It’s also important to get ahead of this enablement expense with your finance team at least 1–2 quarters in advance. This will pave the way for streamlined purchase and implementation before a technology and knowledge deficit begins to limit growth.”
With Seismic and Seismic Learning in place, Jurewicz began to drive the centralisation of onboarding to build a better experience for the GTM teams, reduce their ramp time and ultimately help them become productive faster.
Leah Burk
VP of Revenue Operations
Centralised Self-Service Onboarding
SpyCloud’s enablement team built a 5-week onboarding programme to support the entire GTM organisation, including marketing, sales and customer success teams. Prior to this, onboarding was around 12 weeks and ad hoc based on the availability of executives and SMEs to lead individual sessions. The new programme focused on both consistency and quality of content.
“It wasn’t until I laid out all of the training assets and materials in the new end-to-end structure, that we could see how extensive and intense the ramping process was. There is a massive amount of training employees need to absorb in order to be successful in their roles.”
SpyCloud’s onboarding programme covers industry training, product training, process training and tool training with each week structured around a different theme. “After the first 5 weeks, we really feel like our reps are set up for success,” said Jurewicz.
Brekke Mehis, Director of Sales at SpyCloud, experienced the benefits of our new programme firsthand.
“At the end of 2021, I was tasked with tripling the team in 2022. At the time, there wasn’t a structured enablement programme so I was concerned with how I could support my new hires while building out our GTM strategy. The Seismic Learning programme allowed our new hires to navigate our sales process, solutions stack and internal tools in a timely manner, without overwhelming them. As a result, we onboarded 6 new Account Executives in Q1 and reduced their readiness from 4–6 months to 30–45 days.”
The flexibility of self-service onboarding in Seismic Learning allows Jurewicz to enrol a new hire in the onboarding programme on their first day. This creates a better experience for a new hire since they can get the information they need from day one and no longer have to wait on the live training schedule. “The fact that this was self-service, I could monitor their progress and know each rep was getting the same information, regardless of when they started, was invaluable,” explained Jurewicz.
Centralised content, training and onboarding through a self-service format gave SpyCloud’s enablement team the power to scale their enablement efforts while ensuring the experience for new hires was both seamless and personalised. “We needed to have a space where they could go back to reference, digest and learn in different ways,” explained Jurewicz.
Brekke Mehis
Director of Sales
Building Accountability and Feedback Loops
SpyCloud is intentional about the user experience of their internal tools and the enablement team wanted to build trust in the tools they were arming the GTM organisation with. The built-in feedback loops were a key highlight for the teams using Seismic Learning. Certifications and badges keep users encouraged and motivated as they complete required lessons and training. “I just love when I hear ‘You’ll find that in Seismic Learning’ or ‘You know, if you don’t remember go to Seismic Learning.’ Seismic Learning has become part of our culture’s vernacular. And, it’s led to trusting our technology a bit more as a source of truth,” said Jurewicz.
Jurewicz also uses Seismic Learning reports to showcase high usage of the product to leadership and build confidence in the tool, ultimately highlighting the positive ROI the tool delivers.
Content creation for the lessons is a collaborative effort between enablement, product management, product marketing and sales engineering. Previously these subject matter experts would run live training sessions, but as new hires joined at a greater cadence, finding time on the calendar with these experts was challenging. Now the subject matter experts help create and repurpose existing content for training. Jurewicz assigns the best subject matter expert to each lesson, so user questions go directly to the right person, and end users receive answers quickly.
“This model gives a voice to new hires. They are able to quickly get to the heart of what we’re selling, in the clearest, simplest terms. Designing content this way is beneficial for existing reps too. We’re quickly able to learn what is and isn’t working, and share best practices along the way,” shared Jurewicz. SpyCloud is focused on bringing a human element to cyber security and that is carried over into their internal education, training and onboarding experience for their teams.
“I believe if your sellers have a great training experience, it will translate into great customer experiences. If you make things frictionless, easy and clear for your sellers, customers will share a similar experience. I think that’s important and Seismic Learning has been a huge part of our seamless sales and service model at SpyCloud,” explained Jurewicz.
The Results
3x Pipeline by New Hires
By staying ahead of their growth goals and investing in enablement early, SpyCloud is seeing their forward thinking paying off. Enablement was introduced at SpyCloud to support a quickly growing sales team, ahead of their onboarding reaching a breaking point. This helped buffer new hires from feeling the growing pains of a start-up and the enablement team was able to focus on creating a great experience for their sellers.
“With Seismic Content and Seismic Learning now integrated in Salesforce, we’re able to show that ease of use. Sellers really feel the effort that we’re making to streamline their workflows in service to their frictionless work experience,” said Jurewicz.
The newly condensed 5-week enablement programme boasts a 58% reduction in ramp time and faster revenue production. “Our new hires were managing calls within their first few weeks and had a 3x pipeline built in the first half of the year. It was really encouraging for us that they were able to be self-sufficient and generate value so quickly,” said Jurewicz.
SpyCloud’s self-service onboarding and centralised content with Seismic Learning and Seismic helped the enablement team support and scale a rapidly growing sales team as they work to make the internet a safer place for everyone and bring personalised, human interactions to their customers.
