Learn How Mindtickle Powers the School of Splunk

Overview

Splunk is the world’s first Data-to-Everything Platform designed to remove the barriers between data and action so innovators in IT, security, DevOps and more can gain clarity, elevate discussions and accelerate progress.

The Challenge

Splunk had determined that its training program, hosted solely by an LMS that was populated by the Splunk content team, was no longer meeting the company’s needs. Specifically, sales training consisted of a library of e-learning courses that were primarily video-based modules. Every new hire leveraged the same content in their onboarding process, regardless of their skill level. And coaching — a cornerstone in the development and training of sales reps — was inconsistent among sales managers and not streamlined or well-defined. Splunk determined that all this could be remedied by creating a culture of coaching at the company, underpinned by investment in enablement technology.

The Solution

After a rigorous vendor evaluation process, Mindtickle emerged as the superior option to complement Splunk’s existing LMS and help achieve goals. “Mindtickle incorporates learning with activities to reinforce new messaging, skills, and information. Mindtickle also allows managers to track metrics showing reps’ progress in mastering competencies over time,” said Krishna Saw, Director Digital Transformation & Adoption at Splunk. Probably most importantly, Mindtickle could provide a more streamlined, consistent, and data-driven approach to coaching. Because Splunk’s corporate branding is very important to the company, Mindtickle would be delivered through “Splunk Coach” — the Mindtickle Sales Readiness platform branded with Splunk’s “Buttercup” mascot and bright-pink colors.

Splunk Coach tackles enablement objectives

With Mindtickle as Splunk Coach’s engine, Splunk could now begin to take action on its main enablement objectives, including increasing sales rep productivity and overall revenue impact, and creating more engaging and personalized learning journeys. To accomplish this goal, the training process incorporated expertise from sales leaders and productivity managers, and empowered reps to develop their own coaching sessions and content.

Splunk’s “Stand & Deliver” program is also a key part of its newfound culture of coaching. The program’s goal is to ensure reps are staying on message and delivering the most compelling presentations to customers and prospects. Reps review a given scenario, messaging, and scoring rubric; they record themselves directly within Splunk Coach; and a manager reviews against the scoring rubric and provides feedback. This feedback is then used to inform coaching plans for each rep.

Closing the loop on learning

Splunk’s productivity managers developed “Cloud Heroes,” a course within Splunk Coach that helps reps formulate a positioning pitch. After watching a sample pitch and a short course, reps can record a pitch directly within Splunk Coach, submit it to their managers, and receive detailed feedback — all conveniently within Splunk Coach.

Assessments are also a big part of Splunk Coach. “We use coaching sessions to build a feedback model between our managers and our reps. The reps are coached by the managers, who can then better assess reps’ skills in order to prescribe extra studies or remediation,” said Saw.

Another objective Splunk put into motion with Splunk Coach was to increase engagement among learners. To that end, Splunk complemented its existing video-based learning library with Missions, Tasks, and other engaging Mindtickle activities that can be assigned in more consumable pieces so reps can learn on their own schedule.

Metrics tell the readiness success story

Now, Splunk’s enablement team can gauge how Splunk Coach is resonating by regularly gathering metrics and reporting back to stakeholders to ensure enablement is delivering what was originally intended. So far, Splunk Coach’s metrics have proved its worth. “Our Stand & Deliver program, for example, has been a real success, with 91% of non-sales employees and 96% of sales reps having completed it, “ said Saw.

Learn How Mindtickle Powers the School of Splunk

With Mindtickle as Splunk Coach’s engine, Splunk could begin taking action on its main enablement objectives, including increasing sales rep productivity and overall revenue impact, and creating more engaging and personalized learning journeys. In this video, Nancy French, Director of Operations, Systems & Tools at Splunk, talks about how Sales Managers at Splunk can now create their coaching content faster and personalize it to fit the specific needs of their reps. This also frees up our content team to work on other tasks.