How to Measure SE Impact

When it’s time for a QBR or a performance review, qualitative praise only goes so far. To make the case for headcount or a promotion, you need hard numbers.

But for presales, getting hard numbers is tough. The number of closed-won deals an SE is associated with may seem like the most obvious metric, but it doesn’t tell the full story.

As one Redditor pointed out: “Sometimes the best SEs get on deals that just don’t work out, and some lower-level SEs might stumble on some wins, so you have to use several other criteria.”

And today, the SE’s job doesn’t even stop at a closed deal.

With so many SaaS companies moving to consumption-based models, presales teams are expected to drive adoption, usage, and expansion, too.

Below, we investigate why SE impact is so hard to quantify, outline a few ways leading companies are measuring it, and explain how you can leverage presales KPIs to guide future resource allocation and enablement.

The reason SE data is so hard to pin down is that most companies aren’t measuring it in the tool the rest of the revenue team uses: the CRM.

Instead of getting logged in HubSpot or Salesforce, SE activity lives in a mix of Slack channels, call notes, and shared drives.

Even standard metrics like “demo count” or “POCs created” (if they’re tracked at all) fail to capture true business impact. Here’s why:

• It’s possible that multiple SEs touch one deal. Those metrics don’t account for that kind of attribution.
• Additional value comes post-sale. Onboarding, enablement, and product feedback are all ways SEs contribute to revenue growth.
• Prospect interactions aren’t limited to demos and POCs. SEs are on calls consulting with prospects and answering questions almost as much as AEs – and that time and input is rarely tracked on opportunities.

It’s a vicious cycle. Without clear ROI, it’s near impossible to get buy-in for new hires or new tooling, the very resources that could help SEs quantify their impact and double down on the strategies that are working.

Another challenge presales teams are running into is that the scope of their roles is changing.

As we previewed in the intro, we’re seeing many SaaS companies shift away from seat-based pricing toward consumption-based models, which require:

1. Fast time to activation
2. High product usage
3. High retention

SEs are expected to influence all three. First, they guide buyers through realistic, hands-on experiences via Navattic demos, sandboxes, or live POCs.

Once that customer converts, SEs might lead architecture reviews to ensure everything is configured properly and integrations are working, helping customers see value right away.

And they may hop on more calls with customers to walk through new features or products during renewals or upsell conversations, too.

Traditional revenue metrics like ARR and time to close don’t really capture that nuance.

To make SE impact visible, leaders need a clear measurement framework.

Based on conversations with some of our most successful customers, we’ve identified two sets of metrics: one for presales teams supporting traditional sales motions, and another for teams operating in PLG or consumption-based models.

Traditional Sales-Focused Metrics

• Demo engagement rate: % of demos (live or interactive) viewed or completed.
  • What this shows: How effectively SEs capture buyer attention early in the sales process. High engagement indicates that the SE has strong storytelling skills and a clear understanding of what prospects need.
• Time to first demo: Average days to book a live demo.
  • What this shows: The agility of your presales process. Faster demo turnaround correlates with higher deal momentum and good collaboration between SEs and AEs.
• Win rate with SE involvement: # of opportunities with SE touchpoints versus without.
  • What this shows: Direct impact of presales support on wins/losses. The higher this metric is, the better your case for expanding SE headcount or budget.
• Deal velocity: Average days to close when SEs are engaged.
  • What this shows: How SE expertise removes technical blockers and accelerates prospect decision-making.

Consumption-Focused Metrics

• Activation rate: % of closed-won deals that activate within 30 days of SE involvement.
  • What this shows: How well SEs bridge the gap between purchase and product adoption (which, of course, plays into long-term usage and retention).
• Expansion pipeline influence: # of expansions linked to SE-supported customers.
  • What this shows: The role SEs play in identifying and supporting upsell and cross-sell opportunities.
• Product usage uplift: average consumption increase in accounts with SE-led onboarding.
  • What this shows: Downstream impact of SE involvement on product stickiness.
• Presales ROI: (ARR influenced ÷ total SE cost or hours invested).
  • What this shows: SE efficiency. If your activation rate, expansion pipeline, and product usage are already fairly high, just imagine how much more ROI SEs could drive with tools that strip away manual work.
• Customer adoption curve: Time for SE-guided customers to reach adoption milestones.
  • What this shows: How presales engagement translates to better long-term customer health.

After you’ve nailed down which metrics to track, make sure they’re visible in your CRM. Here’s how:

1. Set up custom SE touchpoint fields, to align with your traditional sales or consumption-based motion. These should go on your Opportunity layout.
2. Connect Navattic analytics to your CRM, so you can see how long each stakeholder spent in an interactive demo, how many steps they got through, and who else they shared it with. Note: You can capture engagement data at the contact or account level.
3. Visualize your data. Build dashboards that compare SE-influenced opportunities to AE-only deals. You might even consider overlaying demo engagement data with close rates or expansion volume to show just how much of a difference highly tailored demos can make.

Pro Tip

Add an “Engagement Source” picklist on the Opportunity (if you don’t already have one) and tag SE-led demos as “Interactive Demo” for clean attribution.

Teams are already using engagement data to drive these KPIs. Here are a few examples:

PowerSchool, the leading provider of cloud-based software for K-12 education in North America, is using demo data to better understand the buyer landscape. Per the team:

“Oftentimes, we will get introduced to ten or more people at a school or district, and it's difficult to know who is interested and who is making the decision on the purchase.

Using Navattic’s demo analytics, we can see exactly how prospects are engaging with the demos to see repeat visitors, time spent per session, and demo dropoff to give our sales team better insight into who we should be re-engaging at the right time.”

Another customer, Singlify, uses sandbox demos to increase deal velocity and improve SE efficiency. Maarten Rooney, the co-founder and CEO, explains:

“We’ve built an end-to-end core banking solution on the Salesforce platform that supports inclusive finance providers with digital transformation. For us, the disadvantage of doing a live demo is that Salesforce is quite elaborate in terms of functionality. And there was potential for getting sidetracked by different prospect questions.

Navattic lets us demo on Salesforce and give customers a real sense and feel of Singlify. We can still guide them through the product in a prescriptive way in 20 minutes, which is what we would cover in 45 minutes during a live demo.”

SE data isn’t just a way to prove ROI, it’s also a tool for continuous improvement. Every month or quarter, take a minute to review:

Demo Data

Which demo experiences keep buyers engaged the longest? Which ones lead to faster activation or larger deals?

Figure out what is so compelling about those Flows and how you can replicate those characteristics across all of your SEs’ opps.

With a tool like Launchpad, you can also monitor who is sharing the most demos, generating the most views, and uncovering the most stakeholders – insights that can help you identify best practices and coach your team.

SE Activity Data

Look at how work is distributed across your team.

If one or two SEs are on way more deals than the rest of your team, it’s probably time to rebalance their workload. And when their bandwidth starts to ease up, ask them to share some tips with their teammates.

Company OKRs

Finally, connect presales metrics to your broader business goals. Tie SE outcomes directly to OKRs like:

• “Accelerate time-to-value”
• “Increase expansion efficiency”
• “Improve customer activation rate.”

Want to reduce manual demo prep, centralize engagement data, and show leadership exactly how SEs influence revenue?

Try Launchpad, Navattic’s demo automation platform. Book a demo to see it in action.