Journey of a Sale: Strategic Research Transforming Sales Enablement

Project Timeline: 2025
Sr. UX Designer | Research Lead & Strategic Partner
Strategic Research Study

My Role

Led comprehensive strategic research initiative to map the complete Premium sales journey. Designed multi-phase research approach, facilitated discovery across diverse stakeholder groups, synthesized complex findings into actionable framework, and delivered prioritized recommendations that aligned competing interests and enabled evidence-based investment decisions.

Business Challenge

Indeed's sales leadership needed to understand how 2,000+ reps were selling Premium products before investing in new tools or processes. Without visibility into the actual end-to-end journey, they risked building solutions that didn't address real needs—wasting resources and missing revenue opportunities.

Impact At-A-Glance

✓ Built stakeholder alignment across GTM Strategy, Sales Operations, Revenue Transformation, and Product
✓ Translated fragmented feedback from 80+ participants into unified strategic framework
✓ Delivered tiered recommendations enabling immediate action while defining long-term vision
✓ Positioned UX as strategic partner in sales enablement, not just feature designers
✓ Established reusable methodology adopted for future product research initiatives

Strategic Challenge

Stakeholders request: "Help us understand the sales journey for Premium so we know where to invest”

The Real Challenge: Competing Priorities Without Shared Understanding

Different stakeholders had conflicting views on what needed fixing:

Sales Operations wanted better lead identification
GTM Strategy wanted streamlined processes
Product Teams wanted to know which tools to improve
Sales Reps wanted less manual work

Without understanding the complete journey, each team would optimize their piece independently—potentially making the overall system worse.

What I Discovered:

Through structured discovery, I uncovered 6 interconnected challenges that no single team could solve alone:

Tool fragmentation forcing manual work (7+ tools for one call)
Missing data preventing ROI justification
Product confusion from overlapping offerings
Ineffective lead identification
Pitch materials not supporting visual selling
Internal complexity from legacy processes

Strategic Reframe

Rather than collecting feature requests, I needed to:

Document reality vs. prescribed process - What reps actually do, not what they're supposed to do
Identify systemic patterns - Root causes, not symptoms
Find leverage points - Where small changes create big impact
Build stakeholder alignment - Common understanding enabling coordinated action

This positioned the research to inform strategy, not just validate features.

The Core Insight I Surfaced:

"The main challenge isn't the lack of resources. It is the lack of seamlessly connected plug-and-play resources."

This reframing shifted the conversation from "which tool should we fix?" to "how do we create a connected system?"

Current State: What Sales Reps Actually Do

Desired State: What Business Needs

The Strategic Bet

Success required aligning systems with how reps should spend time, not just automating current dysfunction. Without addressing this fundamental misalignment, new features would only perpetuate inefficiency.

The Reality

The real problem wasn't tool limitations—it was lack of alignment between business needs, user workflows, and system design across multiple business units. Reps spent 95% of their time on non-revenue activities while business goals required 90% client-facing work.

Process

Our team spent 13 weeks conducting comprehensive discovery with 80+ participants across Sales, Client Success, Sales Operations, and Sales Effectiveness teams. We mapped out a broad Jobs To Be Done framework for each segment and dove deeper into particularly problematic workflows.

Through 85+ discovery sessions and 20 executive interviews, we identified 5 systemic challenges preventing reps from spending meaningful time with clients. We synthesized findings into 54 Epics, 95 Capabilities, and 450+ User Stories that aligned stakeholder priorities with user needs.

Finally, we co-designed future state experiences with sales and CS reps, prototyped concepts for the highest-impact workflows, and validated 33 wireframes through iterative usability testing with end-users across multiple business units.

Activities

Interviews and User Journey Mapping
85+ sessions | 80+ participants
Jobs To Be Done Framework
core jobs and tasks defined for Sales, Client Success and Sales Operations
Research Synthesis & Insights
Analyzed qualitative and quantitative data to identify patterns, created collective sentiments, and documented 5 systemic challenges
Co-Design &Alignment Workshops
Facilitated collaborative sessions with business stakeholders and technical teams to align on future state vision and priorities
Wireframing and Prototyping
33 Wireframes validated
Iterative usability testing
Multiple validation rounds

UX Research - 5 Critical Challenges

1. Broken foundation = poor UX
Constrained processes, fragmented data, poor rep experience

2. Workarounds eclipse impact
Teams created manual workflows instead of fixing root systems

3. Disconnected systems overwhelm
Swivel chair, manual tasks prevent client-facing time

4. Playing detective wastes time
Reps dig through systems for basic client data instead of selling

5. Tools don't help with strategy
Systems store data but don't provide actionable insights

Example of comprehensive Jobs To Be Done artifact which serves as a foundational piece of our UX research.

Design Solutions

Four strategic transformations that turned dysfunction into efficiency

Role-Based Views Over One-Size-Fits-All

Before: Every user saw the same information regardless of their role, forcing Sales, Client Success, and Sales Ops to manually filter irrelevant data
After: Tailored information architecture and data to reflect the specific needs of each user type—Sales sees pipeline, CS sees health metrics, Ops sees forecasts
Impact: Each team sees exactly what they need to do their job, eliminating time spent filtering and increasing data relevance

Essential Information Over Visual Clutter

Before: Account screens overwhelmed users with every possible data point, making it impossible to quickly understand client status or identify next actions
After: Redesigned screens to surface only the most critical information reps need to understand their clients—removing visual clutter and cognitive load
Impact: Reps can now scan accounts in seconds instead of minutes, focusing on client relationships instead of hunting through data

Reps can now scan accounts in seconds instead of minutes, focusing on client relationships instead of hunting through data

Single System Over Tool Fragmentation

Before: Reps swiveled between 5+ disconnected systems, manually copying data between external spreadsheets, internal tools, and Salesforce
After: Consolidated multiple systems into a single unified Salesforce instance, eliminating tool fatigue and creating one source of truth
Impact: Reduced context switching and manual data synchronization, freeing reps to focus on client-facing activities

Actionable Insights Over Data Storage

Before: Systems functioned as passive data repositories—storing information but providing no strategic guidance on what to do next
After: Transformed systems to surface actionable insights—next best actions, forecasting recommendations, and proactive alerts that drive strategy
Impact: Tools now augment human intelligence instead of just recording history, enabling data-driven decisions at every touchpoint

Results

What This Research Enabled

✓ Aligned competing stakeholders around shared understanding of current state
✓ Shifted investment strategy from tool improvements to system integration
✓ Enabled evidence-based decisions replacing assumptions with user data
✓ Created reusable framework adopted for Enterprise segment research (Phase 2)
✓ Positioned UX strategically as research partner, not just feature designers

JOS