Merlin Inline Help

Project

Merlin is an internal insights portal available to the LinkedIn sales teams. With a constant stream of new sales reps, the insights team was spending a significant amount of time training on what the insights mean and how to use them in their sales process. Placing term definitions, talking points, and videos of how actual sales reps use the insights reduced training requests significantly.

Challenge

Sales reps are notorious for not seeking out self-serve training/help, preferring face to face training. For a large sales team, it is not scalable for the insights team to conduct this training constantly.

Solution

By placing the help next to each chart, it is immediately available. The relatively small space also forces the insights team to be concise in giving the reps just the information they need to know. The most used part of this feature are the WebEx screen shares that we have more experienced sales reps produce. With a goal of being 1-2 minutes in lengths, a new rep can hear an experience rep talk through the chart as they would have presented it to a client. All insights using the inline help feature are heavily used and generate the fewest training requests.