The Engagement Grade helps you evaluate the quality of interactions between your selling team and buyers. By analyzing emails, meetings, and other activities, the Engagement Grade offers a measure of how well your team is engaging with potential or existing customers.

This document explains how the Engagement Grade is calculated, its key factors, and how it can be used to support your sales efforts.

What is Engagement Grade?

The Engagement Grade reflects the level of interaction between your team and the buyer’s organization. It uses data from emails and meetings to assign a grade at contact, Opp and Account levels, ranging from A+ (highest engagement) to D- (lowest engagement). Higher grades indicate better buyer engagement, which can lead to improved deal outcomes.

How is the Engagement Grade Calculated?

The Engagement Grade is based on real interactions between the selling and buying teams. These interactions are evaluated using a scoring system that considers several key factors.

1. Key Factors Affecting the Grade
   • Email Exchange: Emails received from buyers have a higher impact on the grade than those sent by your team.
   • Buyer Meetings: Frequent meetings with buyers contribute significantly to the score.
   • SeniorityofBuyers: Interactions with senior decision-makers carry more weight.
   • Recency of Interactions: Recent activities are more impactful as scores decrease over time.
   • Number of Buyers: Engaging multiple stakeholders within the buyer’s organization strengthens the grade.
2. AI Model and Scoring System
   The various signals from key factors are fed into the Aviso proprietary AI model which determines the activity impact on the deal outcome, quality of engagement at contact and Account level. Additionally, the interaction weights are determined by assigning a score for each interaction based on its type, direction, and the number of participants. This will be fed to the AI model as signals representing the volume of interactions
3. Time-Based Decay
   Scores decrease over time, with a 4-week half-life. For instance, a received email worth 6 points initially will reduce to 3 Scores following a decay concept, meaning their value gradually decreases as time passes. This ensures that recent interactions are given more importance than older ones. For example, if an interaction starts with 6 points, it will drop to 3 points after a certain period and continue to reduce further over time.
4. Converting Scores to Grades
   The sum of interaction scores for a deal or account is ranked into percentile brackets, which are then converted to grades. As depicted in the graph below, it visually represents how Engagement Scores are calculated by considering two key factors: Cycle Time and Chances of Winning.
   The Engagement Score helps categorize deals into different grades based on how efficiently they progress through the sales cycle and their likelihood of closing successfully.
   •  Cycle Time measures how long it takes for a deal to progress. Deals that take less time to move forward generally indicate a higher level of engagement, while longer cycle times suggest a need for more attention and may lower the score.
   • Chances of Winning reflect how likely it is that a deal will be successful. Higher chances of winning contribute positively to the engagement score.

The combination of these two factors places the deal in one of the four quadrants:

1.  Grade A deals (Bottom-right) have both short cycle times and high chances of winning, earning the highest engagement scores.
2. Grade B deals (Top-right)have high chances of winning but longer cycle times, indicating that while they are promising, they need more time and effort.
3. Grade C deals (Bottom-left) progress quickly but have lower chances of success, meaning they need more engagement to increase their chances.
4.  Grade D deals (Top-left)are both slow-moving and less likely to succeed, and therefore receive the lowest engagement scores.

By analyzing deals in these categories, teams can prioritize efforts and adjust strategies to improve the engagement levels of less promising deals or speed up the successful ones.

Why is the Engagement Grade Important?

1. Prioritize Deals
   Engagement Grades help identify deals and accounts that are more likely to succeed. High grades indicate strong buyer interest, making them ideal candidates for focused effort.
2.  Monitor Deal Health
   Grades provide an early indication of whether a deal requires more attention. Lower grades signal areas where your team can take corrective actions to improve engagement.
3. Support Strategic Decisions at an Account Level
   By analyzing engagement trends, you can optimize your team’s activities and tailor communication strategies to strengthen buyer relationships.
4.  Engagement plan with significant buyer contact
   Engagement Grades help identify influential buyer contacts, enabling your team to focus on building stronger relationships with decision-makers. By prioritizing senior stakeholders, scheduling strategic meetings, and crafting personalized outreach, you can align your efforts with their needs. Strengthening connections with key contacts fosters trust, enhances collaboration, and improves deal success.