From Spreadsheets to Revenue Excellence: How Samsara Transformed Trials with Accord

Samsara is a leading IoT platform serving transportation, logistics, construction, energy, and manufacturing companies. Their fleet management solutions help customers improve safety, efficiency, and sustainability through connected operations.

As Samsara's enterprise business grew, their try-before-you-buy process became increasingly complex, and each rep managed trials differently. This created inconsistent trial experiences and results—and limited visibility for leadership into what was happening in each trial.

A cross-functional team came together to standardize these critical processes and transform how the Samsara team runs and converts enterprise trials into customers using Accord Playbooks. The team behind the transformation:

• Christine Hou, SVP of Global Revenue Operations and Account Development, who was the ultimate decision-maker on whether to onboard Accord.
• Noelle Carlson, Senior Director of Sales Programs, joined the evaluation process and helped drive formal adoption across the team.
• Jaclyn Dziesietnik, Senior Strategic Program Manager for GTM & Sales Programs, led the project to define and standardize Samsara's trial processes and implement Accord.
• Hank Trumbull, Strategics Lead, Business Value, built and manages the trial success team responsible for implementing Accord across large enterprise deals.

The Challenge: Complex, Discordant Trials

"The trial for a typical deployment is quite extensive because it includes hardware and software," explains Christine.

Trials span 3-12 months and involve shipping and installing devices on vehicles, configuring dashboards for different user groups, training drivers and fleet managers, and measuring operational improvements—all while coordinating dozens of stakeholders across multiple locations.

"We were managing trials in spreadsheets, and were sending Google Docs to customers and back. It just wasn't a clean, professional or polished experience," Christine recalls. "Reps were doing things their own specific way, and recreating the wheel on every trial."

The results:

• Limited Leadership Visibility: Managers lacked real-time insight into trial progress across their teams. "It was really hard for managers to do deep dives into deals and understand what was going on unless they actually had a one-on-one with a sales rep," Jaclyn explains.
• Inconsistent Customer Experience: Without standardized processes, trial quality varied significantly. Some prospects received well-structured experiences while others faced unclear timelines and communication gaps.
• Operational Inefficiency: Updates got lost in email chains, stakeholders had different versions of timelines, and reps spent valuable time coordinating instead of selling.

The Solution: Listening to the Field

Bottoms-up Adoption

The transformation started unexpectedly. "A couple sales reps said, 'Hey, we caught wind of this really cool new sales tool called Accord. Can we buy it?'" recalls Jaclyn. This grassroots enthusiasm was unprecedented at Samsara.

Despite rep excitement, the ops team remained cautious. "Sales reps don't like tools," Jaclyn explains. 

"My first impression was, transparently, maybe it wasn't necessary," Noelle admits. "We had done business the way we had done business for a long time."

Everything changed when they saw Accord with real prospects. "Once I saw the reaction from our prospects, I realized the old way wasn't going to work anymore," Noelle reflects. 

The ability for prospects to work more closely with reps and hold each other accountable to timelines and milestones was a game-changer, and the tool spread organically. "Some star sellers were the first to use it and really championed Accord internally," Christine notes. 

"We actually had customers who loved the tool so much they mentioned wanting to investigate using Accord for their own customers," Jaclyn shared.

The Methodical Rollout

• Enterprise First: The team started by building robust, detailed playbooks in Accord for enterprise-sized trials—with templates for business cases, clear timelines and supporting resources all included. "We started with our largest, most strategic accounts to standardize our upmarket motion," Jaclyn explains. "That tends to be the most complex, with the most steps and players." 
• Specialized Expertise: Hank hired a whole new team to run on Accord. "We hired a team of trial success managers who have become subject matter experts on all things Accord. They're managing our top 50 trials at a time, and the rest of the organization is picking up on the tips and tricks for how to run each step from them."
• Embracing Complexity: Rather than oversimplifying, they built robust playbooks. "Our process is extremely robust—potentially hundreds of steps," Jaclyn acknowledges. "But we reinforced how customizable Accord is. If reps saw steps that weren't relevant, they could easily customize, remove, or reassign them."
• Building Excitement Through Champions: The team leveraged peer influence heavily. "Every enablement session, we'd have a sales rep, their manager, their sales engineer do a quick deal spotlight in Accord," Jaclyn shares. "People hearing from their peers helped showcase: this is worth it."

The Impact: Standardized, Repeatable Trials

"As someone who's implemented various software, Accord has been the tool I've seen people most excited about adopting," Jaclyn reflects. "We made it a one-stop shop, spending time customizing templates with all the fields and resources our team needed."

From Hank: "When you have new reps, they really want to learn from tribal knowledge. We've built all that into the playbooks. Standardizing how reps run trials provides a best-in-class experience that customers really recognize."

The results so far:

• Unparalled Leadership Visibility: "Accord has given sales leaders a level of sight they haven't had before," Christine explains. "You can go down to the minutiae of 'Hey, they haven't gotten this hardware shipped out yet.'" Hank adds: "The trial success team surfaces success stories at weekly check-ins, does org-wide training on best practices. Teams are recognizing, 'This is how it's done at the largest Samsara deals.'"
• Consistency Across the Team: "My favorite feature is the playbooks," Noelle explains. "As a rev ops leader, I prefer a consistent standardized process. It gives me peace of mind that reps create a high quality experience." Key metrics now tracked: "We look at days within a trial and our trial conversion rate—what percent of deals that go through Accord actually advance," Noelle details.
• Rich Engagement Data: "I really like the engagement tab. You get to see how much prospects are looking at Accord and what they're looking at," Christine notes. "That's a powerful metric we never had with Google Sheets."
• A Single Point of Truth: "We've never had something easy enough to scale across every area of the business," Jaclyn explains. "Teams had different tools locked to particular areas. By giving Accord to everyone, it's become a single point of truth as we pass deals between teams."

What's Next: "We're continuing to embed all our sales processes into Accord," Jaclyn shares. "The Accord team has been super hands-on, willing to build their product roadmap alongside us as we continue to roll out to more teams."

Key Takeaways for Revenue Leaders

• Start with Your Best: "Get it in the hands of your sellers, especially those that are really strong," Christine recommends. 
• Listen to the Field: "The field really, really wanted the tool," making adoption far easier than typical top-down rollouts.
• Use Champions: "We leaned heavily on having sellers champion it," Christine notes. "Much more buy-in when sellers and directors were happy to get up on stage and talk about it."