Tag: Sales Enablement

RingDNA Releases Guided Selling

Sales Enablement vendor RingDNA released Guided Selling, a set of Next Best Actions (NBA) for sales reps.  Guided Selling advises sales reps on what to do, when to do it, whom to contact, and what messaging to employ.  Sales managers can create and deploy preferred playbooks to their salesforce, even without face-to-face training.  Both inbound and outbound selling plays are supported, helping “implement proven playbooks at scale.”

“When you know what winning deals look and sound like, you know exactly where to focus to improve outcomes,” said RingDNA CEO Howard Brown.  “Guided selling uses artificial intelligence to provide revenue teams with tools, insights, and next best actions necessary to win deals, grow accounts, maximize revenue.”

“It’s a fool’s errand to expect a 22-year-old sales development rep (SDR) fresh out of university to develop a consistent, scalable, repeatable prioritization, execution, and qualification process.  Be prescriptive in your expectations and methodical in the tools you arm your teams with…for the overwhelming majority of your team—who have never held full-time, quota-carrying roles and aren’t able to think strategically yet—you must be prescriptive.  You need to show them how to think strategically and tactically as they approach their daily work.”

TOPO analyst Phoebe Conybeare

Guided Selling is embedded into the Salesforce Sales Cloud and delivers prioritized actions for opportunities, contacts, and leads, helping reduce sales rep planning time.  The AI-powered task list recommends the tasks that will put sales reps on “the shortest path to revenue.”  The task list is dynamic, updating based upon prospect behavior.  Thus, priorities are reassessed based on prospect interaction with e-mails, web forms, multi-media, and social media.

Guided Selling includes a set of best-practices templates based upon billions of sales interactions monitored by RingDNA since its 2012 launch. Salesforce Dashboards help managers optimize cadences and messaging, allowing them to test and refine rep workflows.  Cadence activities across e-mail, phone, text, and social are synchronized with Salesforce.

Gartner stated that 51% of sales organizations have deployed or plan to deploy algorithmic-guided selling over the next five years.

“Intended to augment more traditional sales tools, such as sales playbooks, algorithmic-guided selling uses sales data to boost the seller’s ability to engage with prospects…Algorithmic-guided selling leverages artificial intelligence technology and existing sales data to guide sellers through deals, automating manual sales actions while reducing the need for individual seller judgment in the sales process.”

Tad Travis, Gartner VP of Research, “Algorithmic-Guided Selling to Have Significant Impact on Sales Productivity”

“In this new remote paradigm, companies are having to do more with less,” said Brown.  “Guided Selling is a total game-changer for sales teams, as it uses AI to focus reps on next best actions while empowering them to build stronger relationships and better solve customer problems.”

Guided Selling is Generally Available.

Seismic Interactive Content

Sales Enablement vendor Seismic released Interactive Content, a set of microapps and LiveContent presentations that lets remote sales reps “come close to mimicking an in-person environment, in which they are adapting to buyer reactions and feedback in near real-time.”  Interactive Content helps revenue organization deliver “immersive, engaging” digital experiences “with just a few clicks.”

A Tiled integration supports Seismic microapps that delivers “memorable evergreen content like digital brochures, pitch decks, 3D interactive visuals, and more.”

“Microapps unleash creative storytelling.  Organizations that deliver their messages in conversational, self-directed ways will win.  Those that don’t will be left behind,” said Tiled CEO Darrell Swain.  “Linear content will ultimately go the way of print.  We are moving into an experiential era that requires a new interactive content format that allows for the creation of rich, immersive experiences, without the need for code.”

Tiled microapps deliver “immersive experiences” with “evergreen content that captures buyers’ attention.”  The apps are interactive and drive engagement through stories “that resonate in a way buyers will remember.”

Seismic describes microapps as “a new content type that combines the interactivity of a mini-website or an app with the ease of document delivery.  Use cases include event invites, digital product brochures, buyer’s guides, and eBooks.

The microapp builder resides within Seismic’s Content Manager and supports drag n’ drop, interactive ‘tiles’ that deliver content as “scrollable image galleries and panes, in-line videos, quizzes, and more.”  The builder is a no-code service that supports adaptive display across mobile, desktop, and tablets.  Microapps may be reviewed and approved before publishing to targeted audiences.

While microapps support one-to-many interactive communications at the top of the funnel, LiveContent supports one-to-one, personalized communications at the bottom of the funnel.  LiveContent is built with familiar authoring tools that “easily transform traditional presentations into personalized, memorable, dynamic stories.”  Content is delivered in an “always-on” mode, as it is “intended to be.”

Seismic LiveContent converts standard presentations with embedded animations, transitions, videos, GIFs, and voiceovers “delivered remotely, exactly how a seller would deliver in person: in presentation mode.”  Seismic stores the original presentation file, allowing content creators to update LiveContent presentations based on page-by-page engagement analytics quickly.  The initial release supports Microsoft PowerPoint, but additional presentation formats will “follow soon.”

“Presentations are not intended to just be scrolled through,” said Seismic CEO Doug Winter.  “LiveContent allows a buyer to engage with a presentation remotely in a similar way that a seller would engage a buyer in person.  With our Summer 2020 release, we are bringing sales content to life.”

According to Seismic, interactive content is preferred to static material, with double the conversion rate of “passive” content.  91% of buyers prefer interactive/visual content and are twice as likely to share interactive content.  81% of marketers agree that interactive content grabs attention, and 45% believe that its effective for educating prospects (vs. 6% for static content).  88% contend that it is effective at differentiating the brand.

The CSO Insights 2019 Sales Enablement report found that 57.7% of buyers saw little difference between sellers with vendors blending together.  Only 31.9% of buyers felt that at least one vendor succeeded in differentiating itself.

Interactive content supports flexible navigation allowing reps to quickly transition to relevant use cases, products, or services during sales conversations.  “You can get a broad set of content—as large as any slide deck—and deep content that drills down into the details of your business solutions,” blogged Seismic Senior Content Manager Neicole Crepeau.  “But it doesn’t have to feel burdensome, and it can be easy to navigate in the middle of a meeting.”

Users can embed questionnaires, videos, assessments, and calculators.  They can let clients drive the discussion, “asking them to enter information or answer questions and choose what they want to know more about,” continued Crepeau.  “By flipping the conversation and putting the customer in the driver’s seat during a meeting, you ensure engagement and that you’re truly talking about topics that resonate with the prospect.”

“Buyer expectations are high, and if the content brands are serving them is not relevant or engaging, they will disregard it.  Today it’s not just about what you say; it’s also how you say it.  Content fatigue and information overload have become particularly pronounced in our new all-digital work environment.  Sellers and marketers are in need of content types that captivate their audiences and move them through the buyer journey faster.”

Seismic CEO Doug Winter

Interactive Content will be available as an add-on service.  Seismic does not disclose its pricing.

Seismic Partner Ecosystem

Sales Enablement vendor Seismic supports over one hundred technology vendor integrations.  Seismic claims to have the “sales enablement industry’s largest partner ecosystem,” with multiple CRM, MAP, and sales engagement partnerships.

“Seismic is purpose-built to work with any application to enhance customer experiences, increase platform engagement, and add value throughout a company’s sales and marketing technology stack,” stated the firm.

Seismic published the following list of significant integrations by category:

  • Customer Intelligence: Gong, Introhive
  • CRM: Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, SugarCRM, Oracle, Pegasystems
  • Sales Readiness: Lessonly, Brainshark, MindTickle, Allego
  • Sales Engagement: SalesLoft, Outreach, Salesvue
  • Productivity: Office 365, GSuite, Microsoft Teams, Slack
  • Business Intelligence: Snowflake, Domo, Clari, Sisense
  • Marketing: Oracle Eloqua, Adobe Marketo, Adobe Marketing Cloud

Seismic has also partnered with over twenty global consulting partners that “are helping customers drive more value from their sales enablement investment, as well as offering local language and in-country support.”

Seismic offers an enterprise-grade content management system which recommends the next-best action for content.  The platform employs analytics to recommend which content is most likely to resonate with a prospect based on buying stage, vertical, etc.

Seismic recently partnered with Industry intelligence vendor Vertical IQ.

Seismic – Vertical IQ Partnership

Seismic announced a partnership with Vertical IQ to deliver industry-specific insights within its Sales Enablement Platform.  Vertical IQ industry overviews will be delivered through Seismic’s dynamic content automation tool, LiveDocs, allowing bankers to quickly assemble client-facing content tailored to the client.  Vertical IQ covers over 325 industries with coverage of industry risks, quarterly insights, key financial benchmarks, and industry growth data.  Coverage of niche industries and regional economic data are also available from within Seismic but are not part of the LiveDocs integration.

Insights can be presented in-person, in print, or via digital devices and are packaged into Seismic templates.

The integration “helps bankers develop hyper-personalized communications with clients and prospects,” stated Vertical IQ CMO David Buffaloe.  “Our industry content is available directly through their platform, allowing bankers to develop customized presentation slides based on the prospects specific industry.”

Vertical IQ content is available to customers outside of the banking space, but the initial implementation was developed with Fulton Bank.  “We started with the joint focus on banking/financial services organizations; however, anyone that uses Seismic and sells to multiple industries would see value,” said Buffaloe.

Buffaloe called the integration a “big win for users” as bank leaders are looking to reduce the number of logins for conducting account research and support.

A Gartner survey found that bankers that deliver insights to their customers generate 94% higher fees.

Relationship Managers (RMs) at banks and credit unions support a broad set of customers and industries, making it difficult to develop deep expertise in individual industries.  Deploying on-demand, industry-specific intelligence helps RMs quickly come up to speed on an industry, ask intelligent questions of owners and financial professionals, and assemble custom presentations for winning business.  Industry-specific content also assists customers in their decision making and supports more valuable meetings between RMs and customers.

“Conversations between a banker and client should go both ways.  Vertical IQ and Seismic’s solution ensures conversations are backed by real-time, tailored insights so bankers can engage in better discussions and act as a trusted advisor.  This helps them bring unique value and expertise to the table to win, grow and retain more business.”

Vertical IQ CEO Bobby Martin

A recent JD Power survey of small businesses found that most were dissatisfied with their bankers’ ability to meet their needs and expectations.  Only 37% of small business customers felt that banks appreciated their business, and only 32% felt that banks understood their business.

According to Bob Neuhaus, VP of Financial Services at JD Power, “Banks need to focus on better integrating high-touch resources with innovative digital tools to meet the demands of small business.”

“Business customers have come to expect hyper-personalized interactions that meet the standards that are now common-place in their personal lives,” said Bill Finnegan, Managing Director, Financial Services Marketing at Seismic.  “We’re thrilled about our partnership with Vertical IQ because of the competitive advantage it will offer our banking customers.  The ability to generate rich industry insights on-the-fly in a marketing-approved format will help bankers elevate client conversations from just product, to industry-specific trends, advice, and guidance.  It allows bankers to be a consultative partner that demonstrates their bank truly understands their business.”

Vertical IQ has launched several integrations over the past year to deliver its industry research within sales and banking workflows.  Recent partnerships include Salesforce, RelPro, and Seismic.  Vertical IQ profiles are written in plain English for non-experts in financial services industries.  Strategic sales reps also leverage Vertical IQ.

The Vertical IQ integration is being sold by Seismic as an add-on to their current sales enablement solution.

Market Insights Newsletter Splits in Half

This was one of the two weeks a year that I take off from writing my Market Insights Newsletter, but I wanted to let you know that I’m splitting the newsletter into two newsletters.  When I started writing the Market Insights Newsletter back in 2012, it focused on Sales Intelligence, Social Selling, and B2B DaaS.  Since then, B2B DaaS has increased greatly in importance, and I’ve added adjacent topics including Sales Engagement Platforms, data privacy / compliance, ABM, and Customer Data Platforms.  The result was a doubling in the length of the newsletter and an increase in the frequency that articles were bumped.  Some features are often bumped for a month or longer due to length.

In August, I took my summer vacation, but there was no August news break.  It took me a few months to catch up on announcements from that week.  This led me to the realization that I needed to split my newsletter in half to improve both topical focus and story currency.  The split will also allow me to profile more startups.

Most of my readers will continue to receive a Sales Intelligence (SI) newsletter which covers

  • Sales Intelligence
  • B2B DaaS
  • Data Hygiene
  • ABM
  • B2B Data (Companies, Contacts, Intent, Technographics, and Triggers)
  • Customer Data Platforms
  • Compliance (GDPR, CCPD, KYC, AML, PEP)

The SI edition of Market Insights will continue to publish on Sundays.

The new Sales Engagement (SE) newsletter covers

  • Sales Engagement Platforms
  • Hybrid Engagement Platforms (Sales Intelligence + ICP / TAM + Sales Engagement)
  • Sales Engagement Platform Ecosystem (e.g. Chat, Video, Attribution, Meeting Management, Analytics)
  • Sales Enablement

The SE edition will publish on Mondays.

Contact me if you’d like to be set up with a trial edition of either newsletter. I offer SMB pricing for startups, so don’t assume that I am unaffordable like other analyst services.

Phil Garlick Joins Brainshark

Phil Garlick joined sales enablement vendor Brainshark as their VP of Corporate Development and Strategic Partnerships.  Garlick held a similar role at Zoominfo prior to its February acquisition by DiscoverOrg.  Before Zoominfo, Garlick was a founder of OneSource Information Services, a pioneer in the sales intelligence space.  He guided the sales and marketing functions before ascending to President.  He is joining Brainshark at a point when partnerships and integrated workflows are critical for sales and marketing teams.

“Phil’s deep experience in the sales intelligence and sales enablement markets, and his track record of success driving business growth, make him a valuable asset to our leadership team,” said Brainshark CEO Greg Flynn. “As Brainshark continues to expand its network of strategic partnerships, we’re confident that Phil’s expertise and customer-centric approach will help us continue to forge strong alliances that deliver great value to clients and improve their sales outcomes.”

Brainshark supports content authoring & management, sales training, video coaching & practice, dashboards & analytics, and creative services.

Over the past half-decade, there has been a steady flow of former OneSource sales reps and management to Brainshark.  Brainshark’s Chief Sales Officer, Colleen Honan, held a similar role at OneSource alongside Garlick.

“I’ve long admired Brainshark’s commitment to helping companies improve the readiness and results of their sales teams. This is a persistent challenge for organizations across industries and an area I’m passionate about. As Brainshark continues to innovate and enable sales teams to maximize their productivity, it’s an exciting time to join the company.”

Phil Garlick, Brainshark VP of Corporate Development and Strategic Partnerships

Note: Garlick was the President of OneSource Information Services while I was a Product Marketing Manager.

Drift Acquires Siftrock; Launches Product & Partnerships at HYPERGROWTH

Drift Botflow
Drift Botflow

At their HYPERGROWTH user conference this week, Drift announced the acquisition of email reply management firm Siftrock which tracks email replies, routes them to sales reps, and syncs data with marketing automation platforms.  Siftrock will be integrated into Drift’s Assistant for Marketing.

“Last year, we started talking about reinventing email and focusing on conversations and replies instead of opens and clicks,” said CEO David Cancel. “Siftrock has built a best-in-class product that manages email replies at scale, and this acquisition will help us deliver on that vision even faster. But most importantly, this is a move that adds real value to both of our customer bases immediately.”

Drift Assistant for Marketing includes email auto-reply detection for updating MAPs and Salesforce when execs change jobs or their emails bounce.  The service also drives email calls to action to conversational landing pages instead of a traditional landing page.

A new Conversational Advertising capability which builds conversations around advertising views was also unveiled.  Instead of sending prospects from ads to webforms, users are brought into conversations.

“With traditional advertising it’s always been about later,” said Cancel. “You drive people to a landing page, get them to fill out a form, and then someone at the company contacts you later.  But with Conversational Advertising, it’s all about right now. We can close the gap and help buyers connect with a business instantly by taking them right from an ad to a conversation to get the answers they need instantly.”

At HYPERGROWTH, Drift rolled out partnerships with Outreach, Marketo, and Demandbase.  Last month, they announced Drift Intel, a lead enrichment service powered by Clearbit.

“The key to high-performing ABM strategies is connecting marketing programs directly to sales activity,” said Demandbase CEO Chris Golec. “We are incredibly excited to be the exclusive launch partner for Drift’s new Conversational Advertising product because now B2B marketers can target specific companies with our account-based advertising, and move to a conversation with sales in a single click. The time from engagement to conversation to pipeline has never been faster.”

“Great conversations are the most powerful way to drive conversion,” said Outreach CEO Manny Medina. “To accomplish this, you must have a consistent customer journey, from calls and emails to your buyer’s experience on your website. Now sales and marketing teams can share context from every touchpoint in the customer journey to drive stronger results wherever they communicate with their buyers.”

A Drift Assistant for Sales email feature helps reps prepare for meetings with briefings on the firm’s tech stack, a summary of previous conversations, and an analysis of recent website activity.  Other features include no show and cancellation rescheduling and next step recommendations (e.g. meeting follow up notes),

“B2B businesses have gone digital, but we haven’t been able to move on from all of the paperwork,” commented Cancel. “Only a third of a sales reps time is actually spent selling, with over 60 percent of their time wasted on administrative tasks and meetings.

SalesLoft Named Top Midsize Workplace in Atlanta

One of the New Features Being Shown at Rainmaker 2018 is an Integrated Meeting Schedule.
One of the new features being shown at Rainmaker 2018 is an integrated meeting scheduler.

Congratulations to SalesLoft on being named the Top Midsize Workplace in Atlanta. The sales enablement firm added 120 employees over the past year to 220 headcount. SalesLoft is looking to add another 150 employees in 2018.

“SalesLoft’s core values are like motivational mantras: Team over self, bias towards action, focus on results, put customers first and glass half full.

  • Atlanta Journal Constitution

CEO Kyle Porter has long stressed the value of transparency at SalesLoft with Sunday evening company-wide emails and Friday all-hands meetings where staff are encouraged to ask any question.

“What I’ve constantly heard is just massive amounts of appreciation for being kept in the loop,” he said.

The firm also emphasizes recognition, cross-team interactions, career development, and teamwork. Chessboards in the lobby foster friendly competition. “It shows that salespeople can have a scientific mind and that engineers can have a relational mind, and that’s really the exact thing that we do for our customers, is we bring the science and relationships together,” said Porter.

SalesLoft is holding its annual Rainmaker conference in Atlanta this week.

Social Selling Benefits

Sales Research company CSO Insights and Seismic, a sales enablement vendor, asked 400 global B2B professionals about the benefits of social selling tools.  These tools include sales enablement, social listening, and social marketing solutions.  A full 38% weren’t sure of the benefits of these tools speaking to a need for vendors to better explain their value and provide user metrics.

The problem of value attribution has long been an issue with sales intelligence services as well, but as sales intelligence has become more tightly tied into the overall sales and marketing process, clear benefits such as reduced time spent keying and maintaining account information and the direct display of account intelligence within CRM I-frames have helped validate sales intelligence tools.

Likewise, B2B professionals found the biggest benefits of social selling tools to be reduced account / contact research time (39%), an increase in the number of leads (33%) and deeper client relationships (31%).  Broader process improvements were noted at lower rates with improved lead conversion (24%), shorter sales cycles (14%), and increased win rates on forecasted deals (13%) rounding out the benefits.

However, when the sub-group of professionals at firms which have aligned their social marketing and selling strategies was assessed, CSO Insights found a sixteen percent improvement in win rates.  Furthermore, the benefits were better understood with 57% enjoying more leads and 56% found deeper client relationships.  Amongst this group, only 18% were unsure about the benefits of social selling tools.  Thus, CSO Insights concluded that the high percentage of B2B professionals doubting the value of social selling tools was due to “a lack of maturity.”

CSO Insights defined social engagement as “equipping salespeople with skills, tools, and content to successfully navigate the change, decision, and value dynamics along the entire customer’s journey by leveraging social media.”  I find this definition a bit limiting operationally for vendors as it focuses exclusively on social media.  Both social selling and sales intelligence vendors have made the mistake of ignoring each other.  There are a few exceptions such as LinkedIn Sales Navigator adding a news feed and InsideView’s integrated social media Buzz tab, but most vendors either focus on profiles and news alerts/triggers or social monitoring and messaging.  The lack of fully integrated social monitoring and messaging tools within sales intelligence platforms remains a missed opportunity to improve sales intelligence products.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator offers Lead (executive) and company news alongside LinkedIn updates. Sales reps can filter for news or shares.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator offers Lead (executive) and Company News alongside LinkedIn updates. Sales reps can filter for news or shares.

A 2015 CSO Insights study of sales reps found that 33% felt social selling training was in need of a major redesign and 31% felt the training needs improvement.  CSO Insights warns against reducing social selling training to LinkedIn or Twitter training.  Research Director Tamara Schenk cautions that lessons from CRM training were not transferred to social selling training. “Salespeople are again asked to take tool training when at the same time the tool and the required skills have not yet been integrated into the current sales system, methodologies and processes. The result is the same. The new tool, social selling, is then considered as a time-consuming add-on rather than an effective enabler to create more and better business.”

Schenk noted that social strategy needs to be defined with marketing.  “An organization’s social strategy has to be aligned along the customer’s journey. [Sales] Enablement leaders are in an ideal position to orchestrate this process. After that, social selling skills have to be integrated in the current methodologies, engagement principles, and processes. Only then, not earlier, can social selling training services be designed and provided. And using the technology effectively is just one element. Another key element is the content challenge. Relevant and valuable content to attract prospects has to be made available for salespeople, ideally on the sales enablement platform with no further internal obstacles to access this content.”

The CSO Insights research was conducted in July by Schenk and Strategic Advisor Jim Dickie.  The study was based upon responses from B2B sales managers (61%), sales ops (21%), marketing (8%) and other roles located in North America (59%) and rest of world (41%).