Tag: Collaboration

Vidyard Rooms

Vidyard Rooms Invitation and Security Levels

Vidyard formally launched its Vidyard Rooms digital sales room (DSR) to beta.  Vidyard Rooms are available at no charge for both free and subscription clients.  However, Vidyard plans to introduce paid DSR plans in the future.

Vidyard Rooms support personalized videos, tailored demonstrations, recorded meetings, documents, and proposals.  Users can comment on and tag content.  Sellers are notified when new buyers join the room and when content is consumed.

“At Vidyard, we are always looking for ways to help sellers and go-to-market teams create more productive relationships with their buyers,” said COO Jonathan Lister.  “With Vidyard Rooms, we are doing just that – empowering sales professionals to build personal relationships at scale and educate key stakeholders in a way that is timely, convenient, and collaborative.”

Vidyard described it as the first “video-first DSR,” but I’m not sure that video-first provides a significant value add as all DSRs support video (and many include chat).  There are three primary values of DSRs:

  1. Collaboration
  2. Expedited deal onboarding and journey stage transition (i.e., looping in the legal department or handing off from an account manager to a customer success manager).
  3. Engagement metrics. 

There is also a latent opportunity for building out the demand unit, but vendors have not focused on that.  None of these requires a video-first platform but building out the demand unit and engagement metrics call for the DSR to be native to an SEP, ABX platform, or Revenue Intelligence platform that ingests multi-channel signals.  Furthermore, Vidyard is integrated with most of the major vendors in these categories.

As such, Vidyard Rooms are likely to be used primarily by SMBs and in enterprise sales segments that have deployed asynchronous video but not cutting-edge RevTech platforms.

“Demand for Digital Sales Rooms is up 325% year-over-year as post-pandemic digitalization and a shift towards efficient growth put pressure on sales teams to transform the way they work with buyers,” said GTM Partners Chief Analyst Bryan Brown.  “With its unique video-first approach, Vidyard Rooms is a compelling new solution in this emerging market that aims to make digital sales rooms more personal, engaging, and helpful to buyers.”

Vidyard Rooms act as a centralized hub for sharing deal artifacts with stakeholders.

Clari Acquires DealPoint

DealPoint Collaboration Flow

Revenue Intelligence platform Clari announced the acquisition of DealPoint.  DealPoint supports deal management and collaboration by enabling “new visibility for sales teams into the connections and agreements between buyers and sellers.” In addition, DealPoint supports deal rooms and Mutual Action Plans (MAPs), helping reduce friction between buyers and sellers and fostering deal alignment.

“With mutual action plans, sales teams can improve alignment with buyers, drive scalable process and rigor, and improve win rates,” said Clari CEO Andy Byrne. “Our acquisition of DealPoint gives Clari customers a new insight they have never had — a view into what buyers are thinking. Combined with our new execution insights, managers and reps will have comprehensive visibility and new inspection capabilities in one unified workspace.”

At the front end of the collaboration, workflow is deal qualification, including defining the pains, processes, and priorities. Next, the teams develop a joint interactive timeline, team maps, and shared team resources (e.g., case studies, requirements, proposals).  Finally, engagement metrics help reps quickly determine “which buyers are engaged, and who’s just kicking the tires.”

DealPoint monitors milestone completion and warns reps when milestones have been missed, helping keep deals on schedule.

“With a MAP, sellers get instant validation on value prop, buyer team, and timeline. Because both sides are operating from an actual plan, frontline managers can see not only what has been done on a deal, but also what hasn’t been done.

In other words, we know which buyers are serious, which deals are going to stall, and what needs to happen to keep everything running smoothly.

Incorporating those buyer signals gives Clari new insight into deal health that will revolutionize deal inspections, resource allocation, and forecast accuracy for frontline managers.”

Tom Williams, Head of DealPoint

Having a joint plan assists with buy-in, providing a psychological edge for the sales team.  “By providing a clear plan to value, you guide the customer journey and keep the conversation focused on fixing their problem with your product,” states DealPoint.  “Buyers adopt your plan as their own, edging out competitors and reducing surprises.”

Sales Managers also benefit from instituting a repeatable process.  According to DealPoint, 50% of reps quickly abandon new methodologies.  Thus, streamlining the methodology helps ensure buy-in and compliance.

Once integrated with Clari, managers will have even more confidence in forecasts based upon milestone tracking.  Additionally, managers can ask reps what needs to be done to bring the deal back on plan, and sales reps can ask similar questions to buyers, helping foster shared accountability.

Customer Success teams benefit from smooth handoffs and pre-defined expectations.

DealPoint argues that taking a set of small steps helps foster trust that reduces perceived buyer risk as milestones are met.  Likewise, collaborating on a joint plan helps build relationships between the revenue team and the buying committee.

DealPoint comes with the MEDDIC methodology out of the box, but users can implement others.

DealPoint is priced at $59 per rep per month on an annual contract.  Seats include an unlimited number of customers and Mutual Action Plans. In addition, DealPoint is integrated with Salesforce and HubSpot.

Deal Rooms are a logical extension of Revenue Intelligence as they facilitate communications between sales reps, customer success, and buyers.  Collaboration also aligns buyers and sellers, fosters collaboration, reduces the probability of surprises, improves forecast confidence, and gooses close rates.

The integrated Deal Room GA is scheduled for Q4.  Acquisition terms were not announced.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator Q1 Release

LinkedIn Sales Navigator added Custom Account and Lead lists.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator rolled out Custom Account and Lead Lists in Q4 and added List Sharing in Q1 2019.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator began rolling out its Q1 release two weeks ago.  New features include custom list sharing, Sales Navigator Coach, list building exclusion filters, new Sales Navigator Application Platform (SNAP) integrations, and an expanded set of technologies selects.

LinkedIn Sales Solutions VP of Product Management Doug Camplejohn was most excited about custom list sharing, noting that that “selling is a team sport.”

Team members can share lists with other users on their contracts, share comments, and sort by “Last Updated” date so sales reps can stay apprised of updated leads and accounts.  Sales Navigator notifies users when lists are being shared with them.  However, lists reside only in LinkedIn and are not downloadable.

“Now we’re taking lists up a notch by adding the ability for you to share these custom lists between your team members and have comments shared as well. Sales Development Reps can collaborate with Account Executives on their team and share progress on breaking into new accounts. Relationship Managers and Customer Success Representatives can collaborate around the health of their named accounts throughout the customer lifecycle. And Marketing can easily share lists from events with the teams following up on new leads. The possibilities are endless.”


Doug Camplejohn, VP of Product Management, LinkedIn Sales Solutions

LinkedIn has long described Sales Navigator as a system of engagement that worked with systems of record (CRM) and communication (email, social).  Much of the initial focus was on lead messaging and SNAP connectors, but the firm is now placing a greater focus on teamwork.  Shared lead lists are “the first step in a broader strategy to enable collaboration across your selling teams,” wrote the firm.

Lead lists were released in Q4 and quickly employed by users.  250,000 custom lists were created within the first six weeks of availability.  A quarter of active users created custom lists post-launch.

Users can also save Leads and Accounts to custom Lists from partner applications via their broad set of SNAP partners.

LinkedIn stated that “sharing increases visibility of and fosters collaboration for your pipeline.”  Custom lists help teams organize and plan for key leads and accounts within lists: “Sharing allows them to collaborate with others as they research, contact, and advance relationships with those Leads and Accounts.”

Users can track team outreach to prospects, share leads with managers to discuss strategy, segment by source, and customize follow-on activities.

Other screening enhancements include the expansion of technology selects to 30,000 technologies and the addition of seven categories of exclusion criteria for leads: company, geography, seniority level, title, function, industry and school.  Account exclusions are provided for geography and industry.  Camplejohn noted that exclusion filters were one of the top user requests.

Part II covers SNAP partners, SFDC Lightning Setup Console integration, and the new Sales Navigator Coach