Highspot Blog

Organizational process design is paramount to successful leadership. Intentional or not, we construct and model the communication frameworks that govern the way our teams make decisions. Ideally, we approach this responsibility deliberately, establishing processes that empower where empowerment matters; that safeguard where boundaries are called for; that flex and harden and stretch; that encourage outcomes consistent with our guiding principles. Inevitably, the processes we adopt won’t just guide our decisions — in tangible ways, the processes are the decisions.

In a growing company, two business-critical examples of where process-as-decision has lasting and material consequences are hiring and product development. I’d like to briefly explain why, and encourage greater appreciation for the significance of value-driven, intentional process design.

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I used to work with a woman who would go to the local coffee shop to make prospecting calls. She used to say, “They drink the caffeine and I feed off of their energy.”

A creative co-worker of mine can’t function in the office when he’s searching for ideas. He works from home where it’s quieter.

I find it impossible to work without using two screens. Switching back and forth on one screen drives me bananas.

Your work environment can be motivating or demotivating. When you’re in a particular place, you tend to do (or not do) specific things. You feel different depending on where you are and what’s around you.

In RAIN Group’s latest Extreme Productivity Benchmark Report, more than 2,300 sellers and business professionals were asked about their work habits and behaviors. Analysts reviewed their responses through the lenses of productivity, job performance, happiness, and job satisfaction. The findings revealed that the Extremely Productive (the XP) are particularly tuned in to their environments. They are 3.3 times more likely to organize their work environment to maximize productivity.

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A great first week of onboarding is not enough to accelerate new hire time-to-productivity. There is a gap in many organizations’ approaches to preparing sellers to lead compelling and repeatable customer conversations. Closing this gap means preparing new reps to lead an effective sales meeting through “conversation mastery.”

Conversation mastery is an accelerator to onboarding success—time-to-productivity, time-to-first deal, and a robust pipeline. Without conversation mastery, a new salesperson will not have the confidence or ability to get the initial customer meeting, build a healthy pipeline, and move deals through the sales cycle.

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The cutting edge can be a lonely place to work. While sales enablement has been around for years, we’re now inventing the future of this category thanks to incredible technology and methodology advances. This means many of us in the enablement community are feeling both the thrill of new horizons and the challenges of trailblazing. This rollercoaster means that we’re banding together like never before, creating a swell of demand for community events that elevate the art and science of enablement.

It’s no wonder that the Sales Enablement Soirée has gone global. Developed in partnership with Sales Enablement PRO, the Sales Enablement Soirée is the only industry event designed specifically for this ever-growing community. What began as a way to unite and encourage networking has grown to an event that draws thousands of attendees across three major cities spanning two continents.

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New Release for Microsoft AppSource Delivers AI-driven Content to Improve Buyer Engagement Across Entire Sales Process

SEATTLE, June 11, 2019 – Highspot, the highest customer-rated sales enablement platform, today launched a new integration with Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales, which is available on Microsoft AppSource. Joint customers can now leverage Highspot’s full suite of capabilities directly within their Dynamics 365 environment to elevate buyer engagement and ultimately, further accelerate revenue growth.

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Technology Leader in Burgeoning Sales Enablement Category Is More Than Doubling Across Key Business Metrics

SEATTLE, June 4, 2019 – Highspot, the highest customer-rated sales enablement platform, today announced it has secured $60 million in Series D funding. ICONIQ Capital led the round, with participation from new investor Sapphire Ventures and all existing investors including Madrona Venture Group, OpenView, Salesforce Ventures and Shasta Ventures. The investment will fuel Highspot’s global expansion and further extend its technology leadership in the sales enablement category. Highspot’s revenue, customer base, existing customer expansion and employee count are all more than doubling year-over-year. Hundreds of companies are using the Highspot platform to empower customer-facing teams and partners, elevate the customer experience, and ultimately, accelerate revenue growth.

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How do you guide your sales team to achieve better results? The answer lies in using the right tools and strategies to improve sales productivity.

On an intuitive level, most team leaders and managers understand that the more buyers your team can engage (within a given period of time), the more deals they’ll close for your company. It’s simple enough: if your team used to reach out to 10 buyers per hour in the past, and they now reach out to 20 buyers per hour, assuming that their closing rate remains the same, you’ll get 2x the amount of successful deals.

There are various ways you can go about boosting sales productivity (for instance: setting up training sessions and getting your reps to read the best books on sales), but the most effective thing you can do is invest in a sales productivity tool or sales effectiveness tool for your team.

In this article, we walk you through the different categories of sales productivity tools that can turn your team into a lean, mean, revenue-generating machine.

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Seventy-six percent of The Extremely Productive (The XP) hold themselves accountable for doing what they tell themselves they’re going to do. Only 34% of The Rest hold themselves to this same level of accountability.

In RAIN Group’s new Extreme Productivity Benchmark Report, which includes data from 2,377 respondents, “holding yourself accountable” was the top behavior exhibited by The XP. It was also the No. 1 key driver of Extreme Productivity, and the behavior that represented the biggest difference between The XP and The Rest.

The data is clear: No matter if you’re in sales, marketing, or another field, the importance of holding yourself accountable can’t be understated. If you can master this, you’ll stay focused and achieve greater success.

Here are three ways to improve self-accountability.

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Every founder anticipates the moment when their business must scale because rapid growth demands it. But growing a business is as challenging as it is exhilarating.

That’s because it’s difficult to hire, train, and enable a sales force capable of sustained growth. Only 16% of sales leaders are confident that they have the talent they need to succeed in the future. Research conducted by Xerox showed that 87% of the new knowledge learned in sales training is lost within 12 weeks. And once they’re trained, up to 1/3 of a sales professional’s time is spent looking for or creating content to share with prospects.

Though harrowing, these numbers reveal an opportunity for operational changes that can optimize the sales process from onboarding to content. The solution I’m referring to is sales enablement.

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You need the skills to perform and the content to deliver.

Neil Armstrong was the first man on the moon. That’s pretty well known. What’s less well-known is his distinguished service as a fighter pilot in the Korean war and his close brush with disaster. On his seventh mission, the wing of Armstrong’s Panther jet clipped an anti-aircraft cable and was cut completely in half. With his plane mortally wounded, Armstrong prepared to bail out, but he had one problem — he had never received proper ejection training.

So, what did Armstrong do? He grabbed the flight manual and studied in the nick of time, learning the protocol and following the steps to make it out alive.

A key moment with a customer isn’t quite as life-and-death as bailing out of a wounded fighter jet — but there is an interesting analogy in this story worth exploring.

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