Highspot Blog

ABC: The motivational sales shorthand for “Always Be Closing” might as well also stand for “Always Be Communicating,” because sales runs on communication. From opening pitch to closing deal, effective communication supports every step in the buyer’s journey and provides a critical link between sellers and internal teams such as marketing.

But sales communication can be a double-edged sword. While its importance in providing sales with critical connections is undeniable, it has the potential to overwhelm or distract sellers from their goals if there is no strategy guiding it. Quality, not quantity, is the key for sales leaders looking to create effective sales communication strategies for their teams. After all, sending more email updates won’t make your sales team any more informed if they aren’t finding the content relevant, valuable, or easily accessible. The guiding goal of any successful sales communication strategy should be to provide salespeople with the right information, in the right place, and at the right time.

Read on for the who, what, when, where, how, and why of developing a sales communication strategy. With these best practices, you’ll have a framework for communicating with your sales team that will keep them informed, prepared, and focused on the goals that matter.

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The word is out — on the evening of June 12, Highspot earned recognition as the Best Sales Enablement Platform and Best Content Management Platform by the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) as part of the 2018 CODiE Awards, the industry’s only peer-reviewed awards program.

A night of good cheer and champagne ensued at the award ceremony in San Francisco, where the team celebrated with companies at the forefront of business innovation.

Looking back on how Highspot rose above the competition to join past winners including Cision, Cisco Systems, and Pitchbook Data, the journey began with a product demonstration in front of expert reviewers, including software and business technology experts, analysts, media, bloggers, bankers, and investors. In the second round, SIIA members voted on the finalist products. The scores from both rounds were tabulated to select the winners.

What set Highspot apart? With judges providing feedback such as, “able to integrate into a company’s workflow on multiple levels in multiple ways,” the platform clearly made an impression.

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Digital transformation — two words anyone who has so much as dabbled in the tech space has heard time and time again. Dubbed by SiriusDecisions as the “buzziest buzzword in B2B,” digital transformation means different things to different organizations. One of the areas where digital transformation is becoming increasingly relevant is in how sellers relate to their customers.

The results of SiriusDecisions’ 2018 Digital Transformation Survey showed that 55 percent of respondents believed that the goal of digital transformation should be on changing engagement with buyers and customers. In other words, how we relate to our customers is rapidly changing. Your buyer needs to be reached quicker with exactly the information they’re looking for, and now more than ever it’s important to invest in digitizing your sales force. Continue reading article ›

Nobody comes to Las Vegas hoping they’ll lose. In Vegas, you can’t help but aim to win — and win big. The same goes for sales. But unlike in Vegas, where the path to success is as simple as walking up to a blackjack table, winning in sales takes more time, more energy, and more strategy. That’s where sales enablement comes in.

Attending SiriusDecisions Summit 2018 last week in Las Vegas was extremely informative for those in the sales enablement function. Nearly every session that I attended discussed sales enablement in some regard—and the sessions that I am about to recap went a step further to show how successful sales enablement can lead to big sales and marketing wins.Continue reading article ›

More great news coming out of Highspot: We’ve won an American Business Award for Most Innovative Tech Company of the Year from the Stevies^®!

According to the American Business Award judges, “Highspot created integrations across learning management platforms to further enhance the ability for sellers to sell. Highspot has further developed its artificial intelligence capabilities over the course of last year.”

“All of us at Highspot are honored to be recognized by the American Business Awards alongside many other impressive companies,” said Jake Braly, vice president of marketing at Highspot. “The fact that this award is focused on innovation highlights the hard work of our product and engineering teams — dedicated to building beautifully designed sales enablement software with a spark of magic, that marketers and sales reps love.”Continue reading article ›

Sales enablement has become mission-critical to businesses. As part of the Highspot “Hot Shots” series, today we’ll hear insights from Mike Kunkle, a highly respected sales transformation architect and internationally recognized sales training and sales enablement expert. He has spent 24 years as a corporate leader and consultant, helping companies drive dramatic revenue growth through his best-in-class learning strategies and effective sales transformation methodologies. Today, Mike is the VP of Sales Transformation Services for Fast Lane Digital (a new division of Fast Lane Consulting & Education Services) and founder of Transforming Sales Results, LLC.

What do you see as the most critical aspect of sales enablement and why?

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Thanks to technology, sales is now a new game. Buyers have already researched your product (and the competition) and are much further down their purchasing process before they even meet your sales rep. In fact, 64.5% of sales reps have reported experiencing more complex sales processes. This means that your reps need sales readiness and training to be ready for more complex and advanced conversations in their meetings and demos.Continue reading article ›

When sales enablement is evolving and growing as fast as it is, it’s helpful to hear how others approach it, and where sales enablement is going next. Today we begin a new blog series highlighting the expertise of “hot shots” of the sales enablement world. We asked questions of Ben Cotton, a thought leader who leads EMEA sales enablement for HubSpot out of Dublin, Ireland. He works at the intersection of sales and marketing and uses deal support, content, data and education to help HubSpot’s sales organization succeed. Ben is passionate about building sales and marketing alignment, as well as helping businesses create predictable recurring revenue.

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The past seven days have been very big for Highspot technology integrations and partnerships. Following last Monday’s announcement of the Highspot Everywhere technology integration program, today we announced a new partnership with SalesLoft to deliver the only native sales enablement integration within the SalesLoft platform.

There was a preview of the integration last week at SalesLoft’s annual user conference, Rainmaker 2018, in Atlanta! Sean Kester, VP of Product Strategy, demoed the native integration on stage as one of three marquee integration partners.  

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Sellers don’t ever stop selling. They are always on the go, and when a buyer needs something, a great seller knows he or she needs to engage quickly. Modern buyers want to buy from modern sellers–and that’s a core part of the Highspot approach to sales enablement.

As part of our approach to adding value to sellers and marketers no matter where they are, we’re announcing Highspot Everywhere, a technology integration program with more than 50 cloud, on-premises, and mobile integrations. It’s the most comprehensive sales and marketing integration capabilities of any sales enablement platform. We partnered with more than 30 leading technology companies, to make Highspot part of sellers’ everyday workflows, making it easy to engage with buyers everywhere they are.

By empowering marketing and sales teams to curate, publish, discover, and pitch sales assets from anywhere, Highspot Everywhere helps sellers close deals faster, more easily, and in more ways than ever before. Continue reading article ›