Highspot Blog

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 ›

Sales enablement has revealed itself to be an increasingly critical contributor to B2B sales growth, giving businesses a powerful advantage in connecting with today’s modern buyers. This is just one of the many insights that come out of this year’s State of Sales Enablement report.

This year’s report shows the gap in success between those with and without formal sales enablement programs is widening.

In the report, which is now available for download, you’ll see that sales enablement is transformational in companies. This tectonic shift is creating more empowered and productive sales organizations, and it further illustrates the importance of enacting or updating a sales enablement strategy quickly—before competitors gain the edge.

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You’ve done your annual company sales kickoff… There was sales training, product training, dynamic speakers, team-building social events, food, frivolity—maybe there was even a little role playing to practice those newly formed sales skills. But here’s the question: was it a total waste of time and money? Was it just an excuse to schmooze?

The typical AE spends 2.7 years on the job* and takes 4.7 months to ramp—often more. So, it’s essential to do something to train and keep that AE on track to retire quota. If you’re wondering what the return is on your investment in SKO every year, you’re not alone.

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Keeping up with buyers today is exhausting. Their behaviors are constantly shifting, and they do more research up-front and on their own than ever before. According to CEB, the average B2B buyer gets 57 percent of the way through their purchase decision before ever engaging a supplier sales rep.

But ponder this: the modern sales rep doesn’t have a problem with any of that. The top echelon of sales reps is knocking it out of the park even in today’s buyer-first environment. Why? Because they’ve figured out what works. Sales enablement teams have the power to lead a shift across the sales organization to update old school “conventional wisdom” and modernize the way reps work.

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The most important metric for sales at the end of the day is quota attainment. The calculation is straightforward: take the total sales that a rep, region or team closes over a certain time period and divide it by the quota for that same period. As an example, if a sales team meets its quota target for a given period, it would achieve 100% sales quota attainment. If it closes only half of the quota target, it would achieve 50%.

But there’s a few problems with sales quota attainment:

1. The quick fix for poor sales quota attainment is to get rid of lower performing sales reps. According to CSO Insights, an average sales team’s annual turnover is around 25 percent. But ironically, the quick-fix approach to improving attainment backfires. Sales teams soon find themselves having to hire, onboard, train, ramp, and transition pipeline to a large portion of their constantly churning sales organization. And quota attainment actually suffers as a result.
2. Sales quota attainment is a lagging indicator. That means some really important things have to happen before a rep can successfully retire quota – like getting trained, delivering the pitch, and engaging with prospects. By over-focusing on quota attainment these important activities are overlooked.

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“That’s how we’ve always done it.” Some of the most expensive words in any business.

Whether it be tools, processes or mentalities, tradition often becomes the scapegoat when faced with the possibility of new. Longstanding conventions seem like a brick wall, and it is easy to become blind to the possibility of change.

In the information era we live in, there is an abundance of knowledge, news and resources available, yet it seems as though they are often overlooked, until there is a critical need that compels us to notice. Proactivity is therefore critical: organizations should always strive to improve and refine processes, and as you become aware of a need for a process improvement or software enhancement, the next steps are vital. Yet, despite their importance, these next steps can certainly feel ominous, creating an uncertainty of what to do and how to begin. Tradition can seem like the easy way out.

As with most tasks, dealing with this uncertainty proves to be the hardest part. Fortunately, while each situation is unique, the general process itself can be broken down into a few, simple steps. So, where do you start? Continue reading article ›