Highspot Blog

One of the biggest advantages of companies with successful sales enablement strategies is their ability to maintain focus.  From content mapping through launch and optimization, they’re clear on why they invested, where they’re going, who is involved, and the steps required to reach their goals.  Today we’ll share a framework for how they do it, courtesy of the Highspot services team.  

Platform Value Drivers

Revenue: your sales reps live by it, your marketers are scored against it, and your C-suite monitors it daily.  Illustrated below is a depiction of the ways sales enablement contributes to this all-important metric.  

One of the reasons we like this value pyramid is that it applies equally to sales and marketing teams.  For example, at the foundational level, the ability for sales teams to quickly access the content they need is a reflection of how easy it is for marketing to make all of their company’s best-performing content available on a single platform.  At the next-highest level, platform usage is directly related to the positive experiences and success of other users from both marketing and sales.  At the top, customer engagement is a clear-cut indicator of whether or not platform features are capable of driving the revenue – and value – anticipated from any sales enablement investment.  Finally, all activities lead to increased revenue, the ultimate KPI for sales and marketing.    Continue reading article ›

Earlier this year, we released our State of Sales Enablement report. Full of insights from sales enablement pros across industries and in organizations of all sizes, this benchmark report has become an annual tradition that we look forward to compiling each year.

And now, we’re excited to see that industry analyst SiriusDecisions has taken a different lens and released its own findings in this area. The report is a summary of key findings from a survey of 250 B2B sales enablement professionals from a variety of industries and revenue bands.Continue reading article ›

The business impact of Account-Based Marketing (ABM) cannot be overstated. In just a few short years, it has recast sales and marketing strategies, inspired new technology decisions, and provoked rapid tactical shifts in sales pipeline management. Looking ahead, we anticipate ABM will exert increasing influence over the processes, content, audience engagement, and analytics that drive revenue growth.

Today we’re pleased to announce the availability of Content: Your Ticket to High-Performing ABM.  You can download your copy at the Highspot Resource Library.Continue reading article ›

Last week, Highspot attended Sales 3.0 in San Francisco. For those that don’t know, Sales 3.0 is a long running—and evolving—conference run by Gerhard Gschwandtner, the founder and CEO of Selling Power. It’s devoted to introducing B2B sales leaders to sales-technologies, trends, and strategies to produce increased revenue and improved sales performance, and delivered hugely this year!

Photo of Gerhard Gschwandtner kicking off Sales 3.0

According to Gerhard, Sales 1.0 was about hustle. Sales 2.0 was when everything went online and became a science. And now, Sales 3.0 centers around the app explosion (think Salesforce App Exchange) and the inclusion of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in all aspects of our lives, while balancing technology with our innate human qualities.Continue reading article ›

For sales reps, innovation that matters is innovation that pays.  Today we’ll illustrate how reps win more deals by leveraging modern sales enablement technology to stay focused when others waver.  And how an aligned approach to sales and marketing innovation makes this possible. 

Compare & Contrast

When you first heard about sales enablement, what was the problem you were trying to solve?  How were your existing processes and technologies getting in the way of solving it?  What strategies and tactics did you prioritize?  Chances are, many of the issues encountered in the early days of your sales enablement journey persist today, if in a different and more competitive form.  Odds are equally high that at some point, self-imposed distractions have prevented you from fully solving your original problem.  As a consequence, your sales reps and their revenue goals have suffered. Continue reading article ›

Did we tell attendees what to expect? No.

The meet-up description was rather vague, simply a promise that it wouldn’t turn into a “vendor” discussion. Frankly, we had our brand value to hold up, so we wanted to ensure that our first inaugural Seattle Sales Enablement Society meet-up was truly centered around the core mission of the society: To elevate the sales enablement profession.Continue reading article ›

Ask any sales leader to point out the difference between success and failure. Chances are, they’ll mention content and training before you can count to three.    

Just as a good plan is only as useful as a team’s ability to execute it, so too an optimal sales enablement platform is a direct reflection of how it delivers the full range of what users need.  The partnership between Highspot and Brainshark is built upon this premise.  

Starting today, customers of both companies have seamless access to the features that make each unique.  For Highspot customers, the power of Brainshark’s sales training solution is now available within the Highspot user experience.  For Brainshark customers, the content authoring, training, and coaching they rely upon may now be accessed via Highspot’s industry-leading sales content management, customer engagement, and analytics platform.  It’s a partnership that rewrites the scope of modern sales enablement capabilities and helps sales teams overcome their most daunting effectiveness challenges.       Continue reading article ›

One of the great things about being in an industry that is still defining itself is that there are no real boundaries. When it comes to sales enablement, the sky is the limit because we’re all defining what it is and what it means to our individual organizations.

Conversely, this freedom can also cause confusion or friction when determining “who does what” to empower sales. As a sales enablement professional, it can be difficult to understand where responsibilities start and stop, when to enlist other teams, and what may be overlooked as being done already (but isn’t).Continue reading article ›

What is Sales Enablement?

Sales enablement is becoming more and more of a common term in organizations big and small. But, just as no organization is the same, no definition of the concept of arming sales to succeed is exactly the same. Some see sales enablement as a role (or team) within the organization, some see it as the technology that does (or should) power content distribution and management, and some categorize it as a hybrid of the two. And, there are many degrees of differences along the spectrum.

At Highspot, we define sales enablement as a strategic, ongoing process that equips sales teams to have consistently effective engagements with prospects and customers throughout the buyer’s journey. In other words, it’s the teams, tools, and technology used in the ongoing quest to help sales close more deals, faster. For what it’s worth, the teams that “do” sales enablement may not have the term in their titles—it could be the marketing team, a dedicated sales enablement team, or even members of the sales team itself who are most involved in activities and deliverables to empower sales.

Continue reading article ›