Highspot Blog

Selling is hard. Doing it well is even harder. On any given day, a seller has to keep track of multiple tasks, diverse objectives, and different layers of information in order to have a chance at making the sale, not to mention meeting quota.

To start, a sales rep has to have the most up-to-date information on products and be trained on new versions, new messaging, and new features and functionalities. Reps have to understand and put into action their company’s sales methodology whenever they engage with prospects. And they must have just the right content on hand, ready with the information their prospect needs to help them progress through the buyer’s journey, taking another step toward making a purchase decision.Continue reading article ›

Plans and strategies are only as useful as their implementation, which is why every sales organization needs a sales playbook.

Sales playbooks help organizations put their plans into action, guiding sellers through every step of the sales process. When reps have access to practical, simple resources, they will have more effective buyer conversations that lead to higher customer retention rates, better lead conversion rates, and increased numbers of reps meeting their quota.Continue reading article ›

As a Highspot Account Development Representative, I know it is no longer the case that sellers get to control the buying process — rather, it’s the reverse. In many ways, the role of the salesperson has shifted from being the pitcher in baseball, where they get to dictate when and how to deliver the pitch, to the batter, where they now must be ready for anything the prospect decides to throw at them. In fact, it’s estimated that 50 to 80% of the buyer’s decision-making process happens before the sales rep gets involved.

For salespeople to combat this paradigm shift in buying patterns and behavior, we must be ready for any conversation, question, or objection, no matter where our prospects are in the buyer’s journey — and we have to be able to turn on a dime. That’s why Highspot is designed to empower sales reps like me with modern sales plays and sales playbooks.

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In today’s competitive market, buyer behavior is constantly changing in response to new technologies and buying processes, and smart sellers must evolve to keep up. Even the highest performing sales teams have to stay alert and on the lookout for new ways to boost sales productivity to keep their competitive edge — or risk falling behind. According to our 2018 State of Sales Enablement report, nearly 70% of respondents reported that their company’s sales process was becoming more complex, and 55% reported that the increasing level of sales process complexity impacted their sales performance. With these new sales process challenges, it’s more important than ever to regularly take time to focus on optimizing sales productivity. After all, productivity means profit. When a business improves its salesforce’s effectiveness and productivity, it makes it easier for sellers to close deals that drive revenue.

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The expectations of today’s buyers have undergone a drastic transformation. Consumer-oriented companies such as Amazon and Airbnb have created great user and customer experiences that have set the bar high for more informed and frictionless buying experiences. These expectations have quickly carried over into the world of B2B buying and changed how marketers engage and influence buyers along their purchasing journey.

In our eBook, which is now available for download, you’ll learn that the modern buyer is more informed, more independent, and more demanding than ever before. But are your sellers equipped to win them over? Continue reading article ›

Strength and flexibility are hallmarks of best-in-class salespeople and sales technology.  They are also at the core of what makes Challenger Selling™ so impactful.  Today we’ll highlight how sales enablement is helping companies optimize their Challenger™ sales model and deliver superior results for their customers. 

The Challenger Sale has upgraded solution selling by showing salespeople how to take greater control over conversations and demolish their quota.  It has also transformed the ways sales teams leverage content to guide prospects through each phase of the buyer’s journey.  By helping companies better organize, find, customize, share, and analyze their sales content, modern sales enablement platforms are integral to making the most of Challenger selling.Continue reading article ›

Recently, we co-hosted a webinar with SiriusDecisions called Connect Sales Content to Revenue. This session was chock-full of research-backed advice to help you turn your sales enablement efforts into measurable revenue contributions. If you want to take sales enablement to the next level, there are a few important steps to consider, and we’ve outlined them below from the webinar discussion.

It’s important to note that before you get started, you’ll want to meet with sales finance to obtain your organization’s revenue plan. Measuring the impact of sales enablement on increasing revenue is key to ensuring your efforts drive the greatest impact on business value, and you need the revenue plan to do it. This step often gets missed, and that’s a shame because sales enablement loses out on its “seat at the table” as a result. Don’t lose your seat at the table! Start with sales finance and then use the four steps below to start turning your enablement efforts into revenue.

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Building a great sales pitch is both an art and a science. Sales and marketing professionals work very hard to get to the right person with the right message and have them agree to take time out of their increasingly busy day to hear what they have to say.

With all of that effort and such a small window of opportunity, delivering a great sales pitch is essential.

So many times, sales calls are bad experiences for both the sales professional and the prospect. Proper qualification long before getting to a person-to-person discussion goes a long way to avoid mismatched expectations or the dreaded “not the right person” realization. Using poor communication tools or slide-sharing systems only exacerbates the problem and takes precious time out of the agreed-upon amount for the meeting. Salespeople must not just focus on having meetings and delivering sales pitches to show they are doing their jobs, but be laser-focused on the quality of the interactions and the results produced.Continue reading article ›

Great salespeople understand that their success or failure is based on their ability to get to the next step in the sales process as a goal of each interaction.

Focusing on the “desired end state” of the opportunity as a goal of each meeting keeps a discipline in place to always focus on forward progress. That progress is dependent upon the prospect granting you the next step in the process. Great salespeople know that they must earn the next step through their focus on the prospect’s needs and how they are uniquely positioned to address them.

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A sales playbook sounds like a great idea — capture the best practices and most important content for your selling process to turn every rep into a closing machine. But it doesn’t always work out that way. Too many sales playbooks rest comfortably on a shelf, gathering dust, while reps use whatever content they’ve managed to pull together. What does it take to create a playbook that is a valuable tool for closing deals? We’ve found that there are five keys to making a playbook that works.

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