Highspot Blog

The world of sales has a lot of stereotypes. Think Glengarry Glen Ross (“Coffee’s for closers!”), Jerry Maguire (“Show me the money!”) or Tommy Boy (“I killed my sale!”). They can be a turnoff for some people who are considering a career in sales (though some certainly seek out the supposed boiler room atmosphere). As for me, I never had any intention of becoming a salesperson. But I’m glad I did.

Common Fears About Sales

With a background in urban planning and biology, entering sales initially felt like being sent to the front lines; the biology world is ruthless, but sales gives it stiff competition. I didn’t think I was profit-driven or competitive enough to be in any industry sales or business oriented. (Don’t get me wrong — I love getting money, and love spending it even more.) In addition, my desire to help people and my tendency to be agreeable deterred me early on. Though I had no expertise in sales, I’ve recently realized that I have more “sales” experience than I thought.Continue reading article ›

Every modern seller today has heard of the power of social selling. But not everyone is doing it. Why? There are a dozen reasons—it’s hard, it’s time-consuming—and it all boils down to one main obstacle: sales teams can’t determine whether their social efforts are effective or not.

Starting today, they can.

We just announced a new way to track and measure social selling engagement that simplifies sales via social media to the click of a button. Using the Highspot for Chrome Plugin, sellers can now easily share the most effective sales assets directly within any online channel. The tool is designed to fit into sales teams’ existing workflows, empower sellers to meet buyers where they are, and provide engagement data that shows the value of social selling efforts across some of the most popular social media platforms, such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.Continue reading article ›

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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International Women’s Day on March 8 celebrated the success of strong women around the world, including women who are paving a path for others kicking off careers in sales.

As a sales executive who is a woman, I’m passionate about empowering and supporting women to succeed in sales. At Highspot, we have a supportive and collaborative culture that stretches and inspires each person to do their best work. For International Women’s Day, we put together a series of tips and tricks for you to stand out and succeed in your sales career.

In the first installment of this series, I cover these topics:

• How to dress at the office
• How to lead a meeting
• How to advocate for yourself

These tips will help whether you’re applying for your dream job, working toward a big promotion, planning an important meeting with executives, or prepping for a must-win sales meeting. Don’t forget to share with your fellow female rock stars! Empowered women empower women!

Sheryl Sandberg said it best: “We need women at all levels, including the top, to change the dynamic, reshape the conversation, to make sure women’s voices are heard and heeded, not overlooked and ignored.”

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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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What do sports teams, households, classrooms, and sales teams have in common? There’s a coach backing all these teams who enables and motivates people to succeed. If you take a moment to think about it, you may begin to see coaches in almost every aspect of your life. Coaches can take the form of a parent, professor, mentor, The Voice, NFL head coach, sales manager, or even your friend.

From competing for my high school track team to my job here at Highspot as an account development representative – I attribute my growth, drive, and success to the individuals who have coached me. The coach who helped me perfect my form over the hurdle, the coach who helped me close my first deal.

These coaches made a huge impact on me personally, and I’ve come to appreciate the skills with which they helped me develop. Coaching has been and always will be about helping your people experience meaningful progress and growth.Continue reading article ›

Sales enablement as a technology is still a grey area for a lot of people. In account development, I talk with several people every day who could benefit from our solution–but the term sales enablement sometimes stands in the way. That’s why it’s my job as a sales rep to educate and guide them, rather than shuffle them along to a contract. The mantra of educating and guiding should be your approach to social prospecting, too.

From a tactical standpoint, we practice the same sales methodology that we preach, which is largely due to how the modern B2B buyer behaves. We’re a point a time where there’s a seemingly infinite amount of information and twice as many product reviews (thanks to our friend Jeff from Amazon), and buyers have the incredible freedom and power to self-educate. Which is why when I’m looking to connect with my prospects, I need to be offering some value elsewhere, which is often just good conversation. We’re looking for people who might not know about our company or technology, yet own some degree of the problem they consciously or unconsciously are looking to solve. Social media offers another channel through which you can meet your potential buyers, and offers some awesome power with the right approach. So let’s dance.

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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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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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When we talk about modern-day sales cycles, we hear a lot of challenges. Just about every sales rep will tell you that the sales cycle is getting increasingly complex. With the continuous advent of new technology, leadership teams have more visibility and insight into how effective their current business operations are. Because of this, there are now multiple stakeholders, all of whom want a voice in why and how to improve their current processes.

So, what does this mean for sales organizations? As an account development representative, I talk every day with people who are experiencing these kinds of challenges—and I also am part of a team that is selling into this increasingly complex world. Let’s take a closer look at how peer-to-peer relationships within sales organizations can make a tremendous, positive impact on modern sales cycles.Continue reading article ›