G2, the largest software marketplace and review platform, announced the 2020 winners of its annual Best Software Awards this month. And we were very honored to have received the #1 ranking for Enterprise Products! This is a massive achievement and a testament to the value we bring to our customers around the globe.
A big thank you to the hundreds of Mindtickle customers who, in their own voice, provided reviews in the G2 platform about how they count on us every day to keep their customer-facing teams ‘remote and ready’, especially in these uncertain times. We thank you for your partnership. We remain committed to your success.
And the #1 ranking for enterprise software wasn’t the only accolade, so here are all the lists that prominently featured Mindtickle.
In Best Software Products, Mindtickle earned:
#1 of the Top 50 Products for Enterprise beating out other products from some of the worlds’ largest and most well-known enterprise software companies; To bring some additional context for how huge this is, last year this spot was held by Tableau which was recently acquired by Salesforce for $15.7B
#5 of the Best Products for Sales as the only Readiness platform listed; Salesforce CPQ held this spot in G2’s 2019 list
#17 of the Top 100 Software Products
#27 of the Top 50 Products for Mid-Market
And in the Highest Satisfaction category, Mindtickle was ranked #32 beating out products from many highly regarded companies.
G2’s Best Software Awards rank all 57,844 software companies and products on G2 using authentic, timely reviews from real users. This isn’t a subjective list based on a few peoples’ opinions, it’s actual users of the Mindtickle platform who have experienced first-hand the value and benefits of a systematic approach to building, reinforcing, and measuring the desired knowledge and behaviors through sales readiness and continuous learning programs.
We have been in leadership positions on several of G2’s category rankings over the years but this is our first time earning a #1 rank, keeping company with some of the biggest names in Enterprise software. We have come a long way and we couldn’t be more proud! Sharing the stage with some of the best and biggest software companies in the world is a great feeling and I am truly grateful to my co-founders, team, customers, and investors who have been with us through this journey. We have all worked together for the last five years to define and create a completely new solution and category of ‘Readiness’ designed from the ground up to help organizations increase the productivity and effectiveness of their customer-facing teams.
And lastly, a special round of applause to the Mindtickle teams from every corner of the company — from the Product team for a relentless focus on software that works to Customer-facing teams across Success and Enablement, Support, Services, Sales and Marketing that embody the Mindtickle principle of delighting our customers at every stage of their journey!
As many teams are shifting to working and training remotely—often for the first time—managers are forced to prepare and re-strategize to ensure teams remain productive. This unexpected development has left organizations feeling the pressures of meeting quotas, supporting customers, and evolving daily with the ever-changing business climate.
It also presents an opportunity to learn just how essential sales readiness is, and how your organization can (and should) build a strategy for remaining sales-ready in any situation.
How a Crisis Can Affect Sales Readiness
Maintaining sales readiness is an especially tricky piece of the puzzle during a pandemic, as sales teams face unique challenges at each step of the buyer’s journey. It’s key to avoid disruptions where possible, and that requires some foundational changes to thinking and overall infrastructure.
If you’re not already considering how your team can remain sales-ready throughout the global COVID-19 crisis, you certainly should be. Without adjusting to continue driving engagement, you’re at risk for miscommunication, lack of preparedness, disengaged reps, and damage to customer relationships. Reps who aren’t sales-ready might not be receiving the training, updates, or resources required to effectively sell in the midst of uncertainty.
How to Enable Sales Readiness Remotely
So how, as sales managers, can we avoid crumbling under the pressure of selling during a pandemic? Here are our top tips for remaining sales-ready during a crisis:
Refine Your Onboarding Program for Remote Use
New-hires are generally presented with at least some in-person training during their first few days or weeks at an organization. This helps to build relationships, expectations, and engagement. But your typical onboarding process has likely been thrown to the wind as in-person gatherings are on hold. That doesn’t mean your onboarding program has to be any less effective for new reps.
Developing the right content for a virtual onboarding experience may sound daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. In fact, you likely already have the right foundational resources at your fingertips and can reuse some of those materials to create a remote process. The good news: creating easily accessible videos, quizzes, quests, and even gamifying the process can increase engagement and retention. You should also focus on closely tracking reps’ progress as they advance through the program, allowing opportunities for progress check-ins and further training, as needed.
Keep Reps Informed with Regular, Standardized Communication
It may feel strange if you’re used to holding weekly in-person meetings to provide updates and news, but keeping the line of communication open during times of remote work is essential. As the Coronavirus pandemic continues to evolve, your team will need to remain up-to-date on announcements, both sales-specific and org-wide. News on policy and process changes, competitors, and customers should be shared regularly so that reps remain informed and consistent with messaging.
Weekly or daily email updates are great, but often get buried as reps are inundated with messages, especially during a time of crisis. Platforms that enable you to provide reps with updates in a variety of formats can ensure that reps are actually engaging with key information. Your teams will be ready-as-ever if they can easily and remotely access announcements, key competitor coverage, win stories, and more from a centralized location.
Optimize Consistent, Remote Training & Coaching
Training and coaching don’t stop when the onboarding process ends. In fact, continuous training is especially important as reps are transitioning to a work-from-home environment, where they’re likely in need of specific information about selling effectively during a time of crisis. Some new skills will need to be developed as teams pivot messaging, techniques, and overall strategy.
One effective way to keep reps engaged with continuous virtual training is to gamify the process with video games, leaderboards, social elements, and gamified quizzes. Prepare your team members with enjoyable, fun coaching and reinforcement opportunities that will contribute to their overall readiness.
Increase Pipeline Visibility
It can be difficult for teams to ensure that every rep has visibility into what’s happening with the sales pipeline, particularly if everyone is working remotely (and even more so if the remote work was unplanned). But providing an understanding of where deals are in the pipeline is another key component to remaining successful during a crisis.
Through pipeline transparency, managers and reps will have a visual representation of win rate and length of sales cycle, and will be able to determine how those factors are being impacted by the pandemic. These insights can be used to understand which assets are most successful at which point in the sales cycle, and whether or not certain reps need additional training.
Be sure to provide easy access to this meaningful information, as it can give your sales team a competitive advantage, particularly during a time of crisis.
Encourage Meaningful Communication Among Reps
In addition to providing top-down information, you should also motivate your sales reps to communicate with one another. Not only will this support and maintain a team environment, it will also provide a space for reps to learn from each other’s wins and losses, and to share tips for being as successful as possible during a crisis.
This can be a challenge when each rep is working from home and is bogged down by the stresses of their workload, but prioritizing meaningful—albeit, virtual—conversations can have a real impact on morale and performance.
You can encourage reps to record and share videos recounting sales interactions (both the successes and failures), tips for working from home, or expressing any questions or concerns. These messages should be posted to a centralized location, where other reps can respond with videos or written comments to keep the conversation going.
How Technology Can Ensure Sales Readiness During a Crisis
If you’re new to developing a sales readiness program or don’t have the right tools to help your team thrive, ensuring readiness during a pandemic may feel overwhelming. The right software can provide easy, remote access to essential content and resources and eLearning for continuous training to keep reps engaged while working from home.
What’s more, your new hires won’t fall behind in the onboarding process, as a proper tool will ensure the right remote training at the right time. And everything can be tracked and analyzed to measure progress for individual reps so you can rest assured that your remote team is learning and selling effectively, regardless of where they’re working from.
Mindtickle’s Sales Readiness Platform can tie all of your initiatives together—from onboarding, to communication, to training and coaching—and provide actionable insights through data and analytics. Keeping your reps on track through virtual micro-learning and continuous remote coaching can help your sales team overcome the many obstacles presented by this and any crisis.
To learn more what the Mindtickle platform can do, request a demo or determine your potential return with our comprehensive ROI calculator.
The sales environment is constantly evolving as new strategies, markets, and products are introduced, reintroduced, or changed. In fact, according to a study of over 100 B2B organizations, 75% of firms have a refocused sales strategy, 70% have entered a new market, and 82% introduced a new product or service over the past twelve months.
In fact, according to a study of over 100 B2B organizations, 75% of firms have a refocused sales strategy, 70% have entered a new market, and 82% introduced a new product or service over the past twelve months.
With the sales function constantly evolving, it’s critical for sales teams to have up-to-date support and the tools they need to sell. This is where data driven sales enablement comes in.
Sales enablement is the strategy you use to ensure sales reps have the information, content, technology, and tools they need to sell effectively. An integral part of your overall sales readiness program, sales enablement focuses on providing everything your reps need to be successful, at every step of the sales journey. When you incorporate elements of sales training, asset management, ongoing coaching, and continuous development—all in a platform that supports a variety of content formats and learning styles—the results are amazing:
Achieve a win rate of 49% on average, which is 12% higher than those without an enablement strategy.
Hit their quotas 35% more often than those without a formal sales enablement strategy.
Experience 15% less turnover than those that approach sales enablement as one-off projects.
Collaboration is twice as likely within organizations that use a formal sales enablement strategy vs. those that use an informal or one-time initiative.
But while 61% of organizations employ some type of sales enablement program, only 34.4% feel it meets their expectations. That number has only improved by a small margin, about 3%, over the past few years. Choosing the right enablement program with intuitive tools is just as critical as not having one at all.
So, why are most organizations struggling when it comes to sales enablement?
Perhaps the topic is misunderstood as a whole—as a one-time project that, once complete, results in a new and improved sales function. Rather, sales enablement must be an ongoing initiative that involves content, training, coaching, and performance measurement.
Sales enablement as part of your readiness strategy can have a significant impact on an organization’s bottom line. 52% of sales organizations who have a specific sales enablement function claim overall sales training effectiveness 29% higher than those who don’t. A sales enablement strategy makes it easy to gauge sales readiness with continuous, accessible training, trackable performance and outcome measures, and a modern approach geared for improved results.
52% of sales organizations who have a specific sales enablement function claim overall sales training effectiveness 29% higher than those who don’t.
There’s myriad data that demonstrates just how valuable a successful sales enablement strategy can be in driving revenue. And understanding what to do with those stats can help you build a better sales enablement program and overall environment for your sales teams. Whether you’ve yet to implement a sales enablement strategy or are looking to make improvements to your existing program, these statistics should be used to inform your next steps.
Sales and Marketing Alignment
A key best practice for any sales enablement strategy requires sales and marketing teams to work in harmony. Sales and morale suffer when knowledge isn’t routinely shared. That becomes a significant challenge for departments operating under differing definitions of the market or specific products.
It’s a foregone conclusion that the two teams should be aligned, but is often not the case. In fact, only 8% of marketing and sales teams of B2B companies say they experience strong alignment.
These two unique areas may have different roles, but should share the same goals and a clear roadmap that leads to them. So how can sales enablement turn the tables?
Debunk long-held beliefs within a company’s culture that sales and marketing are separate entities.
Demonstrate buy-in by leadership and build an open, collaborative relationship between the two departments.
Establish a modern marketing department that drives revenue, just like sales.
Sales and Marketing Alignment: Key Stats
Why does sales and marketing alignment matter? Here’s what the data show:
36% higher customer retention rates and 38% higher overall sales wins are reported by marketing- and sales-aligned companies.
Over 75% of companies that use a sales enablement tool saw a sales increase over twelve months. 40% of those organizations reported growth over 25%.
59% of companies with established sales enablement functions surpassed revenue targets, and 72% of those exceeded them by 25% or more.
Making up-to-date content available to sales reps is a crucial part of sales and marketing alignment. Here’s how content management affects the sales team:
On average, only 47% of salespeople feel they are provided with relevant and effective content. Either they don’t know what’s available, or they don’t have the time or resources to seek it.
57% of businesses say high-quality contentis their top driver of sales. Sales reps shouldn’t have to make their own content. Sales enablement ensures sales and marketing are working closely together to provide up-to-date, valuable content and collateral specific to each customer.
60% of quality sales content goes unused, without a good process for distribution. That means wasted time and resources that could otherwise help drive the sales initiatives.
Just 20% of sales reps use content during a sales conversation, yet, a buyer usually requires touching more than five pieces of content before making a purchase.
First impressions are crucial. Successful sales reps require education, and undertrained reps can cause irreparable damage to customer relationships and sales.
A sales enablement strategy should include an effective onboarding program that ensures new hire progress and performance is measured, supported, and consistently improved upon based on firm metrics to enhance your organization’s readiness.
Sales-specific onboarding provides new hires with information about company values, corporate and product knowledge, and how to use company tools to improve quotas. The most successful onboarding programs help reps learn with smaller, easy to digest modules, clear objectives, and accessible materials.
Sales Onboarding & Training: Key Stats
A poorly trained rep is not equipped to sell, and may not choose to stay with your organization. That’s revenue lost on two counts: loss of sales, and cost of onboarding. Maybe it’s not the rep that isn’t prepared, but instead, materials used for training aren’t up to the task. Sales enablement provides tracking and options for each sales rep to achieve their best outcomes.
Here’s how proper onboarding affects overall performance and success:
Training improves retention rates for new hires and products with an early, effective, onboarding information: The best companies are 53% more likely to undertake pre-boarding and begin onboarding early, often before the first day.
Most companies feel their onboarding efforts are subpar: 62% of companies consider themselves ineffective at onboarding new sales hires, despite leadership with an eye one sales enablement.
Employee turnover is expensive: The average economic cost of turning over a highly skilled job is over two times the salary of that role. 20% of staff turnover takes place in the first 45 days of employment.
Sales Efficiency
It’s easier to access the numbers associated with your organization’s revenue than to know what it’s actually costing to get your sales team up to speed and keep them there. The relation between those two things is sales efficiency. It includes the important task of streamlining sales operations to produce the highest return on investment.
That’s where an effective sales enablement strategy ups the game. It enables your team to implement a consistent measure of those numbers over time and ensure your organization stays profitable. Insight from specific metrics provided by sales enablement helps a business develop and evolve overall strategy, sales training, product direction, and even qualified leads.
Sales Efficiency: Key Stats
These data points demonstrate just how essential sales enablement is for the efficiency of your reps:
84% of sales reps can achieve quotas when their employer engages the best sales enablement strategies available.
Quota attainment was doubled among companies that adopted best practices for sales enablement, compared to those that did not.
59% of companies surpassed yearly revenue targets as a result of a well-defined sales enablement strategy.
Software that allows easy access to a sales enablement strategy and tools seamlessly connects operations, marketing, and sales. Sales enablement technology improves onboarding, coaching, and ongoing training by delivering engaging content in a measurable platform that can track progress.
Technology-based sales enablement solutions help sales reps learn new skills, improve existing skills, and track progress toward development goals. The right sales enablement technology offers:
Automation: Data feeds, updates, and integration solutions for software like Salesforce, Excel, and industry-specific sources.
Customer insight: Customer details are tracked and accessible while reps are in the field. Make account updates. Note specific sales or company requests.
Rapid mobile access: No need to get back to a customer later with more information — account and product information is available via mobile devices, fast tracking answers to customer questions with actual company marketing or sell information.
Analytics: Users and managers can choose onboarding and learning materials relevant to individual needs. Outcome metrics about which tools are used most often with the best results help predict the best resources for the future.
Real-time updates: Collateral materials are automatically updated and available immediately. Relevant content is available to sales teams upon request, and product line information can be organized according to customer, location, or other specifics.
Sales Enablement Technology: Key Stats
The numbers prove how just how imperative technology has become among sales initiatives:
86% of sales managers believe the use of digital tools improves job performance.The opportunity to use mobile devices in the field allows easy access to those tools and can be used to significantly enhance the sales process, providing access to remote customer data, a CRM platform, continually relevant information, and the ability to complete menial tasks on the run.
Technology makes any environment a functional learning opportunity with continuous access to video, role-play opportunities, and even digital social learning environments.
Your Future with Sales Enablement
Choosing a sales enablement solution is a personal journey for your organization on the path to overall readiness. Consider a technology platform that balances your specific needs for marketing and sales collaboration, content management, sales onboarding and training, and a convenient, relevant use of automation.
Review MindTIckle’s Readiness Value Assessment to determine how sales enablement can contribute to your ROI. Or schedule a demo to see the Mindtickle Sales Readiness Platform in action today!
In a highly competitive environment, enabling your salespeople to be at their best—and giving them the right tools to do so—can make all the difference.
Sales enablement refers to the training, tools, content management, and resources provided to the sales team to help them successfully close more deals. The ultimate goal of sales enablement is to equip sales reps for every conversation to help them build strong relationships with prospects and ultimately close more deals.
While sales enablement is really an ecosystem of work that involves sales, marketing, and operations working together, technology is a critical part of getting sales enablement right. Marketing and operations provide case studies, documentation, and other resources that the sales team needs, and a data driven sales enablement platform makes it easy to access those resources and track how reps are engaging with them.
When sales, marketing, and operations work together in this way, reps can onboard more quickly, upskill in key areas, and spend more time selling. But this requires a platform that not only delivers content to your sales reps, but also supports the larger goal of sales readiness.
Sales enablement today
When done well, the benefits of sales enablement speak for themselves:
Companies with a focus on sales enablement see overall sales training effectiveness 29% higher than those without.
Of companies with established sales enablement functions, 59% surpassed revenue targets, and 72% of those exceeded them by 25% or more.
95% of customers buy from a sales rep who provides content at every step of the sale.
Of companies with established sales enablement functions, 59% surpassed revenue targets, and 72% of those exceeded them by 25% or more.
With a sales enablement function to organize and track content, combined with a sales readiness function that continually equips sellers with the right training and coaching for their needs, everyone is more effective. With the right technology, sales departments can use elements like virtual sales training, gamified onboarding activities, and coaching templates to continually improve and empower sales reps.
Today’s sales enablement data helps sales reps in other ways, as well. Here are just a few:
Standardized reporting: allows for easy comparison, access by leadership, and targeted changes when needed.
Sales process review: automated processes makes sales information and materials accessible for reps to review and revise as necessary for more targeted customer contact.
Qualified leads: allows leads to be categorized according to demographics and behavior. When teams have content that is tracked for effectiveness and optimized for efficiency by category, improvements can be made that result in qualified leads, and readiness to purchase.
Optimized content: organized, updated, and targeted resources positively impact the end result.
A quick online search shows just how many sales enablement options there are. To achieve your end goal—a better-equipped sales team that drives more revenue—you need to find the right tool (or integration) for your team’s needs. The right sales enablement platform is tailored to specific business needs, connects sales and marketing, simplifies the content library, and offers powerful sales metrics.
Today’s smart technology provides opportunities for learning tools, formats, and modalities that connect reps online, and even offers interaction through social media platforms. It improves timeliness and effectiveness for resources, training, analysis, and ongoing support. Sales reps are more confident when they have all the resources they need, literally at their fingertips, and customer leads are targeted by the products and solutions they seek.
How sales enablement drives sales readiness
As part of a cohesive program, sales enablement tied with sales readiness results in a more effective sales team. Sales enablement ensures reps have the tools and resources—like ongoing training, coaching, and development—it takes to deliver the message, close the sale, and maintain strong customer relationships.
Sales readiness, on the other hand, is a critical part of a sales enablement program, as it focuses on outcome- and data-oriented results. It gives managers, teams, and organizations insights into performance, outcomes, and gaps in the sales team. Further, sales-ready reps have the confidence and tools necessary to think outside the box while delivering on the goals of the sales, marketing, and operations teams.
Organizations that employ modern sales enablement programs reap myriad benefits. Here are just a few:
Peak performance: a modern sales enablement and readiness program helps sales reps meet quotes sooner with access to tools for efficiency and effectiveness.
Improved time to sell: a sales enablement tool helps reps spend more time selling by providing qualified leads, content, and learning opportunities in small doses over time.
Continuous training: continuous training and accessible learning materials, up-to-date product and industry information, and a sales team that is ready means that increasing quota demands are met.
Marketing and sales in sync: all marketing efforts are regularly updated for easy access by sellers—sales enablement bridges the gap between the two departments.
Sales ready reps are able to capitalize on these sales enablement benefits for successful outcomes:
Access
Provide timely access to information related to the most up-to-date resources, like CRM content, via systems often used by reps in the field, like laptops or mobile devices.
Alignment
Combine the power of your sales team’s knowledge with information about the customer journey throughout the sale process. Content, by way of collateral materials, video, or blogs are available at the touch of a button depending on need. Agility is accessible whenever it is needed.
Education
Organize product and service knowledge across your organization in an accessible format that answers any customer question. An enablement platform makes information available for use in similar situations, with intuitive access.
Presentation
Offer tools to personalize marketing content for clients on-the-go to ensure documents that are customized, updated, and approved for compliance.
Tracking
Provide tracking that reports how well resources are performing, as well as information on inconsistencies, and where additional content could be helpful. No more wasted content, knowledge, or resources.
Must-have features in a sales enablement tool
What’s the difference between the variety of sales enablement tools on the market and how do you choose?
Remember that sales enablement is not a one-size-fits-all—if a tool claims that, it might not be the one. Focus areas of sales enablement tools can include sales content management, coaching and training, sales engagement, sales intelligence, sales management, and customer relationship management (CRM). The process of determining the specific tools your business needs will clarify the best fit for your company.
Before you make that decision, consider the sales enablement best practices you need the platform to support. Then, match those best practices to some specific features that work best for your organization. Let’s take a look at some of the must-haves of a successful sales enablement tool:
Feature: content management
Content, tools, and resources are created based on intel from sales enablement and accessible from a single source, no matter where they were originally stored, for quick discovery and real-time updating.
Accessibility
With customized, user-friendly search capabilities, content is organized, easy to find, and available for publication quickly for every step of the sales journey, including updates, new product features, competitive insights, and success stories.
Customized collateral
Sales materials can be immediately tailored to fit different demographics, products, customers, or stages in the buying process and are easy to access through a flexible interface with other formats like Google Drive, Dropbox, or Youtube.
Marketing and sales alignment:
Insights from content and collateral offer powerful sales effectiveness insights with feedback generating valuable changes that align the selling process to the customer’s path.
Customer interactions and data tracking for reports, dashboards, and planning improve the relationship between sales, marketing, and customer service.
Social selling
Social media channels, touchpoints along the customer path, provide access at a more personal level offering a clear path to potential sales.
Feature: onboarding and training
Time-to-productivity and win rates are improved with technology that enables automated training paths and adaptive learning.
Sale onboarding
Planned eLearning courses and training information are delivered in an accessible format.
Onboarding and learning progress is tracked, showing completion and identifying knowledge gaps.
Customer experience
Training via coaching, gamification, and micro-learning modules support sellers in delivering incredible customer experiences.
Video resources
Reinforcing training and assessing readiness via video coaching and other online sources meets reps where they are and allows them to access tools to address weaknesses.
Feature: analytics
Support accountability, identify gaps, and provide feedback to sales and marketing to refine objectives.
Content usage and reporting
Analyze use of content to evaluate its effectiveness as it works for both reps and customers.
Identify areas for content improvement.
Outcome alignment
Evaluate alignment with overall business goals and objectives as well as how initiatives are impacting revenue.
Receive alerts when prospective customers engage with content.
Engagement
Gain insight into how your sales reps are doing in the field. Help review and revise communication with customers through templates and suggestions.
Sales management
Track sales rep efficiency and provide actionable insights to facilitate more time spent selling.
Feature: engagement
Provide customer-facing employees with the necessary tools for rich, valuable conversations with customers at each stage of the buying cycle, and as part of the overall training process.
Customer relationship management
Provide reps with information that improves the ability to develop better long-term relationships with buyers.
Reps can sell more effectively with content, training, and analytics at their fingertips.
Today’s buyer is informed, often entering a sales interaction with research and other market knowledge. Reps come prepared to have consultative—rather than transactional—conversations to engage customers at a deeper level.
Feature: qualified prospects
Identify and target the right leads with actionable data that enables your teams to establish the right relationships.
Define leads
Analysis from website visits and other customer touchpoints helps determine target buyers, and what characteristics are most likely to convert.
Identifying where leads are in the buying process, from prospect to marketing qualified (MQL) to sales-qualified (SQL), helps produce content that drives customers forward toward conversion.
Target buyers
Content that is tracked and optimized provides information to target collaterals for specific buyers.
Score prospects
Sales intelligence assigns positive or negative ranking to potential customers based on data, including location, or other demographics that affect conversion.
Less qualified prospects are moved to an area that can be addressed over time.
Create sales opportunity
Technology is used to structure the planning process and create a step-by-step guide for sales reps.
Feature: sales integration
Sellers use numerous tools when completing a sale. Tools that are integrated simplify the workflow.
Incorporated solutions
Communications, content, storage, and automation can be used as a system that works together seamlessly so information is available across all platforms and accessible where your sales reps are working, even on the road.
Real-time updates
New information, resources, and updates are automatic and available.
Customer focus
The buying experience is customizable and reporting is simplified using existing customer information.
Sales enablement tools to consider
A sales enablement solution that handles all processes including content, management and distribution, training tools, sales and marketing performance, customer outreach, and reporting can help you take your sales productivity and performance to the next level. Here are a few examples of sales enablement tools with integrated software solutions to support your sales team:
Seismic
Seismic’s sales enablement solution focuses on sales and marketing productivity and effectiveness with tools to collaborate, automate, manage and distribute content. Seismic uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to simplify the sales process for easy access to relevant information, updated insights, and program customization.
The Seismic program includes:
Easy access to relevant selling materials.
Automated creation of sales content personalized to its audience.
Increased revenue per rep due to efficient and effective content and accessibility.
Seismic’s scalable marketing and sales integration is general enough for most organizations and have been used in industries like asset management, banking, business services, healthcare, insurance, manufacturing, technology and more.
Seismic created a system that moved a financial advising firm, 361 Capital, from manual work to automatic updates with total accuracy. That sped up the process by 33%. In another case, a banking and financial services firm, SunTrust, was able to access data and content relevant to closing deals in a more timely manner.
Highspot
With a focus on sales readiness, personalized sales content, and improved sales performance, Highspot’s sales enablement program uses artificial intelligence, guided sales training, and simple integration between marketing, sales, and workflows to improve the sales process.
Benefits include:
Connecting sellers to relevant contact information for each buyer.
Flexible delivery options for content.
Advanced analytics for sales pitch and content optimization.
Effective sales training and assessment accessibility.
Sales integration that incorporates other platforms including training materials, and customer information.
Providing a single source of truth for content is a game-changer for many companies. For example, Dun & Bradstreet was managing 6,000 pieces of content stored across 12 different locations. Highspot streamlined that content with a single source, allowing more than 500 sales reps to spend less time searching for the tools they need, and more time selling.
Likewise, Highspot helped Tripadvisor to consolidate and integrate workflows with content lingering in multiple systems into a single platform for all sales enablement assets. The entire system was built to make life easier for the sales and marketing teams.
Mediafly
Sales and marketing are the focus of Mediafly’s enablement tool with an emphasis on creating a modern selling experience. Using a single, intuitive sales application, the company gives sellers and marketers a simple process to create, deliver, and analyze the sales process.
Sales reps benefit from:
Training, coaching, and learning.
Access to interactive selling tools
Reports and analytic insights.
Easy creation and updating of dynamic content for distribution on any device.
Mediafly helped pharma company Dr. Falk equip its sales team with the right materials for every sales situation providing a simple, accessible source for resources that are seamlessly updated and maintained, with integration options. Mobile presentation apps, content management, analytics and feedback provided Dr. Falk with the ability to have more valuable sales conversations.
How Mindtickle ties it all together
Integrated solution partners make Mindtickle’s sales readiness and enablement initiatives run smoothly and successfully. These partnerships offer complementary solutions with a simple-to-use interface that works for the entire organization. With that in place, Mindtickle can do what it does best: accelerate onboarding and ensure ongoing readiness and training.
Partnerships like those with Seismic, Highpoint, and Mediafly are part of a natural evolution to ensure enablement in a multi-system environment. Integration with these initiatives helps align sales and marketing, organizing and updating content internally and externally to manage its lifecycle.
Seamless interface: curated content that is regularly updated, easily accessed, and personalized is critical.
Improved productivity: no need to go digging for content—it is delivered to sales reps intuitively depending on need and customer. That leaves more time for selling.
Outcome-oriented approach: data is used to predict and provide according to the capabilities of your reps, helping them grab more sales.
Enablement metrics: must be tracked and fed into your readiness strategy regularly to keep it fresh and evolving with the needs of your organization and sales reps.
How Mindtickle can work for you
Mindtickle’s platform enables customer-centric sales readiness and enablement strategies for organizations using proven technology to increase revenue and grow brand value. Take a Readiness Value Assessment to determine the return on investment of a partnership with Mindtickle.
If you’re ready to see it for yourself, schedule a demo with Mindtickle today!
As more tech-savvy employees enter the workforce, businesses must think about how to engage Millennial and Gen Z employees during the onboarding process. After spending months finding the right person for a job, you don’t want to lose them due to a corporate onboarding process that doesn’t resonate or set them up for success. You risk shrinking that new-employee honeymoon phase with boredom and disillusionment.
Instead of leaving your new hires to read a manual or watch videos of company presentations, consider using gamification to create active challenges and track progress with shared metrics.
What is onboarding gamification?
Onboarding gamification is an approach that engages workers in corporate training and other learning activities using entertaining activities, rewards, gratification, and feedback. As a set of techniques, gamification uses tools refined in video games and apps to drive engagement with onboarding content.
There’s a good reason gamification works. Video game and app developers discovered decades ago that by asking social scientists to analyze user behavior, they could refine the software to encourage engagement—even addiction. Thank a social scientist every time you smile when your post gets liked, or your iMessages “ping” for attention. The techniques of behavioral design apply as directly to training as they do to entertainment. Instead of focusing on keeping a gamer on an ad-supported platform, HR managers might apply these same techniques to progress a worker through a structured program to learn a defined set of skills.
To demographers like Pew Research, 1996 is the birth year that defines the border between Millennials and Gen Z. As digital natives, today’s young Gen Z and Millennial workers have high expectations for engaged learning. If you were born in or after 1996, you never knew a world without high-speed internet access. You know you can look up almost anything you’ve ever wanted to know. Chances are, you’ve been using apps and playing video games for most of your life. To this generation, gamified onboarding is more natural, more fun—and more effective—than any passive alternative.
Why change your strategy for Millennial and Gen Z workers?
You’ll need to change your strategy because, simply put, gamification works better. Materials designed for the Post-War and Boomer generations might depend on videos, slideshows, and manuals, but they will never be as effective for this new cohort. And it’s not just about technology, either.
Current events, social changes, and other forces have left new Millennial and Gen Z employees with very different motivational and behavioral patterns than their Boomer and Gen X parents. While everyone is shaped by their parents to a certain degree, generations as a whole are shaped to some extent by opposition to the previous generation.
Members of both generations are typically comfortable with technology. Smartphone apps, collaboration software, and messaging are as familiar to these generations as jets and TVs were to Boomers. With their social relationships forged online using social media, texting, and other tools, these cohorts seamlessly communicate across time zones and physical locations. Similarly, technical gamification elements like unpredictability and social influence feel natural and make engagement interesting.
Why gamifying the process is effective
Gamifying the process is effective because “fun” is fundamentally a manipulation of behavior that leaves participants wanting more. The modern video game and social media industry have supported extensive social science research into human behavior. The result has been the development of social and interactive learning techniques, such as those described by Yu-kai Chou’s framework, that are much more sophisticated than the badges, progress bars, and notifications of the past. We’re already seeing tools like Slack and Workday take hold and apply the social engagement of Facebook into the serious business of project collaboration.
Applying the research of gaming and social media into gamified onboarding can lead to important progress toward corporate goals for new hires:
Improved productivity comes from better knowledge of how an organization functions. For example, setting employees on a “quest” to learn from other employees allows new reps to spend more time “doing” and less time finding out “how to do” tasks at their new company.
Increased retention rates for new employees are ensured because individuals feel empowered and productive as quickly as possible. Effective onboarding programs can get new employees past those critical first 6 months when an estimated 86% of new hires make the decision to stay or leave a company.
Aligning business goals with onboarding is easier with a structured program that builds content for new hires with key business goals in mind. Without structure, new employees will learn on the job, and the company has less control over how the worker perceives the company, their day-to-day-work, and overall goals. By aligning onboarding games and activities with key company goals, businesses can reinforce core values and instill the right habits from day one.
More consistent results come from a structured program, which can be measured and refined over time based on feedback and results.
Better understanding of progress and areas for improvement is possible through a more structured, goal-oriented approach to onboarding. Gamified onboarding (as part of a larger onboarding program) allows you to gather feedback and data, and use that information for evaluation cycles that are key to continuous improvement. Adding competitions and social connections, for example, generates data that can be used to track the progress of the program itself.
Support for continuous training requires onboarding new employees in a structured and gamified program, which sets up expectations for continuous training.
Effective onboarding programs can get new employees past those critical first 6 months when an estimated 86% of new hires make the decision to stay or leave a company.
How technology can help
Game mechanics don’t have to be derived from software, but it can help. At Deloitte LLP, for example, the onboarding program is very gamified. Early on, compliance, privacy, and ethics training materials were taught using a game board, modeled after the popular game “LIFE.” Today, the firm has expanded on the model to build an online game called The Chosen Analyst to teach professional consultants’ skills around a narrative of the coming Zombie Apocalypse.
Deloitte learned the power of game mechanics first, then applied technology to serve those objectives. The process pulled from storytelling the way traditional video games do. A story, like the Zombie Apocalypse, had to be compelling—and a little outlandish—to be fun. A good onboarding platform implements the best gamification elements so that corporate resources can focus on learning to be transferred to new employees. Best practices for gamification elements include:
Game mechanics like points for accomplishments, bonuses for special features, time-based tracking and a progress countdown, defined goals and levels, and an acknowledgment of status.
Engagement where participants develop stories, take on challenges and quests, and develop characters and avatars
Elements that give participants control over the game, the freedom to fail, and consistent feedback.
Recent disruptions caused by the novel Coronavirus pandemic have given firms everywhere an appreciation for virtual learning platforms and self-paced training activities that keep training moving even when participants can’t travel or interact directly. With cloud-based tools that can be continuously refined based on engagement and progress metrics, modern training platforms are applying these best practices to one of the biggest challenges in human resources: onboarding.
The revenue generated by billions of gamers and social media users has created a golden age for social science research into online user behavior. Mindtickle has now applied this research to onboarding as a way to optimize how Millennial and Gen Z digital natives learn when they join the workforce. Onboarding success has the potential to not only improve retention, but also drive productivity and predictable quota attainment.
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