Given that the role of enablement, and enablement tech is becoming more important across the industry, Seismic commissioned a research report to better understand how leading firms are integrating enablement as part of their business strategy.   

Our new study, “Revenue Enablement in Financial Services: 2024 Global Findings & Insights,” explores how industry leaders are investing in enablement, driving business results, and integrating AI into their enablement strategies to better support the needs of sales, marketing, compliance and leadership teams. Nearly all respondents (94%) say they are using some form of enablement technology at work and predict (93%) that their team’s reliance on enablement technology will continue to increase over the next year. 

In this post, we’ll cover the results of the study and focus on the importance of organizational and strategic alignment and the critical role that enablement plays within financial services. 

What is enablement technology?  

Enablement technology encompasses multiple capabilities and solutions, including sales content management and automation, training and coaching, buyer engagement, strategy and planning, and analytics and intelligence. 

Serving as a critical component in a modern tech stack, enablement technology makes it possible for firms to manage rapid change, keep up with changing customer expectations, improve offerings and services, and close skill gaps. 

The role of enablement in financial services  

Enablement tech plays an important role in unifying sales, marketing, service, enablement, sales learning and coaching, product, compliance and leadership teams to achieve the firm’s top strategic priorities.  Seismic’s own Chief Revenue Officer (CRO), Hayden Stafford, underscored the importance of alignment in a recent presentation, stating, “Aligned teams are efficient teams. Aligned teams are productive teams, and aligned teams are winning teams.” 

Enablement helps drive alignment by providing the necessary tools, training, and resources to help teams maximize every client interaction, and drive business growth and stability. Leaders featured in our study also agree with that sentiment, knowing that there is a lot needed to make client facing teams more impactful. They define enablement, a function generally shared across teams, as a mix of content creation and production (36%), sales tech (27%), and sales and training coaching (26%).  

Enablement technology makes it possible for marketing teams to create accurate and compliant content at scale, while solving the challenge of making it discoverable for client-facing teams. When client-facing professionals can quickly access up-to-date content and relevant client information, they’re able to deliver the hyper-personalized experiences that are both memorable and impactful.  

Organizational placement of enablement teams  

Although there’s no single blueprint for the ideal enablement structure, one essential quality they must share is alignment. Supporting sales teams effectively requires a coordinated effort across multiple departments. Successful firms understand that aligning marketing, product, sales coaching and training, data, and technology teams is essential for driving growth and maximizing impact. 

Firms are choosing a number of different ways to support sales enablement – having components of the function sit across various teams, with cross-functional committees coming together to align on priorities, measurements, and outcomes. Others are looking to centralize more of these functions within one team. While giving careful thought to organization structures is important, it is more important to keep teams aligned on a shared vision for enablement. 

According to Stafford, “Enablement drives measurable results — not just efficiency adoption, but concrete outcomes that matter, such as pipeline, sales velocity, value coverage, win rates, close rates, uplift rates, renewal rates, and more.” 

Enablement leaders and their responsibilities  

When industry leaders were asked about the primary responsibilities of the person leading enablement, responses varied across different focus areas. The largest portion (39%) indicated that their enablement leaders spend the most time on long-term projects, such as business transformation and operations that require a more holistic approach.  

Another 31% said these leaders focus primarily on execution, working to deliver on plans and projects they or others in the organization have requested. Meanwhile, 16% noted an equal division of time across all responsibilities, while 12% described their leaders’ roles as handling ad-hoc tasks that arise unexpectedly. 

The impact of AI-powered enablement 

Firms view AI as a powerful productivity booster for client-facing, marketing, and training teams, especially for streamlining content creation and improving efficiency of meeting preparation, delivery, and follow-up.  

Over 50% of respondents say their companies are using AI-powered tools in their enablement processes, and 90% report being satisfied or extremely satisfied with these tools. 

Use of AI in enablement efforts is expected to become more widespread in the near term. Respondents predict that AI will be indispensable in providing personalized customer experiences (92%) and maintaining competitive advantage (86%) in the next five years. 

Recommendations for driving strategic change and transformation 

To make the most impact and drive strategic change, we recommend that enablement leaders follow a six-faceted model: 
 

1. Align with business outcomes for strategic initiatives: Choose the business outcomes that you can address. 

2. Correlate client-facing professionals’ behavior to outcomes: Determine what they need to do and say differently, and what else they need to know. 

3. Develop the program: Create the program structure with playbooks, content, lessons, and practice. 

4. Monitor progress: Observe whether the program is working. Did the client-facing professionals engage with the enablement materials? Did they apply it with the right skills and behaviors? 

5. Implement modifications: Coach teams, improve materials, promote best practices, and fill gaps.  

6. Review results: Assess whether the program met the outcomes determined at the start (i.e. pipeline, revenue, time-to-close, or win rate). 

The power of alignment in driving strategic change  

Alignment is key to making enablement truly effective in financial services, helping teams drive strategic change and create a lasting impact. Our study reveals that industry leaders prioritize alignment across sales, marketing, and training teams as a means to boost productivity, personalize client interactions, and support growth. By ensuring all teams work toward shared goals and outcomes, enablement becomes more than a function—it becomes a strategic force for transformation. Firms that focus on alignment in their enablement efforts are better positioned to grow and set new standards in operational excellence and client satisfaction. 

To review the full findings, download the report: “Revenue Enablement in Financial Services: 2024 Global Findings & Insights.” 

The post How Financial Services Firms Align for Growth appeared first on Seismic.

When it comes to rolling out programmes or initiatives like sales plays, product launches, or onboarding programmes, business leaders need to create a collaborative environment that connects strategy with well-defined objectives and execution. 

That’s why we’re excited to announce our Fall ’24 Release, created to help teams better execute their go-to-market strategies around shared goals. Our latest features and updates to the Seismic Enablement Cloud enable teams to activate strategic initiatives, optimise workflows, and drive sustainable growth. 

Enablement’s first command centre is here 

Seismic Programmes is the first command centre for enablement practitioners to design, manage, and optimise their enablement initiatives while demonstrating impact.  

Seismic Programmes offers unprecedented visibility across the entire enablement lifecycle, connecting data from content, lessons, customer engagements, and more. With Seismic Programmes, enablers can launch their initiatives, assess their enablement programmes in real time, and modify them wherever needed. 

Enablement practitioners using Seismic Programmes are fully equipped to drive field team behaviour change and prove their impact on win rates, revenue, and other goals. 

Speed up workflows with AI-powered enablement  

Aura Copilot has been available for Early Access (EA) since our Fall 2023 release, and has now reached General Availability (GA). In addition to EA features like page creation and generative search, we’re excited to announce several new Aura Copilot features. 

As part of General Availability, teams can now get answers and content faster, automate tedious tasks, and get hands-on assistance in their workflows.  

Content creators save valuable time with the ability to draft Pages and Playbooks based on existing content from their Seismic Library. They also eliminate manual efforts with an AI writing assistant for programme and content descriptions, and multi-language support for content tagging. 

Enablement professionals can easily show impact and ROI with self-service reporting on their teams’ Aura Copilot usage. They also have more control over AI feature access by updating user permissions.  

Sellers benefit from improvements to generative search for faster and more accurate answers. They can also view AI-generated summaries of their email, Slack, and Teams notifications. With quicker access to the information they need, sellers deliver better customer experiences and close deals faster. 

Deliver impactful meetings 

Meetings are make-or-break opportunities for sellers. And when reps can’t progress deals quickly toward closure, sales plays and product launches often fall short of their goals. Our Fall Release updates to Seismic for Meetings will empower sellers to deliver higher quality experiences throughout the entire meeting lifecycle – so teams excel in the final stages of their enablement programs. The newest additions allow users to: 

Seamlessly execute meetings and remove needless interruptions by switching presenters behind the scenes without pausing and restarting screenshare. With a new slide panel view, presenters can easily access content, agendas, notepads, and speaker notes on a slide deck. 

Increase engagement by distributing meeting clips internally as best practice examples or sharing them with customers through a digital sales room (DSR) (EN) after the meeting.   

Enable better coaching from sales managers and colleagues with the ability to review and add time-stamped comments directly inside a meeting recording. 

Shorten ramp time and accelerate quota attainment  

Seismic Skills connects the dots between the programmes enablement teams are running and behaviours in the field that are necessary for their success. It makes it easier for sales enablement teams to work in lockstep with sales managers to achieve their outcomes by assessing reps’ skills and creating plans to learning gaps. 

Enablement leaders can easily create and deploy role-based competency frameworks to assess the impact of training and coaching on reps’ skill development. They can empower sales teams with collaborative, goal-driven coaching plans. 

Revenue managers can review and evaluate reps’ performance to ensure they are growing into their roles, developing expertise, and hitting quota. They can assess strengths and weaknesses across individual performers and create customised coaching plans to improve reps’ development and replicate top performers. 

Customer-facing reps can monitor their own progress through the training process, determining areas of success and improvement. Skills helps reps easily identify areas for professional growth and includes hands-on feedback from their manager.

Prepare teams to excel in every customer interaction 

To rise above the competition, customer-facing teams need a collaborative environment to access top strategies, content, and information. This way, they can consistently execute on sales plays and product launches. Seismic Channels – now available for Early Access – equips teams with the resources to do just that. It provides an intuitive hub for go-to-market communications, cross-functional collaboration, and peer-to-peer learning. Targeted channels give reps and enablement practitioners the ability to post, comment, react, and share best practices. Teams with Seismic Channels: 

• Break down silos and foster a collaborative peer-to-peer learning community of fully informed and aligned sellers. Streamline internal communications and keep teams up to date by featuring posts with important market and company developments. 

• Ramp sellers quickly and scale enablement by sharing successful strategies, peer coaching, pitch practice, and continuous skill development. 

• Measure impact and optimise enablement strategies with communication trends and performance insights at an overview, channel, and post level, with opportunities for seller feedback. 

See the latest features and updates in action  

Want to see our Fall ’24 Release for yourself? Get a demo today!  

Not ready to talk? Learn how Seismic customers are driving better outcomes with Seismic by downloading our ebook, Master Modern B2B Selling with Enablement.   

The post Fall ’24 Release: Empower Strategic Change  appeared first on Seismic.

About a year ago, I met with a Seismic customer who changed my view on measuring success. For them, success boils down to a single, yet important question: Is my enablement technology making us more money than it’s costing us? 

In this post, we’ll highlight the importance of enablement technology to your programme and how you can measure its impact to improve your initiatives.  

Making the case for enablement technology 

We live in a world where tech stacks are scrutinised and evaluated for efficacy. Sales enablement teams often act as centres of excellence, tasked with developing and deploying best practices and processes benefiting various departments.  

Enablement continues to be a rapidly growing priority for major organisations. To put it into perspective, in 2017 only 58% of companies had a dedicated sales enablement resource, team, or programme. Now, more than 80% of organisations do. As demand grows —– and the pressure to quantify value increases —– enablement professionals must make the case for continued confidence and investment for a variety of executive decision-makers. That makes the measurement of success more important than ever.   

Measuring the success of your enablement programme 

Defining the success of any enablement programme starts with understanding the problems you want to solve. Uncovering these core issues helps identify a path to value. Here are some tips to get started: 

4. Learn what’s working and what isn’t. Replicate success where possible, refine promising efforts, and improve or discard what doesn’t deliver value. 

5. Align the biggest efforts with the biggest returns. Demonstrating the value of your investment in tangible ways allows you to measure it against the resources invested. 

6. Implement new processes to drive productivity and maturity. Establishing an end-to-end process for rolling out and measuring new efforts is essential for success. 

Use findings to usher in new processes 

Driving toward productivity and maturity means establishing a comprehensive process to launch, measure, and optimise new efforts. I’m used to rolling up my sleeves and helping clients move from the art of the possible into reality, so I want to share things you can do right now. 

• Select success metrics: Defining good KPIs is challenging but essential. It starts with identifying the problems you want to solve and your desired outcomes. For example, if you aim to enhance seller efficiency, you can measure the average sales cycle. Compare the performance of sellers using enablement tools to those who do not. Then, use the gap in the average sales cycle to define your KPIs and develop an engagement programme. 

• Ensure access to data: Understand what data is accessible and assess what’s lacking based on your objectives. Our analytics enable you to filter various dashboards and reports using both out-of-the-box metadata and custom content properties. If essential elements are absent, consider integrating with other platforms like your HRIS system or CRM to incorporate those data points into Seismic, enhancing the measurement capability. 

• Connect the dots: Knowledge is critical for mastering analytics in Seismic. To gauge success accurately, connect your enablement programmes and key behaviours with our analytics. For instance, if one of your KPIs is focused on platform adoption, clarify what constitutes adoption: is it based on login frequency, content usage, or user activity? Precisely defining success criteria ensures clarity in measurement.  

• Move from data to insights: While data is valuable, insights are invaluable. Performance metrics are great, but the real value lies in analysing and interpreting them to make impactful recommendations. This process can be challenging, as it requires translating data into actionable insights. Seismic alleviates this fear by offering automated insights as part of our comprehensive package. For instance, if you want to audit the internal performance of your content to understand what resonates with your sellers, our out-of-the-box dashboards provide instant recommendations based on industry standards. 

As you continue to leverage Seismic, you’ll discover how to define key metrics that drive success. While capturing the necessary data might seem daunting, being open to exploration and learning equips you to answer the million-dollar question: Is Seismic making us more money than it’s costing us? 

Seismic makes it simple to measure success 

Reflecting on the conversation with our client, I’m pleased to report that our analysis and discovery determined their answer was a resounding yes. At Seismic, we believe every customer needs to ask the same question when starting to measure success. Enablement is mission-critical and impacts the entire organisation. Future platform innovations promise to make measuring the comprehensive impact of every enablement effort even easier. 

In the meantime, if you need further guidance on your journey to answer this question, Seismic solution consultants and strategic advisors are here to help you analyse your data and make programme recommendations that will set you on the path to organisational transformation. 

You can also download the Generation Enablement Report: Driving Strategic Change with the Power of AI here! 

The post How to measure sales enablement success  appeared first on Seismic.

Master meeting lifecycles with Seismic for Meetings

Our Spring/Summer Release updates empower sellers to deliver higher quality experiences throughout the entire meeting lifecycle.

Sales and deal teams can now save time and more easily collaborate around meeting prep, presentation, and follow-up. They can personalise content, set agendas, and define goals and objectives for meeting prep faster with enhanced workflows. They also can add content and a full meeting recording to an existing DSR.

Seismic for Meetings has also expanded its integration with the Microsoft suite of products and now integrates with Microsoft Teams and Outlook Calendar. This partnership drastically increases productivity and streamlines meeting workflows.

Speed up teams with Aura Copilot

We’re excited to announce that Seismic’s AI-enablement assistant, Aura Copilot, is now available for early access. Teams can now get faster access to answers and content, automate tedious tasks, and gain insights for better business decisions.

Content creators can save valuable time with AI-powered updates and modifications to Pages and Content. For example, if a content creator wants to build a new product playbook, they can ask Aura Copilot to summarise the content, adjust its length, put it in bullets or sections, fix typos, localise it, and more.

Enablement professionals can easily create lessons with AI-generated drafts, questions, and summaries. They can also identify learning gaps and discover trends based on searches and aggregated data.

Sellers can get immediate access to answers and content through generative search. With quicker access to the information they need, sellers can deliver better customer experiences and close deals faster.

Seismic now integrates with Microsoft Copilot for Sales and Copilot for Microsoft 365 to streamline workflows and provide one seamless experience inside these commonly used platforms.

Seismic for Copilot for Microsoft 365 gives teams in-the-moment answers and content recommendations right within the AI-assistant.

Seismic’s integration with Microsoft Copilot for Sales provides sellers with AI-powered content recommendations, valuable buyer insights, and comprehensive training and coaching from wherever they work.

See the latest features and updates in action

Want to see our Spring/Summer ’24 Release for yourself? Get a demo today!

Not ready to talk? Learn how Seismic customers are driving better outcomes with Seismic instead by downloading our latest ebook, Master Modern B2B Selling with Enablement.

The post Meetings mastery and AI-powered assistance in Seismic’s Spring/Summer 2024 Release appeared first on Seismic.

With an ever-changing sales landscape, traditional coaching methods can often fall short. As markets evolve and customer behaviours shift, sales leaders are turning to new ways of coaching their teams.

This is where artificial intelligence (AI) comes into play. With the ability to analyse large amounts of data, AI offers a scalable solution that goes above and beyond what traditional coaching ever could.

I’m Lindsey Fine, Growth Advisor and Consultant. I’ve spent all of my career in B2B tech sales. With years of experience leading sales teams, I’ve seen it all when it comes to coaching. It’s something I’ve been passionate about for a while, and AI has only amplified that. I’m thrilled with how far we’ve come with AI and where we’re headed.

But before we go any further, let’s start with the basics.

What is AI-powered sales coaching?

AI-powered sales coaching uses AI to deliver personalised training and guidance to sales teams. This allows companies to offer tailored coaching and training to every rep no matter their level of experience or tenure with the company, all at scale.

By looking at individual performance data, these tools identify skill gaps, suggest personalised learning paths, and provide customised, real-time feedback. This approach ensures that every rep receives the individualised support they need to close more deals.

How AI-powered sales coaching works

AI sales coaching uses advanced AI and machine learning technologies to provide data-driven, personalised coaching tailored to each sales rep. Here’s how the process works:

1. Data Collection: AI gathers data from sources like CRM systems, emails, phone calls, and sales presentations. This includes details on sales activities, customer interactions, and performance metrics.
   
2. Analysis: Machine learning algorithms look at the data and assess message delivery, question quality, and objection handling. It looks for patterns, trends, and correlations.
   
   
3. Feedback and recommendations: Based on the analysis, AI coaching platforms deliver tailored feedback and recommendations to each rep. Certain tools even automatically create profiles for each rep where they store information about their unique strengths and areas for improvement and growth.
   
   
4. Personalised learning plans: Using data from these profiles, AI suggests specific learning paths and bite-sized training content. These suggestions improve as the software receives new data and adapts to each individual’s strengths and weaknesses.
   
   
5. Performance tracking: AI systems track the performance of reps over time. They look at key metrics such as conversion rates, deal size, and sales cycle length. This helps sales leaders track the efficacy of their coaching and its impact on the bottom line.

Key benefits of using AI sales coaching

AI sales coaching represents a long overdue upgrade to sales training and development. It offers a wide range of advantages for individuals and the broader organisation.

The benefits below show how AI-driven coaching improves rep performance, efficiency, and the overall effectiveness of coaching initiatives.

Tailoring training for individual needs

By looking at data from calls, demos, and presentations, an AI sales coach can identify — on a massive, company-wide scale — each rep’s mastered knowledge and subsequent skill gaps. This targeted approach ensures that training is relevant and accelerates improvement.

Recommending personalised learning plans

AI analyses a rep’s performance on specific training lessons or modules. From there, AI sales training recommends individual learning plans for reps to focus on.

But it doesn’t stop there: AI then optimises the learning plan as the rep progresses through training. This data-driven approach keeps reps engaged and focused on developing their most critical gaps.

Critiquing pitch delivery

Delivering an engaging, persuasive sales pitch is one of the most valuable skills for any rep.

Sales coaching AI tools can analyse video or audio recordings of a rep’s pitches to provide detailed feedback on pacing, tone, body language, and content structure. This real-time feedback helps reps hone their customer-facing skills and boost their long-term effectiveness.

Data-driven insights

Traditional coaching methods often rely on anecdotal manager observations and subjective feedback. AI coaching takes the guesswork out by analysing comprehensive data on rep performance.

Sales coaching software measures skills like:

• Asking questions
• Active listening
• Explaining value
• Handling objections, and more.

It provides granular, data-backed visibility into the exact areas a rep has for improvement.

For example, AI sales coaching may identify a rep who struggles with discovery call questioning. AI might score them at 62% in that skill set versus the team average of 82%, indicating a need for improvement. With AI sales training and coaching, that rep would receive laser-focused coaching that’s focused on developing stronger discovery skills.

Scalability

AI makes it easy to provide consistent, high-quality coaching across the entire sales organisation. An AI sales coach takes in data in the background to analyse performance, prescribe learning paths, and deliver coaching for all reps, whether you’re coaching five or 5,000 of them.

As time goes on and your repository of data grows, AI coaching tools become better and better at predicting which skills each rep needs a hand with. When AI models have more high-quality inputs to draw from, the outputs (or in this case, coaching recommendations) are better.

Introducing Seismic Learning: The best AI sales coaching solution

Seismic Learning, the learning and coaching arm of the Seismic Enablement Cloud, puts the power of AI in the hands of sales leaders in a practical, no-code way. Seismic Learning leverages AI to:

• Analyse rep performance data across activities
• Automatically identify each rep’s coaching needs
• Deliver personalised training content and learning plans
• Provide detailed pitch delivery feedback

With Seismic Learning’s AI sales coaching capabilities, you can:

• Ensure each rep gets tailored coaching on their biggest opportunities
• Speed up skill mastery through individualised learning
• Continuously improve the team’s pitching and presentations
• Easily track rep progress to focus on further coaching

In short, Seismic Learning empowers revenue and enablement leaders to provide world-class coaching at scale for teams of any size.

Lean on AI-powered coaching for a competitive advantage

In today’s hyper-competitive sales environment, AI in sales enablement is quickly transitioning from a nice-to-have tool to a must-have capability. Organisations embracing AI have a distinct advantage in accelerating skill development and unlocking their teams’ full sales potential. Case in point: More than 70% of revenue leaders believe organisations that don’t incorporate AI into their GTM processes will fall behind.

But with personalised feedback and tailored learning plans, AI sales coaching can change how teams learn and improve — now and in the future.

AI will only continue to advance, so now’s the time to take advantage of AI-powered sales coaching to best position yourself for a future where you’re not playing catch-up, but rather setting the pace for coaching excellence.

Want to join the thousands of other brands leading the AI sales coaching revolution with Seismic Learning? Book some time with our sales team to see if we’re a good match for your needs.

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Lindsey Fine is a sales leadership veteran with extensive experience driving growth at industry giants like Salesforce, Meta, Dropbox, and Amazon. After nearly a decade on the frontlines of B2B tech sales, Fine brings a unique perspective on leveraging AI to elevate sales coaching and drive revenue. Connect with her on LinkedIn to explore how she can help with your growth strategy.

The post How to use AI for sales coaching appeared first on Seismic.

Many GTM teams already rely on sales enablement software. The recent increase in its use isn’t just because more organisations are adopting new technology; it’s also about how enablement leaders are using modern tools to lead change, scale proven methods, and revolutionize training. That’s why for enablement leaders, investing in enablement technology isn’t just a matter of convenience — it’s a strategic necessity.  

To better understand the critical role enablement technology plays in empowering GTM teams across the globe, Seismic recently surveyed nearly 2,000 managers and senior leadership figures across GTM roles. The aim was to delve into their enablement strategies, the effectiveness of those strategies, the obstacles they face, and their GTM approaches. 

The study revealed that 92% of enablement tech users believe the desire for strategic, effective enablement will increase over the next 5 years, with 49% predicting a significant increase.  

Read on to understand the importance of sales enablement solutions and why this strategic investment is critical for driving growth, enhancing competitiveness, and ensuring long-term sustainability. 

Why enablement technology matters 

Enablement technology empowers organisations to drive impactful customer engagement and prospect interactions. According to our study, increasing revenue, boosting customer satisfaction, optimising operations, improving marketing and sales alignment, and increasing client retention are just some of the ways respondents say enablement technology helps their organisations. In fact, 82% of respondents estimate that enablement tools will help their company exceed its revenue targets in 2024. 

Part of the reason that it’s possible to achieve the business outcomes noted above is because enablement technology is great at enhancing the efficiency of GTM teams. On average, it saves respondents 12 hours per week, enabling teams to trade administrative work for higher value activities. Beyond streamlining processes, the adoption of enablement technology holds profound implications for employee retention and organisational competitiveness. Respondents feel so strongly about the necessity of enablement technology that 52% of enablement tech users say they simply wouldn’t work for a company without these tools. 

Who uses sales enablement tools? 

Once primarily utilised by sales teams, sales enablement technology now encompasses other GTM functions like customer success and marketing, reflecting its growing importance across customer-facing and revenue-generating teams. According to our study, 6 in 10 enablement users say that their company’s sales team uses enablement tech, while 58% report that marketing uses enablement tech and 53% say that enablement tech is used by customer success teams. 

When asked if the desire for strategic, effective enablement has increased over the last 3 to 5 years, 9 in 10 sales enablement tool users say yes — with 38% reporting a significant increase.  

The case for investment 

The study revealed that enablement spend is on the upswing: 58% of respondents say that their company plans to increase their investment in enablement technology in 2024. Notably, those who already use enablement technology and know its benefits were 75% more likely to say this. Sales leaders were 34% more likely than average to report an increase in spending. 

Investing in enablement technology isn’t just about staying ahead; it’s about securing your organisation’s future resilience and competitiveness. A staggering 83% of those planning to increase or retain investment agree that enablement technology is integral to weathering difficult economic times. This speaks volumes about the perceived value of sales enablement tools.  

And the repercussions of neglecting this investment are real — with 36% of respondents considering leaving their organisation due to inadequate tools, putting organisations at risk for attrition and diminished GTM performance.  

The promise of AI and outlook 

Recent advances around generative AI have the potential to transform digital sales enablement. In fact, 92% of respondents who plan to increase investment in enablement tech plan to do so because of the promise of AI. Today, AI is already transforming and simplifying enablement workflows, saving humans hours of administrative time by assuming repetitive, manual tasks.  

As generative AI continues to evolve, organisations can expect to improve data-driven decision-making, better understand customers, and deliver the personalised interactions that buyers crave. Investing in AI-powered enablement technology positions organisations to thrive in the future by driving innovation, streamlining operations, and delivering a superior customer experience. 

It’s time for Generation Enablement 

Today’s GTM teams are not just adopting sales enablement software — they’re  harnessing it to drive transformational change across the business. They’re not defined by their age, but by their outsized impact on GTM strategy, behaviours, and results. At Seismic, we’re calling this Generation Enablement, or Gen E for short.  

The Seismic Enablement Cloud^TM is designed to help GTM teams break down silos across departments and generations to help them perform their best and drive revenue growth.  

To learn more about Gen E and the results of our study, download the report here.  

The post 2024 is the year to invest in enablement software  appeared first on Seismic.

Let’s get started by looking at how sellers spend their time. The truth is, the majority of their time isn’t spent selling. Shocking! According to the LinkedIn State of Sales Report 2022, sellers only spend a quarter of their time selling. The rest of their time is spent performing a variety of other tasks, including internal meetings, training, administrative duties, and updating their CRM. 

If you’re anything like me, maybe you’re still surprised that sellers only spend 27% of their time selling. I thought the gig was all smiles and dials – turns out I was wrong. Fortunately, our research has shown that one tool can help sellers save up to 15 hours a week: sales enablement software. 

Now, hear me out. We wouldn’t just say that because we’re the leader in sales enablement. The numbers actually bear it out. In the 2023 Value of Enablement Report – a multinational survey of more than 1,200 professionals in sales, enablement, and customer service – respondents overwhelmingly stated that their sales enablement platform saves them time. 

In this post, we’ll see how go-to-market (GTM) professionals use sales enablement to operate efficiently. Let’s get to it!

How sales enablement platforms save time

Sales enablement saves practitioners 15 hours per week. That’s nearly two complete business days. While the time savings are great, what’s even more impressive is what survey respondents are able to do with their time. According to the report, 83% of respondents who use sales enablement software stated that they have more time to focus on revenue-generating activities. 

But sales enablement technology saves time on a variety of activities. According to the survey, 52% of respondents say that sales enablement software helps them save time on finding metrics for planning and forecasting. The benefits also extend to sales enablement training. 48% of respondents say that sales enablement tech saves time on organising requests and addressing training gaps. Another 47% of respondents noted that sales enablement tools save them time locating information. 

Time savings can have a great impact on employee morale. Think about it – when sellers can easily and quickly find content or access training, they can feel confident that they’re better prepared for client interactions. But, that’s not always the case in organisations that don’t use sales enablement technology. The survey found that 91% of respondents who don’t use sales enablement tools not only spend more time looking for content, but the time they spend on non-revenue generating activities also affects their morale. It also negatively affects their wallets. 67% of respondents who didn’t have access to the correct content said that spending time on non-revenue generating activities affects their income. 

Smarter enablement leads to better outcomes.

We believe that when organisations practise smart enablement, great things will happen. And organisations that currently use sales enablement technology tend to agree. Even as budgets tighten, 71% of respondents say that their company plans to increase its investment in enablement technology in 2023.

Organisations that plan to maintain or increase their investment in sales enablement technology do so because of the impact it has on their employees. We won’t share exact numbers here – we’ve got to save some of the best findings for the report, which you can download here. But, on a serious note, organisations that use sales enablement technology believe that their solution helps with both client and employee retention. 

How Seismic can help

The Seismic Enablement Cloud is purpose-built to help organisations weather difficult times by operating more efficiently. If you find that your sellers are only spending a quarter of their time focused on revenue-generating activities, or if you’d like to help them save 15 hours per week, we can help. We’ve helped thousands of customers like Salesloft achieve 35% higher win rates by delivering sales enablement content to customers through Seismic. 

If you’d like to learn more about how organisations extract value from their sales enablement solution, download the Seismic 2023 Value of Enablement Report. 

Once you take a moment to see the numbers for yourself, there’s still work to be done. Carve out some time in your calendar to get a demo.

The post How sales enablement saves you time appeared first on Seismic.

In our previous post, we provided an overview of Seismic’s Maturity Growth Framework. In this post, we’ll dig into the first stage of maturity: Control Chaos.  

Starting something new can sometimes feel unorganised, challenging, or even chaotic. But just like anything else we experience in life, changing a process or learning a new skill takes time and repetition to build new muscles. It might even hurt a bit, but the outcome is always worth it!  

Fun fact about me: before joining Seismic, I was a customer (and super-user). I know firsthand that managing behind-the-scenes sales and content enablement efforts can feel like you are trying to hit a moving target. Many times, just before a project goes live, that target can move further away, adding new obstacles. Amid these challenges, you’re still expected to answer questions about the effectiveness of your initiatives. This can easily lead to frantic decisions that make you feel out of control. The good news is that this is a natural place to begin. What’s important is that you continue to make ad hoc adjustments and actively manage changes. 

When you find yourself or your organisation in this type of chaotic situation, take a deep breath and remember maturity and growth come in phases. It takes time to improve an enablement maturity strategy. So, you’ll need to adjust your plans and come up with innovative ideas to drive early user adoption and grow excitement around your enablement efforts.  

It’s also important to define future outcomes for success at an early stage to effectively track your progress. As an enablement leader, you have many responsibilities across various teams and systems to manage. It can be challenging to narrow your list of objectives to fit into one solution that integrates with legacy tools and solves every workstream requirement. This is where you need to be strategic!  Let’s look at how chaos may manifest within your organisation:  

1. Examine your content management process for red flags. Are teams collaborating or are they operating in silos?  

2. Gather feedback from different end-users to understand unique use cases. Are sales reps complaining that content is hard to find or that it doesn’t meet their expectations?  

3. Do you have high-level coordination such as a steering committee or cross-functional, executive buy-in? Or are you struggling to find sponsors who will champion the use of the platform, and/or help define and drive outcomes for success?  

During this time, issues will inevitably emerge, and it’s critical to double-click into each one to gather answers that will inform your changes.  

Feedback is critical at this stage of maturity. It will help you find better ways to break down silos, uncover user challenges, and make sure your roadmap is backed by multiple levels of executive sponsorship and buy-in. A better understanding of the end-user experience will increase your effectiveness in developing good strategy and beneficial enhancements to the platform and your overall process. This will lead to a better experience for your users as they start to see changes based on their feedback. The results? Higher user adoption, faster sales cycles, increased pipeline, and movement away from chaos toward better enablement. 

Good enablement comes in many forms, from live sessions to prebuilt learning content. It’s important to diversify your approach and dig a deep well of resources that will help everyone find the answers they might not know they need at this early stage. As you look at creating content and filling gaps, always go back to your agreed-upon targeted outcomes to ensure your teams are looking in the same direction. Regular refreshers through new learning opportunities help make adoption behaviour sticky and repeatable. Measure improvement by closing the feedback loop throughout these continual sales enablement sessions. These changes will add up over time to become a tipping point, taking your maturity to the next level. 

This is just the first stop on the road to maturity. The next step in the journey requires a deeper understanding of the impact of the changes you make, so stay with us as we travel to the next phase: learning how to measure and understand impact. The Seismic Enablement Cloud provides invaluable insights about your sales teams, the content they use, and the motions they follow to drive the best results and outcomes.  

If you’d like a guide on your sales enablement journey, we’re here to help. Contact the Seismic Services team of Enablement Experts today!  

The post How to “Control Chaos” on the path to enablement maturity appeared first on Seismic.

With this reality in mind, Seismic commissioned a study to better understand the value of sales enablement tools. The Seismic 2023 Value of Enablement Report sampled more than 1,200 full-time sales, enablement, and customer success professionals in managerial and leadership roles throughout the United States and Europe. The report found that sales enablement technology is exceedingly popular, with 82% of respondents saying they use it on the job.

It would be easy for us to say that sales enablement makes practitioners’ jobs easier. However, that statement is much more impactful when numbers bear it out. Perhaps, what’s even more interesting is the feedback we received from organisations that don’t use sales enablement solutions. 

That’s where we’d like to start in this post. We’ll share some of the study’s highlights and outline the experiences of the “haves” and the “have-nots.”

Those who have sales enablement technology

Let’s start with a simple question: does enablement technology make work easier? The short answer is a resounding yes. 99% of respondents who use sales enablement platforms said that it makes their job easier. 

A variety of considerations factored into this claim. As sellers become increasingly responsible for ambitious sales targets, every minute of their workday is more valuable. Any tool that gives them an advantage, or saves time, has a significant impact on their outcomes. 80% of respondents who use enablement technology stated that it frees up time to focus on revenue-generating activities. Furthermore, they reported that it saves them 15 hours per week. That’s nearly two workdays that can be spent interacting with and responding to customer needs instead – not searching for or updating content. 

Enablement technology’s ability to save users time creates opportunities in other areas, too. Not only does enablement software give go-to-market (GTM) teams more time to prioritise client-facing activities, it ensures that they feel more prepared and knowledgeable. When users have the content and resources they need at their fingertips, it’s easy to feel empowered. In fact, 97% of respondents who said enablement technology gave them quick access to content, information, or coaching believed they were able to speak to clients from a more informed perspective. And 68% of respondents said that having quick access to information and content prevents them from second-guessing themselves. 

The enablement have-nots

While respondents who don’t use enablement technology didn’t explicitly say that their lack of access made their jobs more difficult, the numbers said it for them. Their responses indicated that not using enablement technology had negative impacts on their bottom line. Of those who do not use sales enablement tools, 36% said their company struggles with increasing client retention. 

Sales enablement platforms with built-in learning, training, and coaching capabilities are vital to sales acceleration. When organisations onboard reps faster, the sooner they can win new business and have an impact on revenue generation. The inverse can prove consequential. 88% of respondents whose organisations struggle with onboarding agreed that poor onboarding disrupted company operations. These disruptions result in opportunities lost and can stunt a company’s growth. 

Organisations without a sales enablement strategy face challenges that go beyond training and coaching. Once GTM hires are onboarded, poor access to content poses an additional challenge to customer-facing roles. Comparatively, sellers who work for organisations with streamlined access to content felt more prepared and confident going into their customer interactions. On the other hand, 97% of those who didn’t use enablement technology said they were often (19%) or sometimes (78%) unable to locate the content they needed. Of those respondents, 91% said this makes them feel less productive. 

The value of a sales enablement programme

The findings in the report indicate that the value of sales enablement can’t be understated. In organisations with a sales enablement team and technology, sellers feel supported and well-equipped to do their jobs. We couldn’t agree more. 

Again, we could tell you ourselves why we believe a sales enablement platform is a sound strategic investment, but we won’t. Instead, we invite you to see for yourself. If you’d like to learn more about why enablement is valuable – both in times of economic uncertainty and abundance – check out  The Seismic 2023 Value of Enablement Report. 

The post Seismic 2023 Value of Enablement Report: Sales enablement makes your job easier appeared first on Seismic.

Seismic’s Winter 2024 Release strengthens Aura Copilot with new tools to help enablement professionals work more efficiently in their roles. 

Save time with AI Page Builder 

AI Page Builder gives enablement teams a highly intelligent assistant to simplify page creation in Seismic. An activity that previously took several hours to produce great content for go-to-market (GTM) teams can now be completed in an hour or less. Users can sit back while Aura Copilot builds a page in minutes and then make edits to ensure it meets specific needs.  

Content creators are always multi-tasking and we’ve added auto-save capabilities to Page to help content builders save their work. If a user closes a page or leaves their browser, their content updates are saved in real-time to ensure their work is available the next time a user accesses Seismic. 

Find what you need in Seismic, faster 

We’ve made it easier and faster for sellers to find what they need in Seismic. With Quick Access Search, when a seller is searching for something, they will be presented with a history of their searches that will give access to previously searched or access documents. Sellers will have type-ahead functionality, similar to web search engines – that, as they type, suggested content and pages will be presenting in their search results. 

Control content permissions in Seismic Library 

Upgrades to content access permissions and notifications increase flexibility and control to streamline and accelerate content management at scale. Administrators have access to improved audit trails to view how, when, and by whom content is accessed.  

Enablers can also keep tabs on content expirations. Improved in-app and email notifications ensure that users are aware of content expiration. Flexible notifications give users the ability to delegate content for updates in Enablement Planner or update directly.  

Scale and create digital sales rooms faster 

Empower sellers with a repeatable, scalable, and collaborative way to produce and manage DSRs with marketing-created templates (available now) and ownership transfer (Early Access). Minimise repetitive tasks and maintain compliance while personalising  content for every engagement.  

Expand on the power of Seismic for Meetings 

The Winter Release updates enable users to share meeting recordings – alongside the content presented – directly to a DSR in just a few clicks. Meeting attendees can revisit what happened in a meeting along with key follow-up items.  

Sales reps can now prepare for meetings by previewing meeting sessions ahead of time. This update empowers sellers to make presentations more effective through practise runs that preview their presentation playlists.  

Using the power of generative AI, enablement teams can identify how specific topics, keywords, and questions resonate with customers to make improvements for objections, deal discussions, and discovery.  

See the latest features and updates in action 

Want to see our Fall ‘23 Release for yourself? Get a demo today! 

If you’d like to learn about how Seismic customers are using the Enablement Cloud to drive better outcomes, download our latest eBook, “Making the Case for Enablement.” 

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