The Importance of a Well-Structured Library 

An organized library empowers content owners to manage, create, and sunset content efficiently, all while enabling end users to find what they need easily. One of the unique strengths of Seismic’s sales content management platform is its ability to separate the content management experience from the end-user experience. 

Think of it like this: while the “kitchen” where content owners work might be full of moving parts, the “living room” for end users remains polished and perfectly organized. This separation enables your teams to work productively behind the scenes without compromising the user-facing experience. 

Building the Foundation: Best Practices for Library Structure 

1. Establish a Logical Folder Hierarchy 

2.  Start by defining a structure that mirrors the way your organization operates. Whether you organize content by product, geography, or business unit, the key is to create a structure that feels intuitive to those managing the content. 

For example, a regional setup might include folders like “APAC” and “EMEA,” ensuring content owners see only the materials relevant to their responsibilities. This minimizes distractions and supports productivity. 

3. Use Custom Content Properties for Categorization 

 Every organization has its own “vocabulary” for categorizing content. Custom content properties (such as tags or metadata) allow teams to apply that vocabulary, enabling precise filtering and easy retrieval of assets. 

Tip: Consistent naming conventions are essential. A clear, uniform approach not only helps with internal searches but also enhances your brand when content is shared externally. 

4. Set Up Clear Access Permissions 

 Properly configured access permissions are critical for streamlining workflows and reducing noise. There are three levels of permissions you can assign: 

1. View: For users who need access but won’t edit or manage content. 

2. Edit: For content owners responsible for updates and publishing. 

3. Manage: For administrators overseeing the structure and assigning permissions. 

Assign these permissions thoughtfully, grouping users where possible to avoid overcomplication. 

Workflow Management and Governance 

A library isn’t just about where content lives—it’s also about how content moves through its lifecycle. Implementing clear workflows ensures every piece of content is properly reviewed, approved, and eventually archived or purged when it’s no longer relevant. 

This process also supports compliance and accountability. Keep a permissions blueprint as part of your content governance documentation to make it easy to audit and adjust access as your business evolves. 

Bringing It All Together 

Combining an intuitive folder structure with thoughtful permissions creates a powerful system that drives: 

• Enhanced Productivity: Content owners spend less time searching and more time creating. 

• Improved Security: Only authorized users can access sensitive content. 

• Scalability: A well-structured library adapts to your changing business needs. 

Addressing External Content Challenges 

If you’re syncing content from systems like Google Drive or SharePoint, you may inherit folder structures you can’t modify. In these cases, clearly differentiate synced content from Seismic-managed content using distinct folder labels. This helps content owners quickly identify what they need while maintaining best practices for your internal assets. 

A Best Practice Worth Highlighting 

One proven approach is to separate your active content from other materials. Create distinct folders for active content, archived content, and admin/testing materials. This ensures your dynamic folders, which surface content to end users, only pull from vetted, up-to-date assets. 

For instance, an “Active Doc Center” folder can house all the materials intended for user profiles, while other content remains safely stored in separate, non-visible folders. 

The Path Forward 

By thoughtfully designing your library’s structure and workflows, you can transform content management from a challenge into a strategic advantage. With tools like Seismic’s content properties, permissions, and workflows, your teams can focus on what matters most: delivering impactful content to drive success. 

If you’re ready to refine your content library, Seismic University offers courses that can help you get started. And as always, our solution consultants are here to guide you every step of the way. 

The post How to organize and manage content in Seismic  appeared first on Seismic.

The evolution of AI has opened unprecedented opportunities for enablement leaders to increase productivity across teams. With foundational AI technologies like machine learning and the rise of generative AI, many organizations are now equipped to handle massive amounts of data. In this AI-driven environment, leaders are seeing a shift toward personalized enablement at scale, where AI helps teams identify and act on the most relevant information for each stage of the customer journey. 

According to Michelle Morgan, a global analyst with IDC, this transformation will yield an estimated $10 trillion boost to global GDP in the next decade, propelled by AI’s ability to handle both structured and unstructured data.  

From sales forecasting to tailored customer interactions, AI is transforming a previously “gut-feeling” process into a data-driven strategy. AI’s next step, Morgan explains, is in enhancing productivity through scenario simulations and customized learning paths — allowing enablement teams to better support sellers at each stage. 

In this post, we’ll highlight key takeaways from our Shift panel discussion, and detail how enablement practitioners can leverage AI tools to make sellers more productive and improve buyer engagement – all with an emphasis on compliance, data privacy, and security. 

The Role of AI in Enablement: A New Era of Productivity 

AI is reshaping the enablement landscape by automating time-intensive tasks, offering personalization at scale, and enabling teams to work more intelligently. With foundational AI technologies like machine learning and generative AI, many organizations are now equipped to handle vast amounts of data, making insights more accessible. And as we move toward personalized enablement at scale, AI tools are increasingly able to surface the right information at the right time for every customer interaction. 

Enablement leaders are also finding value in AI-driven forecasting tools, which analyze both historical and current data to produce highly accurate predictions. Additionally, personalized learning paths powered by AI create customized onboarding and training programs tailored to individual learning styles, ensuring that every seller is prepared and continuously supported. 

Enhancing Customer Experience through Smarter Interactions 

AI opens the door to deeper, more engaging customer experiences by transforming how sellers interact with clients. In today’s fast-paced environment, many buyers prefer a digital-first approach for initial engagement, and AI enables organizations to meet this demand through automated, context-aware interactions. AI tools like virtual assistants help with scheduling, CRM updates, and drafting personalized content, taking care of “assistant-level” work so sellers can focus on high-impact conversations. 

AI’s role in improving customer experience also extends to the buying journey. For instance, virtual try-on tools or interactive demos powered by AI allow buyers to explore products at their convenience, ultimately boosting engagement. Additionally, AI can analyze buyer interactions across digital touchpoints to inform sales reps of buyer preferences, allowing sellers to engage customers with content that resonates. These insights enable teams to tailor their approach and create a more seamless, customer-centered experience. 

Ensuring Compliance and Data Security in AI Deployments 

As organizations adopt AI at scale, compliance and governance become crucial. Enterprise-grade AI must align with data security and regulatory standards while remaining adaptable to an organization’s internal needs. To achieve this, effective governance strategies include restricting AI’s autonomous actions to administrative tasks, allowing human oversight for high-stakes decisions. AI solutions should also be designed to integrate securely with various systems across the organization, ensuring that data is controlled and protected at every touchpoint. 

Another vital strategy for enhancing security is contextualizing AI outputs with a company’s proprietary data. By grounding AI insights in an organization’s specific data repositories, companies can ensure that outputs are not only relevant but also compliant with internal standards. This customization enhances the quality of AI outputs, allowing them to align closely with the company’s voice and brand values. 

Overcoming the Fear Factor: From Hesitation to Action 

While the potential of AI is clear, leaders may face resistance to adoption due to concerns around complexity and change. A practical way to move forward is by beginning with focused, measurable AI projects that clearly demonstrate value. For example, enablement teams can start with AI applications in specific areas like onboarding or content engagement tracking, building confidence through small, impactful wins. 

By focusing on gradual, data-driven adoption, leaders can help their teams see the value of AI in real-time, addressing initial hesitations and building momentum for broader innovation. A phased approach also enables companies to expand their AI initiatives as teams become comfortable and experience success with early applications. 

A Strategic Vision for AI in Enablement 

As Seismic Shift 2024 highlighted, AI represents an opportunity for enablement teams to drive growth and deliver value by empowering sellers with more intelligent, adaptable resources. From enhancing productivity to improving customer engagement, AI-driven enablement can set teams apart in an increasingly competitive landscape. By focusing on compliance, customer experience, and productivity gains, enablement leaders can unlock the full potential of AI as a strategic asset. 

Through strategic adoption and thoughtful governance, enablement leaders can position their teams for sustained success in an AI-enabled world, building stronger, more resilient organizations in the process. 

If you’d like to learn more about how you can use AI in enablement, download our free eBook, The comprehensive guide to using generative AI in enablement, and transform your team’s productivity and customer engagement.  

The post An insider’s guide to pioneering AI in enablement  appeared first on Seismic.

Alteryx has transformed its sales operations, accelerated sales opportunities, and equipped sellers with essential tools, thanks to Seismic. To illustrate this success, we spoke with Khari Bankston, Alteryx’s Senior Manager of Enablement, to see how she’s using Seismic to its maximum potential. 

The conversation highlights how Alteryx transformed its sales operations with Seismic. They’ve been able to accelerate sales opportunities and equip sellers with essential tools, thanks to Seismic. Read on to learn how strategic integrations and data-driven insights can significantly enhance sales performance across various stages of the sales cycle. 

How does your organization use Seismic for revenue enablement? 

KB: Seismic has been crucial for accelerating our sales opportunities. The team has helped us get the most out of the platform and made a huge impact on our sales team across different stages of the sales cycle. We use features like LiveSend and an integration with Salesloft to put Seismic where our sellers work. 

What are some of the different integrations you use with your Seismic instance? 

KB: We use integrations with Outlook, Salesloft, Salesforce, and our Salesforce business enrichment data app. We call this combination of integrations the “holy grail of sales enablement.” It helps us communicate ROI effectively, not just anecdotally. 

How do you measure the impact of Seismic on your sellers in the field? 

KB: We can show correlations from end to end. Our data science team has identified our top, mid, and lower performers. Our application allows us to take different data sets, build workflows, and create real data stories behind them. 

We’ve presented at conferences showing that sellers who engage with content — internal enablement, customer-facing materials, and instructor-led trainings — perform better. We measure engagement through Seismic Learning, tracking attendance and assigning coursework as needed. High performers complete these learnings; mid performers engage less; and low performers do not engage at all. The data is clear, and we use Seismic pages to build sales plays and provide prescriptive guidance to our sales team. 

How does your team currently use Seismic Aura and Aura Copilot? 

KB: We have been leveraging Aura Copilot and it’s really taken off. Everyone from our SDRs through CSMs use Copilot to generate emails, ask for advice on discovery calls with CFOs, outline steps, and curate content. 

We use LiveDocs not only for guided assembly to create custom sales presentations for any stage of the sales cycle, but we are also preparing to launch our LiveDocs sales proposal generator. This tool will significantly reduce the time it takes to deliver proposals to customers. 

We received enthusiastic feedback from the pilot. Those users said it would save them at least four hours when building a proposal. Managers and RFP handlers have expressed relief over the time saved in reviewing proposals, thanks to the system’s ability to create, share through Workspace, and offer complete flexibility and transparency for collaborators. 

How has Seismic had an impact on you and your organization? 

KB: Seismic has been invaluable, and I can’t wait for our Aura Copilot launch to the full team. This is probably the biggest development since we onboarded Seismic a year ago. It’s been fantastic, and I am always thrilled to discuss its impact on my productivity and value to the company. It’s rewarding to make sellers’ lives easier and create a frictionless selling and buying experience. I’m very grateful for Seismic; bravo to the team for their work. 

I’ve used many vendors and sales enablement tools, and Seismic is the most comprehensive and complete.  

Unlock Unparalleled Sales Efficiency with Seismic 

Seismic has proven to be an indispensable tool for Alteryx, empowering their sales teams with unparalleled efficiency and insight. The seamless integration of Seismic’s features has helped streamline their sales processes and increase seller performance.  

If you’d like to learn how you can achieve similar success, get a demo today. You can also learn how to use AI in enablement by downloading our eBook, The Comprehensive Guide to AI in Enablement.  

The post Seismic’s Impact on Revenue Enablement at Alteryx  appeared first on Seismic.

By transforming how sellers find and leverage content, generative search is not just a tool. It’s a game-changer that empowers sales to personalize every buyer engagement with the most relevant and compelling content.  

In this post, we’ll cover how generative search technology, driven by artificial intelligence, is revolutionizing sales enablement by providing personalized, context-aware responses and enhancing overall efficiency. Let’s start with the basics! 

What is generative search? 

Generative search is an approach driven by artificial intelligence (AI).  Instead of returning links to web pages, the system generates original, comprehensive answers based on a user’s query.  

Because generative search is powered by AI and large language models (LLMs), it can synthesize vast amounts of data, drawing from multiple sources to create a more relevant, cohesive response. This makes generative AI search engines different from traditional search engines, which focus on indexing and ranking web pages.  

Generative search presents the answers to a query in a conversational, context-aware manner, allowing users to get precise, nuanced, and customized responses. Generative search is a key capability supported by Seismic Aura Copilot, and it is used in other AI tools like ChatGPT, Bard, and Bing. 

Using generative search for sales enablement 

Sales enablement technology that uses generative AI can analyze customer data and past interactions in real time. This helps create personalized responses, pitch materials, and recommendations. Generating content in this way helps sellers quickly access the most relevant information, enabling them to optimize customer engagement and close deals faster.  

Generative AI in sales enablement technology also enhances lead qualification. It can surface ideal prospects and provide data-driven insights on buyer intent, making the sales process more effective and targeted.  

Benefits of generative search in sales enablement 

Generative search offers significant benefits to sales enablement by enhancing how sellers access and leverage information. Here are the key outcomes it can help deliver for go-to-market (GTM) teams: 

• Enhanced efficiency: Sellers can find information faster, improving their confidence and reducing time spent on manual research. In fact, the Seismic 2023 Value of Enablement Report found that 68% of enablement tech users say that having quick access to information and/or content enables them to avoid second-guessing themselves.  
   
  In addition, when AI can generate high-quality content such as email templates, follow-up messages, or presentations, sales teams can shift their focus to strategic activities like relationship-building and closing deals. 

• Improved accuracy: AI-powered generative search provides the most relevant answers to sales queries. That means sellers no longer have to sift through multiple documents or web pages and risk sharing outdated information. Instead, generative search empowers each rep with context-specific responses tailored to their needs, such as product details, pricing, and customer data. 

• Personalized engagement: Generative AI search can create customized content for different audiences, enabling sellers to quickly produce tailored pitches, proposals, or responses based on the unique needs and goals of each customer or prospect. This personalized engagement strengthens rapport, differentiates your solutions from competitors, and increases the likelihood of closing the deal. It also leads to higher customer satisfaction and retention. 

• Data-driven insights: AI-powered generative search can analyze huge sales and customer datasets and then highlight trends, patterns, or opportunities. These data-driven insights help sales teams optimize their strategies and make informed decisions about how to target the right customers efficiently and effectively. 

• Consistency in messaging: By using AI-generated sales materials, organizations can improve message consistency across all channels. As a result, GTM teams are better able to communicate brand-aligned, accurate, and up-to-date information. Consistent messaging builds trust with customers and helps align team efforts toward common goals, ultimately driving better results. 

• Scalability: Generative search tools are built to handle large volumes of data and can easily scale across organizations to support growing sales teams and data requirements. This scalability ensures that even large teams have access to the same quality of information and insights, driving alignment and accelerating the onboarding process for new team members. 

Generative AI for sales enablement drives revenue growth 

Finding the right information to send to customers and prospects is time-consuming and challenging. Generative search streamlines sales workflows by providing instant access to AI-generated, contextually relevant content. This empowers sales teams by minimizing human error in data retrieval and improving efficiency, personalization, and decision-making. These benefits drive better performance and revenue growth in a competitive environment. 

Seismic mitigates content discovery challenges with generative search, a key capability supported by Seismic Aura Copilot. This AI-powered approach aims to provide an intuitive, Google-like search experience within Seismic, making it easier and faster for sellers to find the accurate, compelling information they need. 

Download “The Comprehensive Guide to using Generative AI in Enablement” to learn more about how Seismic Aura Copilot can empower your sales enablement strategy. 

The post How enablement technology uses generative search  appeared first on Seismic.

According to Harvard Business Review, a typical knowledge worker switches between various apps and websites around 1,200 times daily, resulting in lost time and a poor user experience. For go-to-market (GTM) teams, consolidating the sales tech stack is vital for boosting operational efficiency and cutting costs. 

Eliminating redundant technology is only part of the solution. Even if the remaining applications are useful, their separation across different vendors and platforms creates challenges. This siloed data makes it difficult for GTM teams to reach their full potential. 

That’s why organizations need to unify tools in the sales enablement tech stack to reap the business benefits of consolidation. Read on to understand the reasons for doing so, learn about the business benefits, and hear some real-life case study examples.  

Drivers for consolidating and unifying the sales tech stack 

Overbuilding your sales tech stack can stifle growth, add costs, and create inefficiencies that impact sales productivity. Here are some key factors that make consolidating and unifying your tools an essential step: 

• Saturation of cheap point solutions: While inexpensive point solutions might seem like a good short-term fix, they often lack the robust features and scalability that growing organizations need. Using many small tools can create a mix of systems that don’t work well together. This can lead to data silos and missed opportunities for collaboration. Consolidating these tools into a single, more comprehensive platform can enhance functionality, eliminate redundancy, and ultimately improve sales productivity. 

• Rising administration costs: Each tool in your sales tech stack comes with its own administrative overhead. Factors like licensing fees, training needs, and ongoing maintenance can add up quickly. Consolidating the tools in your tech stack allows you to reduce the number of systems requiring support, cutting down on time and resources spent on administration.  

• Redundant technology: Many GTM teams use multiple tools that perform similar functions, leading to unnecessary overlap and added complexity. Consolidating and unifying the sales tech stack provides a single source of truth, removes redundant solutions, streamlines processes, and drives higher user adoption. 

The business benefits of a unified sales tech stack 

After consolidating and unifying your sales tech stack, you can expect to realize several business benefits:  

• Reducing costs and complexity: A unified sales stack reduces financial overhead and decreases the complexity of managing disparate systems. This frees up resources and reduces your administrative burden. 

• Eliminating silos and enhancing data quality: By centralizing your data in one platform, you eliminate data silos and give your teams the visibility they need to make informed decisions. When your data is consistent, accessible, and easily shareable, teams can quickly identify trends, measure impact, and establish best practices, resulting in faster, data-driven decision-making. 

• Improving efficiency and user experience: A single platform means fewer logins, fewer tool transitions, and more streamlined workflows. Your GTM team can find and share content faster, access key data without toggling between tools, and focus on high-value tasks instead of managing multiple interfaces. This enhances efficiency and boosts user satisfaction and adoption. 

• Enhancing collaboration and alignment across teams: When sales, marketing, and enablement teams use the same platform, it fosters better alignment and collaboration. A unified system enables seamless content sharing, consistent messaging, and clearer communication channels, ensuring everyone is working toward the same objectives. This shared environment helps accelerate deal cycles and promotes a more cohesive GTM strategy. 

Real-life examples: How two tech companies unified their sales tech stack 

Genesys:

• The problem: Genesys, a leading customer experience platform, had a disunified, clunky learning platform that frustrated sellers.  

• The solution: Genesys unified its content and learning experiences by migrating all sales-related content from SharePoint to Seismic and trading its learning management system for Seismic Learning.  

• The results: When Genesys created a seamless unified platform experience, 99% of their users adopted Seismic. In just eight months, Genesys experienced an increase of nearly 2000% in its sales teams using Digital Sales Rooms to create co-branded, personalized microsites, which resulted in a more engaging and relevant experience for its prospects and customers. 

Salesloft:

• The problem: Salesloft, a leading sales engagement platform, needed a way to consolidate and standardize resources, content, and onboarding to support company growth, while streamlining new messaging and initiatives. 

• The solution: Salesloft consolidated content that was scattered across multiple platforms with Seismic, leading to more efficient content management and better support for seller growth. 

• The results: The top 25% of Salesloft’s commercial sellers using Seismic boasted a 52% shorter average deal cycle and a 4% higher upgrade win rate. Additionally, those commercial sellers generated 40% more pipeline, and SDRs using Seismic saw 84% more pipeline generated than the previous fiscal year. 

Unify and optimize your sales tech stack with Seismic 

Consolidating your sales tech stack prepares your organization for success, allowing for faster decision-making and a better user experience. The right platform can unify your tools, helping you reduce costs, centralize data, and create consistent processes that enable GTM teams. 

Seismic empowers GTM teams to unify their sales tech stack by seamlessly integrating with popular platforms like CRM systems, content repositories, email tools, data sources, and more. Coupled with integrations, Seismic provides robust capabilities around learning and coaching, sales content management, and strategy and planning that eliminate the need for redundant technology. 

Speak to our team to learn how Seismic can optimize your sales software stack.  

The post How to add value by consolidating your sales tech stack  appeared first on Seismic.

Over the course of three days, we had the pleasure of connecting with 1,123 attendees from 429 companies across 19 countries. It was a week filled with inspiring keynotes, engaging breakout sessions, and countless opportunities to learn from each other. 

Throughout the event, we gathered a wealth of questions from our conversations with attendees. These questions reflect the curiosity, challenges, and aspirations of our community. To ensure everyone benefits from the insights shared at Shift, we’ve decided to create this mailbag-style article where Seismic’s subject matter experts will address some of the most pressing questions from our customers. 

From the latest innovations in the Seismic Enablement Cloud to practical tips on driving transformational enablement, our experts are here to provide you with valuable answers and actionable advice. Whether you were able to join us in San Diego or are catching up from afar, we hope this blog post helps you push what’s possible in your own enablement journey. 

Stay tuned as we dive into your questions and share the knowledge and experiences that made Seismic Shift 2024 an event to remember. 

Where should enablement sit within the organization and to whom should it report? 

The short answer is it depends. The longer answer is more complex, but it ultimately comes down to revenue and growth.  

Enablement needs to align to the revenue sponsor, whether that lies with marketing or sales. Enablement teams should be integrated into the strategic planning process to ensure their initiatives are aligned with the company’s overall objectives. As a critical player in the decision-making process, enablement can help set measurable success metrics that matter to the business, such as pipeline velocity, win rates, and customer engagement.  

This data-driven approach allows for continuous monitoring and adjustment of strategies to achieve the desired outcomes. Ultimately, the close integration of enablement teams with other functions and their involvement in strategic planning are crucial for driving significant revenue growth and achieving business success. 

Enablement teams should be strategically positioned within an organization to drive the greatest growth impact. By aligning closely with sales, marketing, product development, and customer success teams, enablement can ensure that all efforts are directed towards common goals and outcomes. This alignment fosters a shared understanding of success and creates a cohesive strategy that enhances efficiency and productivity across the organization. Enablement teams provide the necessary tools, training, and resources to support sales teams, ensuring they are well-equipped to meet their targets and drive revenue growth. 

Hayden Stafford | President & CRO | Seismic 

How should my enablement team approach planning? 

To build a strategy for an initiative, start by clearly defining the objective, understanding the problem you aim to solve or the opportunity you want to leverage. Identify key stakeholders, resources, and potential obstacles. Develop a strategic roadmap for action with specific, measurable steps, prioritizing tasks based on impact and feasibility. Finally, establish metrics to track progress and ensure continuous evaluation and adjustment. 

In more specific terms, we recommend that you start with an Enablement Charter if you do not have one. Our Enablement Charter service helps establish a comprehensive framework that defines the strategy and vision of your enablement function. This formal charter ensures that your enablement efforts are aligned with broader business objectives and have clear ownership across departments. By activating this charter, we help ensure your organization is strategically positioned to maximize the value of your enablement initiatives. This service brings structure, alignment, and focus to your enablement strategy, enabling long-term growth and measurable success. 

You can also contact the Strategic Enablement Services team! We have a broad range of ways to help customers get started, including a baseline assessment of your enablement maturity level and corresponding recommendations that point back to our Enablement Value Chain.  

Dean Perry | Strategic Consulting Director | Seismic 

How do I identify the right KPIs for my team to measure? How do you show business value with non-revenue generating functions? 

Ultimately, you want to measure more than just the number of people logging into the Seismic platform, so defining meaningful KPIs for your organization is paramount. Every enablement org serves a different business with different goals, making it difficult to determine a set of KPIs for all. 

Ask yourself what value story you hope to tell with Seismic and how it aligns to your business’s outcomes. Businesses often measure success with revenue, and while difficult, it isn’t impossible to tie enablement behaviors to revenue. 

Identify what your leaders recognize as success, such as the average length of a sales cycle, lead conversion rate, and win rate. Aim to change and improve sales behavior through enablement. Consider the average time to ramp up new sellers, measure content usage for product/program launches in relation to revenue trends and compare win rates when using Seismic content versus not. 

The key takeaway is to be conscious of your core audience. Use the data Seismic provides to connect the dots between your actions and your business goals. 

Sergio Toranzo | Senior Solution Consultant II | Seismic 

How do I demonstrate value and build internal advocacy for enablement? 

Two of the questions we’re often asked are, “How do I prove value to teams I haven’t engaged with?” And “How do I engage with teams I haven’t provided value to?” 

We recommend understanding your organization’s vision, which often involves building strong customer relationships for revenue and loyalty. As an enablement expert, you likely have initiatives to support team goals. Next, identify these teams’ specific goals and challenges within the business context. Create or use content that addresses these needs, with measurable deliverables. Regularly check in with clear reporting to show impact and uncover new growth opportunities. 

Liz McLemore | Product Marketing Director | Seismic 

I work in a highly regulated industry where leadership is risk averse. Do you have any advice for helping colleagues become more comfortable with AI? 

There remains a wealth of opportunities for AI to bring business value to highly regulated industries, especially by integrating with existing regulatory requirements and ensuring compliance. Many AI products are specifically designed with regulatory frameworks in mind to meet the complex needs of enterprises.  

To find a suitable, enterprise-grade AI solution for your industry, it’s crucial to involve legal and compliance teams early in the process. This helps address concerns and ensure the solution adheres to essential standards. Key factors to assess when choosing AI products include compliance with privacy regulations, transparency in AI decision-making, responsible data-sharing practices, and ensuring data residency requirements are met. Additionally, AI models should be accountable and designed with safety mechanisms to prevent unintended risks.  

To help your organization adopt AI, start by educating internal teams and addressing key concerns raised by legal and compliance departments. This builds trust and alignment regarding technology, business, and regulatory needs. Begin with low-risk AI projects that have clear, measurable outcomes, allowing your organization to see real-world benefits through small, controlled pilot programs. 

Yinyin Liu | VP of Engineering | Seismic 

How can Seismic Strategic Enablement Services help me? 

Strategic Enablement Services offers tailored consulting solutions that align your enablement efforts with broader business goals, driving measurable impact. Our expert team works alongside you to optimize processes, enhance team productivity, and ensure smooth adoption of new initiatives. Whether you need support with onboarding, change management, or developing a robust enablement strategy, we bring the expertise to help you achieve sustained growth and maximize your ROI. 

Irina Soriano | VP, Strategic Enablement Consulting | Seismic 

Build Momentum with Strategic Enablement 

Understanding your organization’s vision and aligning it with actionable enablement initiatives is key to driving growth and success. Seismic’s Strategic Enablement Services team is here to support you every step of the way, from optimizing processes to ensuring smooth adoption of new initiatives. With tailored consulting and a focus on measurable impact, we are dedicated to helping you achieve your business goals. 

Thank you for your questions. We encourage you to continue to submit your most pressing enablement queries to us on social media. We are always here to provide the insights and support you need to drive success in your organization. Stay engaged and keep those questions coming! 

The post Mailbag: Answers to your top foundational enablement questions  appeared first on Seismic.

As buyers become more informed and their needs more diverse, the role of AI in sales enablement has grown increasingly vital. AI not only empowers sales teams with personalized training and insights but also aligns sales and marketing efforts to foster business growth. By leveraging real-time data and analytics, AI ensures that every interaction with a buyer is meaningful and value-driven, increasing the likelihood of successful deals. 

We recently had the privilege to speak with Yinyin Liu, Seismic’s VP of Engineering and a leading AI expert, who shed light on how AI is transforming sales enablement and shared insights on integrating AI into existing workflows. 

How can AI enhance sales enablement processes and improve sales performance? 

YL: Sales enablement is about continuously improving and empowering sales teams with the right skills, knowledge, tools, and content to engage buyers and close deals effectively. AI can accelerate this empowerment by providing personalized training programs and insights, aligning sales and marketing efforts and driving business growth.   

In the digital era, buyers are more informed, demanding, and diverse than ever. They spend very little of their time face-to-face with sellers during the buyer journey. AI can help sellers make the most of these limited interactions by providing real-time data and analytics that are highly attuned to the buyer’s needs. This ensures that every interaction adds value for the buyer and increases the chances of closing the deal.  

AI’s integration into sales enablement processes can provide a significant competitive edge. From empowering sales teams and adapting to buyer behaviors to leveraging data-driven insights and enhancing collaboration, AI offers a comprehensive suite of tools and capabilities that can transform how sales are conducted. Businesses that harness the power of AI will be better positioned to meet the demands of modern buyers and achieve their objectives. 

How can sales and enablement leaders effectively integrate AI into their existing workflows and processes? 

YL: Like any technology transformation the business world has gone through before, it is more sustainable for business leaders to follow a structured process, even if the company commitment and support are already there. These are the steps that help organizations operationalize AI for sustainable growth: 

1. Assess current processes: Begin with a thorough evaluation of existing sales workflows, identifying areas where AI can drive efficiency—such as automating repetitive tasks, lead scoring, and analyzing buyer data. 

2. Start with small AI projects: Initiate pilot programs focusing on specific pain points or opportunities within sales processes that can lead to measurable impact. This allows teams to test AI’s impact on areas like data insights, situation synthesis, buyer behavior predictions, or content recommendations, before full-scale implementation. 

3. Look for an AI solution that meets organization-wide needs: Choose robust, scalable AI solutions that fit organizational needs and offer capabilities beyond basic automation or features for an individual persona. Enterprise-grade AI provides enhanced data privacy, security, and compliance, which are critical for long-term success. It also provides organization-wide configurations including roles, permissions, workflows and data use to ensure seamless adoption of AI and alignment with business goals. 

4. Iterate and optimize: AI integration is an ongoing process. Continuously evaluate the AI tools in use, gather feedback from sales teams, and refine workflows to align with evolving business needs and technological advances, driving continuous growth over time. 

What are the key considerations for sales and enablement leaders when choosing AI tools? 

YL: To ensure the solution aligns with business goals and drives meaningful outcomes, I believe these are the key factors: 

• Data and content integration: The ability of an AI tool is heavily impacted by the data and business context it can be grounded by. For a system to handle vast amounts of data and a large variety of data formats. Sales leaders should seek out AI solutions that have strong data integration, as well as solid content ingestion, management, and retrieval foundations to ensure data and context consistency across the AI platforms. 

• Scalability: As businesses grow, so does the volume of their data and the complexity of their operations. The chosen AI tools should be scalable, capable of evolving alongside the business to remain effective as demands increase.  

• User Experience: Generative AI products for business users need to balance professionalism with consumer-friendliness. An intuitive interface can ensure that even non-technical users can effectively leverage the tool, driving broader adoption and maximizing its impact. In addition, the AI product experience needs to be transparent, so users remain in control of critical decisions.  

How do you see AI taking shape in the next five to ten years. What trends do you expect to emerge? 

YL: The future of AI over the next five to ten years is likely to be transformative across industries, including B2B sales, healthcare, manufacturing, and beyond. I am very excited to see how AI will develop for better Human-AI collaboration, continued growth of the generative AI technology, more mature AI ethics and governance, and of course, greater benefits for sales and marketing teams.   

The Strategic Imperative of Embracing AI in Sales Enablement 

AI is revolutionizing sales enablement by providing unprecedented insights and tools that empower sales teams to engage more effectively with today’s informed and diverse buyers. By seamlessly integrating AI into existing workflows, businesses can drive efficiency, enhance collaboration, and ultimately achieve greater sales performance. Embracing AI is not just a technological transformation; it’s a strategic imperative for any organization striving to stay competitive and meet the evolving demands of the digital marketplace. 

If you’d like to learn more about how you can leverage AI in enablement, please download our eBook, The Comprehensive Guide to Using Generative AI in Enablement. 

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Meetings are so high-stakes that it becomes easy for sellers to focus on the meeting itself, leaving prep and follow-up as afterthoughts. But, in reality, effective preparation and rigorous follow-up are the foundations upon which great buyer experiences are built.

If you’re wondering how you or your team can better prepare for meetings, you’re in luck. In this post, we’ll share how you can make the most of your time and craft a memorable experience for your buyers and customers.

Understand the buyer and their needs

First things first: a sales meeting isn’t primarily about making a sale. It’s about developing a relationship with your buyer. It’s important to center your sales meetings around your customers and their needs. While this isn’t always possible in an introductory meeting, there are small things you can do to tailor your meetings to your audience. And, over time, you can continue to personalize what you share and when, based on your customer’s unique needs.

For an introductory meeting, it’s important to do your research. By searching the buyer’s website, recent news, and pulling relevant insights about their industry, you can demonstrate a high business acumen. For example, if you’re meeting with a prospect from a manufacturing firm, you can start by reviewing their latest earnings report, researching their recent projects, and getting a feel for their competitive landscape.

Conducting this pre-work ensures that you can create a hypothesis for how the meeting will flow. Gathering information on what’s worked for similar customers and prospects can help you prepare effectively. Researching your customer’s pain points, interests, and objectives will enable you to create a personalized agenda that is relevant to your customer and what they hope to achieve.

Prepare the right content and knowledge

The pitch deck is the bread and butter of any sales call. Sellers depend on PowerPoint presentations to create a narrative that will guide their meetings. Once you’ve developed an understanding of your customer and their unique needs, begin by gathering the right content. Identify and personalize the most relevant content to help guide the conversation based on your customer’s specific scenario.

Just as content is important to the meeting experience, so, too, is the knowledge your sellers possess. This is where pre-meeting activities like just-in-time learning and virtual practice help ensure sellers have the skills and knowledge necessary to master your talk track and address any questions, objections, and topics that might come up during the meeting. This can also include topics like competitor insights, product features, and your product or service’s value proposition.

Align and collaborate with your sales team

Before any customer-facing meeting – especially high-stakes meetings with executives – it’s important to ensure that every member of your sales team is aligned. Connect with these members to rehearse your pitch, as well as any other scenarios you foresee unfolding during your call.

Use these pre-meeting exercises to fine-tune your approach. Through peer-to-peer dry runs, you may identify opportunities to refine before you’re in front of a buyer. Tools like Seismic Learning enable sellers through just-in-time coaching so they can prepare more intentionally, and with their specific customer needs in mind. And Seismic for Meetings helps sellers collaborate with their deal team and ensure everyone is aligned and well-rehearsed on the agenda and content.

Trust Seismic to prepare for make-or-break meetings

Meeting prep can be a hassle when content and learning exist in multiple different systems, but it doesn’t have to be. The Seismic Enablement Cloud provides a single, unified platform for all the tools and content your sales teams need to prepare efficiently.

Effectively prepare for meetings with Seismic’s features such as Meetings, Content, Knowledge, Learning, and more that can help sellers connect the dots on everything they need for the meeting.

Ready to make the most out of every meeting? Download our buyer engagement kit to access tools that will help you prepare, engage, and follow up with your customers. If you’d like to see Seismic in action, please request a demo today.

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For CMOs, enablement technology plays a crucial role in driving cross-functional sales and marketing alignment by facilitating seamless communication, data sharing, and collaboration between these teams. Enablement technology streamlines processes, reduces manual tasks, and enhances productivity, allowing sales and marketing teams to focus on strategic initiatives and revenue-generating activities. 

The challenge of sales and marketing alignment 

Despite the many benefits of sales and marketing alignment, CMOs often struggle with getting their team to work collaboratively with sales. The most common challenges to marketing and sales alignment include: 

• Poor communication: Communication is fundamental to driving alignment. Differences in terminology, lack of regular meetings, and limited feedback create gaps that lead to misunderstandings, inefficiencies, and delays. 

• Data silos: Collaboration suffers when information lives in separate systems. To do their jobs well, sales and marketing teams need seamless access to customer data and insights. This information enables them to optimize leads and create effective, targeted campaigns. 

• Divergent strategies: When marketing and sales teams have conflicting strategies, the customer experience suffers. Lack of alignment on messaging, targeting criteria, and customer journey mapping can confuse prospects and weaken brand perception. 

• Resistance to change: Some team members may be hesitant to adopt new technologies and processes. This resistance to change is a common roadblock, and it is often the reason behind inefficient practices and poor performance. 

The role of enablement technology 

Enablement technology helps CMOs bridge the gap between sales and marketing teams. It’s used to establish clear processes, promote seamless cross-functional teamwork, and provide regular training and feedback — all of which are essential for driving successful sales and marketing alignment. Integrations with customer relationship management (CRM) systems, marketing automation platforms, and other tools allow both sales and marketing to share information and insights within a single platform. This leads tobetter lead management, effective campaigns, and personalized messaging that truly resonates with customers.  

A recent Seismic study found that 60% of users do not know how to effectively implement enablement tools for their team, and marketing leaders were 28% more likely than average to say this. When implemented effectively, marketing and sales enablement technology helps CMOs accelerate progress toward strategic business objectives like growing their customer base, operating more efficiently, and exceeding revenue targets. In our study, 91% of enablement technology users said it helps them provide a better buyer experience. In addition, enablement technology users were 14% more likely than non-users to say their company achieved its marketing goals in 2023.  

Sales and marketing alignment best practices 

What can CMOs do to create — and maintain — sales and marketing alignment? Here are best practices that strengthen sales and marketing collaboration, improve efficiency, and drive revenue growth. 

• Use a centralized platform to share data and insights. A centralized enablement platform promotes sales and marketing collaboration by giving both teams the ability to access and update customer data, interactions, and insights. This shared visibility ensures that everyone is working with the same information, leading to better decision making, more effective targeting, and improved performance overall. In our recent survey of sales and marketing professionals, 58% of respondents believe that cross-departmental enablement would help their company increase revenue. 

• Integrate analytics and reporting tools. The integration of analytics and reporting tools enables new insights into campaign performance, lead conversion rates, and customer engagement metrics. As a result, sales and marketing teams will be better able to track progress, identify trends, and adjust strategies in real time, optimizing results and ROI. AllianceBernstein, one of the largest investment management firms in the world, uses a Salesforce integration with Seismic to maintain contact records, track content interactions as opportunities, and manage client interactions to improve sales and service efficiency. By using Seismic, the company saves 23,000 seller hours each year.   

• Create a content hub. Your enablement technology should include a centralized content hub where sales can easily access, customize, and share marketing collateral, presentations, case studies, and product information. Content management capabilities streamline content distribution, empower sales teams, and reinforce consistent messaging across channels. Five9, a cloud contact center solutions company, saves $680,000 yearly through increased seller efficiency by centralizing content in Seismic. Five9’s head of marketing leverages Seismic to surface content for sales, automate the creation of personalized customer assets, and measure content usage and effectiveness.  Leverage technology for training and onboarding. Using interactive platforms, video tutorials, and knowledge-sharing tools helps ensure consistent training and onboarding across departments. Aerogen, a global leader in acute care aerosol drug delivery, standardized remote enablement and effective coaching of line managers with Seismic. The results included a 39% increase in deal size and a 54% increase in sellers reaching and exceeding targets.  

Driving alignment across the go-to-market organization 

Ultimately, marketing and sales alignment requires a concerted effort to foster a culture of open communication, shared goals, and continuous learning. This sets the stage for sales and marketing collaboration, which then leads to improved customer experiences, boosted productivity, and revenue growth.  

The Seismic Enablement Cloud^TM is designed to help CMOs drive greater cross-functional alignment within their organizations by streamlining content production, centralizing materials in one place, and uniting data sources to promote smarter marketing decisions. Our recent study, Generation Enablement Report: The Rise of Enablement’s Influence, explains how marketing leaders across the globe leverage enablement technology in innovative ways to achieve their business goals. Download the report today.  

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